The Remnants of Prehistoric Plant Pollen Reveal that Humans Shaped Forests 11,000 Years Ago

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/remnants-prehistoric-plant-pollen-reveal-humans-shaped-forests-11000-years-ago-180949985/?no-ist

tropical forest writes much of its history at large scale, producing trees as tall as skyscrapers and flowers the size of carry-on luggage. But by zooming in, scientists are uncovering chapters in forest history that were influenced by human activity far earlier than anyone thought.

A new study of pollen samples extracted from tropical forests in southeast Asia suggests humans have shaped these landscapes for thousands of years. Although scientists previously believed the forests were virtually untouched by people, researchers are now pointing to signs of imported seeds, plants cultivated for food, and land clearing as early as 11,000 years ago—around the end of the last Ice Age.
The study, to be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science comes from researchers led by paleoecologist Chris Hunt, of Queen’s University, Belfast, who analyzed existing data and examined samples from Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Thailand and Vietnam.



Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/remnants-prehistoric-plant-pollen-reveal-humans-shaped-forests-11000-years-ago-180949985/#KYZF8xMbRAa6tyWW.99
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The discoveries could boost indigenous populations' claims to ancestral lands long thought to be untouched by human activity

By Josie Garthwaite

smithsonianmag.com
March 5, 2014

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/remnants-prehistoric-plant-pollen-reveal-humans-shaped-forests-11000-years-ago-180949985/#KYZF8xMbRAa6tyWW.99
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The discoveries could boost indigenous populations' claims to ancestral lands long thought to be untouched by human activity

By Josie Garthwaite

smithsonianmag.com
March 5, 2014

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/remnants-prehistoric-plant-pollen-reveal-humans-shaped-forests-11000-years-ago-180949985/#KYZF8xMbRAa6tyWW.99
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Adenan’s heart with people, state

http://www.theborneopost.com/2014/03/01/adenans-heart-with-people-state/

by Philip Kiew. Posted on March 1, 2014, Saturday

Adenan (second left) is at home in rural Sarawak in this picture taken in 2003.

HE REGARDS Sarawak as heaven on earth, cultural diversity and harmony.  As a former Minister of Agriculture and Food Industries Sarawak, he knows every nook and corner of the state, having intimate knowledge of their needs and peculiarities.

His continuous call for unity resonates throughout the state in multi-racial and religious settings, while his efficiency in the public service makes him stand out in the state’s political and social landscape.

Everyone has a different idea of who or what he is, but everyone agrees that he has a sharp analytical mind, is a brainy and decisive leader and an experienced hand in affairs of the state and it’s state of affairs.

After 35 years as elected representative and 28 years holding state and federal cabinet posts, Tan Sri Datuk Amar Adenan Satem is now ready to write the next chapter in leading Sarawak with effect from his swearing-in yesterday.

SUPP publicity and information secretary Datuk Sebastian Ting (left) extending his congratulations
to then CM-designate Adenan.

He is as public a figure as it gets in Sarawak, but has strangely remained an enigma to many who do not know him up close.

To those close to him, he is also known as a hotshot in game hunting in his younger days, a fishing enthusiast, an avid reader and a sci-fi movie buff.

To his immediate circle, he is a wonderful person; generous, compassionate, insightful and humorous.
To the political circle, he is a no-nonsense, incisive leader with the knack of reading one’s mind.

His eyes may be closed when the speeches are getting underway, but his brain is anything but idle.

His collected thoughts, wits and message collate into rib-tickling but flourishing speeches without fail at many functions he officiates.

His predecessor Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud on one occasion managed to lace an explanation and advice with humour in addressing complaints of aloofness against the former.

Saying Adenan had a heart of gold, Taib said this thinking minister was always so engrossed in his thoughts that he could literally walk into glass walls.

The minister was officiating a function in Miri when it was reported in the press, and with a laugh, he later told this author that a reply was in order.

