Human Story - What was the Srivijayan Empire?

There's a familiar set of pre-modern empires that are well-established in the academic consciousness: the Romans and Byzantines, the Mongols, the Holy Roman Empire, and the various incarnations and dynasties of the Chinese, Persian, and Islamic civilizations. History buffs might know a bit about the Akkadians, Mauryans, or Incas. But there are great swaths of time and space where, for various historical reasons, major players in human civilization have essentially vanished to dust. Today I'm writing about one of them - an empire which dominated one of the most populous areas of the world across seven centuries, which I'd never heard of until it got half a chapter in a book I happened to pick up.

Srivijaya through time