Ashu Dutt answered this
People who spokeAustronesian languagesfirst arrived in Sumatra around 500BCE.One of the earliest known kingdoms wasKantoli, which flourished in the 5th century CE in southern Sumatra. Kantoli was replaced by the Empire ofSrivijayaand then later by theKingdom of Samudra. Srivijaya was a Buddhist monarchy centred in what is nowPalembang. Dominating the region through trade and conquest throughout the 7th to 9th centuries, the empire helped spread theMalayculture throughoutNusantara. The empire was athalassocracyor maritime power that extended its influence from island to island. Palembang was a center for scholarly learning, and it was there the Chinese Buddhist pilgrimI Chingstudied Sanskrit in 671CE before departing for India. On his journey to China, he spent four years in Palembang translating Buddhist texts and writing two manuscripts.
Batakwarriors, 1870
Srivijayan influence waned in the 11th century after it was defeated by theCholaEmpire of southern India. At the same time, Islam made its way to Sumatra through Arabs and Indian traders in the 6th and 7th centuries AD.[9]By the late 13th century, the monarch of theSamudrakingdom had converted to Islam.Marco Polovisited the island in 1292, andIbn Battutavisited twice during 13451346. Samudra was succeeded by the powerfulAceh Sultanate, which survived to the 20th century. With the coming of the Dutch, the many Sumatran princely states gradually fell under their control. Aceh, in the north, was the major obstacle, as the Dutch were involved in the long and costlyAceh War(18731903).
Sumatra came under the control of theDutch East Indiesand became a major producer of pepper, rubber, and oil. In the early and mid-twentieth century, Sumatran academics and leaders were important figures inIndonesia's independence movements, such as:Mohammad Hatta(the first vice-president) andSutan Sjahrir(the first prime minister).
TheGreat Sumatran fault(astrike-slip fault), and theSunda megathrust(asubduction zone), run the entire length of the island along its west coast. On 26 December 2004, the western coast and islands of Sumatra, particularlyAcehprovince, were struck by atsunamifollowing theIndian Ocean earthquake. More than 170,000 Indonesians were killed, primarily in Aceh. Other recent earthquakes to strike Sumatra include the2005 Sumatra Earthquakeand theOctober 2010 Sumatra earthquake.Then environment minister Gusti Mohammad Hatta stated in 2010 that Sumatra had experienced tremendous pressures resulting from natural resource exploitation. He further argued that natural forests had decreased, leaving only 29 percent of forest cover on the island.
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