His tongue-in-cheek riposte was: “I thank the Chief Minister for his kind words, and will try to remember not to walk into glass walls,” which was reported in the The Borneo Post and Utusan Borneo.

A decade ago in Buduk Nur in Ba Kelalan, he publicly declared having a soft spot for the Orang Ulu communities in the interior of Sarawak.

“I will always find an excuse to visit Orang Ulus since the days of Datuk Balan Seling and Datuk Racha Umong because I like them- simple as that,” he said, agreeing with the remark of his close friend and then Ba Kelalan state assemblyman, the late Datuk Dr Judson Sakai, that the minorities in Sarawak have a friend in Adenan.

Adenan is also a stickler for education and remaining true to one’s roots.

Years back, he told parents at a seminar in Lawas: “My mother was responsible for my becoming a minister, and she has always paid attention despite being illiterate, making sure that I ate, clothed and went to school.”

She also made it a point to monitor his conduct and progress from primary school to university level, but letting him enjoy the freedom to play after school.

On the political scene, he worked best behind the scenes with results which speak for themselves.
He was instrumental in bringing back Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) back into the BN fold after the Ming Court Affair in 1987, paving the way for political stability which has lasted to this day.

Under his watch as Chief Minister in this challenging transition period, Sarawak can look forward to responsible, matured and experienced leadership from Adenan and his team.

His conviction and approach is reflected in a speech he gave in 2005 at the opening of the Triennial General Meeting of PBB Marudi, Senadin, Piasau and Lambir divisions.

“The greater the power, the greater is the responsibility to uphold political stability and with power comes big responsibilities which you must carry as the biggest successful political party, “ he said.

A united front by PBB as the backbone of the state BN is expected by the Chief Minister cum party president in his call at the party’s supreme council meeting that all the senior leaders from president to vice-presidents should be returned uncontested for the sake of unity.

“This is to avoid any split and unhappiness which is bound to happen no matter what Hollywood (play-acting) and handshakes displayed before any contest,” said Adenan back then.

The smooth transition and unity in PBB despite the three horse-race for the Chief Minister post involving him, deputy president Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg and senior vicepresident Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan speaks of the inherent leadership policy of the party he will inherit.

“Our stand is to bring as many people with the same wavelength under one umbrella and that is the reason why PBB is the most successful party in the state while SNAP split to PBDS, PRS and whatever remains,“ he said in 2005.

Adenan’s experience in the last 35 years as elected representative and 28 years with ministerial portfolios has drummed home clearly the reality of minorities working together with the majority to keep up with the mainstream.

“You have to go with the flow or risk being left high and dry like debris on the river bank,“ he said.

Adenan (left) presenting a token of appreciation to Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin on Feb 14, this year in Lundu as Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Alfred Jabu (centre) looks on.

Speaking at a Rurum Kelabit function in Miri in 2005, Adenan said he made it a point that minorities tend to be marginalised, and he is inclined to use whatever high positions held to reach out to them- irrespective of whether they were Kelabits, Kayans, Lun Bawangs or even the small Indian community.

His Kelabit name is ‘Maran Ribet’ meaning ‘Handsome Nobleman’.

He was bestowed the name over a decade ago, and the community is likely to invite him for another name-changing ceremony to reflect his current status.

Admitting his love for the highland countryside, with its tranquility of nature in remote places, he said the peace and quiet is a refreshing experience for the weary mind, away from the hustle-bustle of the cities, the rat races and the madding crowd.

Idris Jala must not defend the 10-point formula

http://www.mysinchew.com/node/96077

2014-02-25 11:55

By BOB TEOH

Idris Jala's defence of the Cabinet's position over the'Allah-Alkitab' crisis and 10-point issue is untenable because it is fundamentally flawed. Although he made it clear that this is his personal opinion, Idris is basically defending the Cabinet over an indefensible policy.

The Cabinet's 10-point solution in 2011 is flawed because it is essentially a one-country-two-laws policy.

This is both wrong and unacceptable.


The 10-point was imposed unilaterally by the Cabinet although discussions with some church leaders were held behind closed-door. The Christian Federation of Malaysia, the umbrella body, immediate response was to reject the 10-point. Other church organisations, denominations and pastors' fellowship adopted a similar posture with the exception of the Bible Society of Malaysia, which is not a spokesman of the church in any case but a Bible bookshop.

The use of the word 'Allah' predates Islam. It is not exclusive to Islam. The 10-point fails to understand this.

A senior pastor pointed out just last week that on the Day of Pentecost as described in the Book of Acts in the New Testament, Arabs as well as people of other ethnicities were present on that occasion, 600 years before the Qur'an was compiled. The Bible also pointed out each people group was declaring "the wonders of God in their own tongues" (Acts 2:11). The Arabs would have no doubt used the word 'Allah' to refer to God.

In the Malay speaking world, portions of the Bible was first translated (in Indonesia) in 1612 in which the word God was translated as 'Allah.' This was not only the first non-European translation of the Bible but it was done well ahead of any translation of the Qur'an into Malay. Even the legendary Munshi Abdullah translated the Bible into Malay preferring the word 'Allah' for God. The Christians were, therefore, first to use the word 'Allah' in the Malay language Bible. This puts to rest the argument that the word 'Allah' is exclusive to Muslims. The principle is that the first to use the term is entitled to claim priority over those who used it later. Again, the 10-point has missed this moot point.

Even as Islam is the religion of the Federation, freedom of religion for each and every citizen remains a most fundamental human right of every citizen recognised and protected by the Federal Constitution. This, the Cabinet has failed to accept or understand.

So fundamental is this right that even when a state of emergency rule is proclaimed under Article 150 of the Constitution, among other things, our right to freedom of religion cannot be tampered with or removed. We have lived through several emergencies or marshal law periods in our short history. Yet not once has our fundamental right to freedom of religion been curtailed or set aside.

Sub-clause 6A of Article 150 is clear: "… nor shall Clause (6) validate any provision inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution relating to any such matter or relating to religion…"

This plainly means freedom of religion remains protected and guaranteed by our Constitution even under emergency rule.

The supremacy of the Constitutional guarantee and protection of our freedom of religion becomes clear at once, when read together with Articles 3 and 11. The safeguard of freedom of religion, as rightly pointed out by Idris Jala, is further amplified in what is known as the 18 and 20-point agreements submitted by the Sarawak and Sabah governments for inclusion into the new Constitution for Malaysia in 1963.

We are also acutely aware that freedom of religion is also a cornerstone of United Nations conventions on fundamental human rights and that the state should not intervene in matters of religion.

This was the position rightly taken by the High Court in the Herald case when it decided on 31 Dec 2009 that the Home Minister was wrong in imposing a condition that the weekly Catholic Herald's annual publishing permit would only be renewed if it did not use the word 'Allah' to refer to God in its Bahasa edition.

Sadly, last year the Court of Appeal reversed the High Court judgment by ruling that the usage of the word 'Allah' is not integral to Christianity. In doing so the Court of Appeal went beyond its jurisdiction and has usurped the ecclesiastical jurisdiction that belonged solely to the Church in Malaysia. It is up to the Federal Court now to restore the status quo. The remedy can be by a consent judgment.

Idris Jala's contention is that Article 11 (4) allows for the various so-called State Islamic Enactments to "control or restrict the propagation of any religious doctrine or belief among persons professing the religion of Islam". That may be so, but the operative words are "control" and "restrict". But the various State Islamic authorities started gazetting fatwas "prohibiting" non-Muslims from using a slew of words like 'Allah'. This "prohibition" is clearly in violation of the Constitutional provision. This strikes at the heart of the supremacy of the Constitution.

Many have called for Idris Jala to resign from the Cabinet over the 10-point. Many are also aware of Idris Jala's Christian heritage from the Kelabit Highlands, the Bible Belt of Malaysia. He preached his first sermon while in Form Three way back in October 1973. Some believed him while some others doubted. The rest is history.

But history repeats itself. Today, when Idris Jala to tries to preach religious tolerance, there are many who believe in him just as there are doubters. I may disagree with Idris Jala, but as a fellow believer I would still listen to his sermon.

Back to Borneo, and an Eden at Risk

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/travel/back-to-borneo-and-an-eden-at-risk.html?_r=0

By KAREN J. COATES 

FEB. 21, 2014

Pa Lungan in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, Malaysia. Credit Jerry Redfern for The New York Time

 There are no roads to the village of Pa Lungan, just a mucky water buffalo trail beneath a tight-knit canopy — among the last standing highland jungles on the island of Borneo. In spots, the trail is more swamp than path. But that does not mean all is quiet: The rain forest is a cacophonous place. Cicadas squeal and monkeys hoot as they romp through the trees. Bamboo creaks in the breeze as its stalks grind and rub in a primitive dance.

Our journey through Borneo began seven years ago, when, on a whim, my husband and I visited the Kelabit Highlands, situated in Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the island. I’d been invited to a conference in the capital city of Kuching; with some time on our hands, we headed to this remote region, most easily accessible by turboprop plane, which flew a few times each week from Miri, on the coast, to the small town of Bario. (The alternatives were many hours, even days, on precarious logging roads, or several weeks on foot through the forest.) 

Thanks to a reporting fellowship, we found ourselves back in the Highlands last year. Things had changed somewhat — that flight now leaves twice daily, and a newly graded dirt road eases travel in and out of Bario. 

The town had grown slightly — more houses, a few concrete-slab roads — but the tempo had not. Bario Asal, the town’s original longhouse, remains, albeit a bit quieter than in years past. But local families still gather by unvented fires in a common area filled with smoke and chitchat. Tourists come to see this. “More tourists, every day,” a Kelabit elder named Jenette Ulun said — one or two a day, sometimes a dozen. “There are more tourists than us locals,” she joked.

Photo

The Parill family at the Bario Asal longhouse. Credit Jerry Redfern for The New York Times

For centuries, the Kelabit people lived isolated lives, best known to the outside world as champion headhunters. But that began to change under the reign of the so-called White Rajahs, a British family by the name of Brooke, who reigned in Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 and tried to rid the region of headhunting. 

Meanwhile, Christian missionaries converted the Kelabits in the 1940s and clamped down on alcohol consumption. Ever since, the Kelabits, who now number about 6,000, have gladly practiced evangelical Christianity with ceremonies far less laborious than their old animist rituals, they say. And the Kelabits have modernized in other ways: Gone are skulls hanging from the rafters, replaced by fireside cellphones and laptops.

Until a few years ago, travelers came for the “Bario Loop,” and other multiday treks organized by local Kelabit guides that hugged the Indonesian border through jungles now logged. These days, most visitors take shorter hikes and experience Kelabit culture in local homes.

Photo

Typical Kelabit fare (pounded rice cake, chicken soup, mushroom soup and fried wild vegetables) at Henry Lagang’s guesthouse in Pa Dalih. Credit Jerry Redfern for The New York Times

On our first trip to Bario, my husband and I lodged at De Plateau, a homestay near the forest leading to Pa Lungan. I remember the cold-water showers and the outdoor sink, which faced a panorama of blue-green hills bathed in flowery air. Dinners consisted of fried wild boar, fiddlehead ferns and sautéed, burgundy-red ginger flowers.

We hired a guide who led us up and down a sodden trail, a foot-long blade called a parang hanging from a scabbard at his hip. Five hours on, we found Pa Lungan, set like a mountain oasis amid verdant, dewy grasses and sparkling ponds. That’s where we met Walter Paran, our village host. He took us to his wooden house set on stilts, where we met his wife, Moriaty, and his then-toddler daughter, Mujan. Walter’s mother squatted by a blackened hearth, tending a pot of simmering cucumber. “Very simple food,” Walter said.

Photo

Kids take a sunset joyride around the Pa Dalih longhouse in Sarawak, Malaysia. Credit Jerry Redfern for The New York Times

We also met Walter’s brother, Pasen Mado Inan, who praised the forests around him. “Most of the things we need for every day come from the jungle,” he said. He feared it would disappear — the trucks were getting closer. “We hate the logging.”

Walter asked us to return so he could take us deeper into the forest, “before logging disturbs that side.” As my husband and I flew out of Bario a few days later, we saw early evidence of what he feared. Below, thick jungle turned to naked hills laced with ruddy roads. “No one can stop them,” our pilot said. “It’s disgusting.”

Photo

One of the guest rooms at the Jungle Blues Guesthouse in Bario, Sarawak, Malaysia. Credit Jerry Redfern for The New York Times

For years, I wondered what became of Walter, his family and their forests. I read of jungles all over Borneo, chopped and cleared, replanted with palms. To raze a rain forest is to bulldoze one of the earth’s biggest carbon stores. To erase this forest would also be to annihilate an age-old way of life. 

Seven years later, we returned, again flying a turboprop into Bario. This time, we stayed with Stephen Baya, a Kelabit artist, and his Danish wife, Tine Hjetting, in their homestay-gallery called Jungle Blues Dream, in a longhouse overlooking the wild yonder of rice paddies, homes and wooded hills that disappeared each morning in a shroud of fog. Stephen, a self-taught artist, fills his wooden walls with vivid trees of life, a motif that symbolizes, for him, a “journey never-ending.” Stephen was born in the Highlands but spent years working for Hilton, Holiday Inn and a Printemps department store elsewhere in Malaysia. He prefers Bario. Living the city life, he said, means “always having to think about tomorrow, think about next week.”

Photo

Walter Paran, a local guide. Credit Jerry Redfern for The New York Times

When I told Stephen of my search for Walter, he relayed the message. Spotty cellphone coverage now permeates parts of the jungle. (We later learned that if Walter wedges his phone into one particular window and stands back, he can sometimes maintain a conversation.) Walter successfully received Stephen’s message and said he awaited our arrival.

Stephen drove us to the road’s end, and from there, we hoofed it, packs on backs, sticks in hand. Along the way, elements of our first trip came back: the tests of balance provided by bridges the width of two logs that spanned streams and broad swaths of mud; an avenue of palms beneath higher, old-growth trees. We stopped at the palms, sat on a log and ate canned chicken curry. In the distance, we heard what sounded like faint, high-pitched voices. There were no trails, no villages, no one around. Perhaps it was wind, making the treetops squeak. Elders later spoke of talking spirits that occasionally spook villagers on foot in the forest.

Pa Lungan was idyllic as ever. We found Walter’s home, but he was out somewhere. Moriaty and Mujan, who was 9 by the time of our return visit, offered us instant coffee, fried shrimp crackers and a seat at their long wooden table. After a cold bucket shower and a short rest, we joined a party next door: Village hunters had caught a boar that morning, and its head crackled on the fire. They offered strips of hot, juicy fat and grilled petai beans, known for their sulfuric stench but delicious flavor.

The sky that evening was a spectacle of tropical-fruit colors: tangerine, passionfruit, papaya. Then darkness fell, and Walter’s generator rumbled on. The power allowed for a few efficiency lights, and a TV — the latter an addition since our previous visit. Mujan lay under a blanket, watching Bruce Lee chop his way through “Fist of Fury.” 

In the morning, we were greeted by Walter, who remembered us and had many things to share. He wanted to show us why tourists still come to Pa Lungan. “They love the place because it’s still green,” he said. 

Nearby Pulong Tau National Park was expanded in 2008, creating a buffer between his village and the logging threat, he told us. He said Pa Lungan remains a “nice, quiet place” — for now.

Together, we hiked a nearby mountain, across the soft earthen floor beneath palms that Walter’s ancestors had planted generations ago. The forest was dense. “This one you can call primary jungle,” he said. From there, we scrambled a near-vertical climb to the hilltop, where a giant metal cross, placed by someone from Pa Lungan (its exact origins are murky), was dedicated to “God’s saving grace”; a sign commemorates the need to avoid bringing “anything detestable” into the land. Below, Pa Lungan seemed to float in an undulating sea of trees. 

That’s Indonesia, Walter said, pointing to the horizon. He added: “Other side of the mountain, they already logged.” He eyed the area behind the cross, toward another area that had already been logged. From this vantage, we could also see Pulong Tau. Walter hoped the park would last, that its boundaries would hold; not all government decisions do, he had told us earlier. 

Walter knew he was living in an Eden at risk, but has always said he will fight for it. “I’m the one who’s always fighting against this logging,” he told me in 2006. 

Today, he has more hope for this view, still intact. We peered across thick stands of trees where Walter had taken us foraging for edible palms and rattans, and bamboos with liquid inside. He said he could live in that forest on the food and drink it provided. It had, after all, sustained centuries of people before him. “That’s why we need to keep our jungle,” he said.

Bario, and most Kelabit villages, offer homestay lodging with meals included.

Jungle Blues Dream (junglebluesdream.weebly.com) charges 70 ringgit per person per day, about $21 at 3.25 ringgit to the dollar. The owners can help arrange guides (typically 80 to 100 ringgit a day) and lodging elsewhere. Prices for homestay lodgings generally range from 50 to 90 ringgit a day.

Several Pa Lungan villagers welcome guests, at similar rates, including Walter Paran; arrange in advance from Bario or simply show up.

A version of this article appears in print on February 23, 2014, on page TR8 of the New York edition with the headline: Back to Borneo, and an Eden at Risk. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

The Landscape of Memory Archaeology, oral history, and culture deep in the Malaysian jungle

http://www.archaeology.org/issues/127-1403/letter-from/1793-borneo-jungle-megalithic-mounds-stone-jars

By KAREN COATES

Monday, February 10, 2014

(Jerry Redfern) Henry Lagang is one of only 6,000 members of highland
Borneo’s Kelabit tribe. Each day, Henry Lagang heads into the forest to hunt
and forage with a machete slung over one shoulder, a gun over the other, and
dogs at his heels. His mother grows rice, and so do his neighbors. For generations,
people have lived and worked like this to claim the land—and survive—in the
inland jungles of Malaysian Borneo.

For centuries, the Kelabits, a small tribe of hunter-farmer-foragers, lived in near isolation in the Bornean forests that straddle Malaysia and Indonesia. The tribe practiced animism and headhunting until missionaries converted them to Christianity in the 1940s. In contrast to the wealth of archaeological and anthropological research on the inhabitants of the island’s coasts, very little is known about the early history of the peoples who dwelled in these highlands. With approximately 6,000 tribe members among a total population of roughly 20 million Borneans, the Kelabits are a tiny minority, and little has been published on their history. But archaeologists working there now may offer new insights into the missing pieces of Kelabit history, as well as that of their predecessors.

Until recently, this region of the island was accessible only by plane or a month-long hike through the jungle. A new dirt logging road now connects the interior and the coast, but the locals who choose to stay still hike far and wide for food. Their lives revolve around the jungle. Kelabits measure their treks in cigarette time, 47-year-old Lagang explains. For example, it’s a “two-cigarette” hike from his mother’s rice field to a recently abandoned longhouse known as Batu Patong, through bucolic fields flanked by thick rain forest resonating with the sounds of insects.

(Richard Bleiweiss)

As he heads toward the jungle, Lagang passes a stone mound where local stories say heirless ancestors buried their belongings. Just a few yards away, beside a neighbor’s pineapple garden, sits a broken ceramic jar in what remains of a cemetery. Beyond, the rain forest shelters thousands of years of the archaeological record stacked atop itself, layer upon layer, site upon site: century-old longhouses with fruit trees planted by previous inhabitants, 300- to 600-year-old stone burial jars covered in moss and caked in dirt, now-overgrown rice and sago plots that fed the highlanders up to 2,300 years ago, and even evidence of widespread forest burning, a potential sign of arboriculture, dating back 6,000 years or more. Archaeologists have no way yet to precisely identify many of the jungle’s past inhabitants or the creators of these sites. And the more scientists find, the more questions emerge about the histories that lie hidden.

Though the island of Borneo has 50,000 years of known human occupation, until recently very little excavation, or even survey, has taken place in the inland mountains. Now, research in the Kelabit jungles offers new possibilities for assembling the puzzle of human history across interior Borneo. Since 2007, Lindsay Lloyd-Smith of Sogang University’s Institute for East Asian Studies in Seoul, South Korea, has coordinated archaeological fieldwork for a multiyear, multidisciplinary research team called the Cultured Rainforest Project (CRF). Led by Cambridge archaeologist Graeme Barker, CRF includes scientists from universities and institutes across the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Malaysia, and combines work in the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, and paleoecology. The project’s aim is to investigate past and present relationships between people and rain forest in interior highland Borneo. “We really didn’t know what to expect,” Lloyd-Smith says of the project’s beginnings. “We now have a pretty good chronological framework for human occupation and subsistence in the heart of Borneo, and it has revealed just how rich and varied the prehistory of central Borneo is. It’s exciting.” Yet the local knowledge of the past on which much of the CRF’s work also depends is slipping away quickly, and documentation of the archaeology might be one of the only ways to save it.

(Courtesy Lindsay Lloyd-Smith) Members of the Cultured Rainforest Project (CRF) 
are documenting the archaeological landscape of the Kelabit highlands, including this 
large stone mound known as a perupun. 

CRF’s work has also given Lagang and his neighbors their first formal chance to learn about Kelabit history, which is not taught in Malaysian schools. And the timing is critical. The last decade has brought rapid change as interior Borneo faces the rise of commercial logging and the cultural changes that come with it. Since 1990, according to a recent scientific report, logging has altered nearly 80 percent of Malaysian Borneo’s land surface. When trees go, so do traditional lifestyles that rely on them. Amid the effects of newly built logging roads, climate change, and a desire among young people for education and city jobs, Kelabit life seesaws between tradition and transition. Fading cultural knowledge compounds the threats to potential archaeological sites from the harsh climate and farmland development, explains Borbála Nyíri, who is Lloyd-Smith’s partner in both life and work, and a doctoral student at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester. “Many sites are now only known to a handful of old people, and are quickly dropping out of the sphere of cultural memory,” Nyíri says.

Through the years, Lagang and his mother, Mariar Aran, have opened the doors of their longhouse to researchers—“many people, many times,” Lagang says—offering beds and mosquito nets, meals of homegrown rice, wild boar and deer he has hunted, and vegetables plucked from the jungle. Lagang serves as both host and guide through the tangled terrain.

The Kelabit highlands are dotted with signs of the past. Throughout the forest, there are hundreds of markers called etuu. The Kelabits believe that in order to establish rights over a landscape, it is essential to mark it. These markers can include megaliths, carved stones, stone jars, stone mounds, and even rice fields. One prominent type of mark is the large stone mound known as a perupun. Kelabits today say such mounds, which are found all across the central highlands and can reach 100 feet wide and 10 feet high, were spiritually significant. “These findings seem to indicate a widespread cultural tradition that flourished around 2,000 years ago, during the Early Metal Age,” Lloyd-Smith says. And they indicate use of the landscape going back generations.

(Jerry Redfern) Kelabit tribesman Walter Paran stands in front of a megalithic burial site—
one of the many types of man-made marks on the landscape—called Batu Ritong.

Kelabits also see etuu as evidence of a person’s ability to channel lalud, the manifest power believed to govern all nature, from rivers to rain to life itself. Lalud is deeply intertwined with the spirit world, and etuu are indicators of a person’s ties to those spirits and ancestors. According to CRF anthropologist Monica Janowski, “A successful human, of high status, should demonstrate the ability to manage and manipulate lalud effectively, and this should be visible through the etuu marks he or she makes on the landscape.”

Etuu aren’t the only signs of human occupation in the forest. There are also hundreds of old settlements in varying stages of decay. Some are standing wooden structures, such as Batu Patong, while others are recognizable only by fruits and palms planted by previous inhabitants. Some sites date to the 1800s, and locals can remember their names and histories. Others show evidence of occupation dating back 400 years, but nothing is known of the people who lived there. Researchers have also identified what appear to be large, open-air settlements with stone walls and iron artifacts dating to the Early Metal Age, some 1,000 to 2,300 years ago. “As far as I am aware, these represent the earliest Metal Age settlements yet discovered on Borneo,” Lloyd-Smith says. Cave burial sites on the island have been studied before, but much less is known about occupation sites. For the first time, Lloyd-Smith says, he and his colleagues can begin to see these early societies from a domestic perspective, rather than from their mortuary practices alone. But at this point, the researchers don’t know a lot about these sites, such as whether they were long-term villages or gathering points for multiple communities, or how iron tools were introduced, or who brought them.

(Courtesy Lindsay Lloyd-Smith, Jerry Redfern) CRF archaeologists excavate at 
Long Diit (above left), which was used as a settlement as far back as 2,400 years 
ago, then as a burial site, likely 300-600 years ago. One of the 14 stone jars (above 
right) found at the site is heavily overgrown but still stands. 

The evidence uncovered thus far provokes questions about who the jungle’s early inhabitants were, how they lived and worked, what they ate, and how they interacted with their regional neighbors at a time of thriving trade between Borneo, China, India, and Southeast Asia. Were the early inhabitants of interior Borneo indigenous to the highlands, or outsiders who came with iron tools? Were they among the first Neolithic farmers who arrived in Southeast Asia from Taiwan and the Philippines 1,000 years earlier? Or was this interior culture a mix of local development and regional migration?

These queries have led Lloyd-Smith on a new investigation, called the Early Borneo Project. He hopes to focus on the early relationships between Borneo’s highlands and coast, and on the question of whether regional trade could have sparked the construction of megaliths and monuments such as the perupuns in the heart of Borneo in the Early Metal Age. “The effect of such early ‘globalization’ on such distant interior locations has never been considered,” says Lloyd-Smith.

For outsiders, traveling through the Bornean jungle is a constant challenge of balance, strength, and determination. But Lagang knows this place, how it behaves, and how he must respond. Even fording rivers is routine for him. He braces his body against the forceful flow of cold water rushing over rocks. Once across the water, he bushwhacks through vines and leaves, clearing a path to Long Diit, a site that was a settlement 1,000 to 2,400 years ago, and was later used as a cemetery, or menatoh, likely beginning 300 to 600 years ago. Menatoh are found throughout the highlands. These were essentially “villages of the dead,” according to Janowski. There, the deceased continue to live in the parallel spirit world or dimension, growing rice, keeping chickens, and practicing other everyday activities.

(Jerry Redfern) A broken dragon jar at the edge of Lagang’s village of Pa Dalih is the only surviving vessel in what was once a cemetery filled with dragon jars.

 

At Long Diit, beneath the towering canopy of old-growth forest, are seven slab structures and 14 moss-covered stone burial jars, some standing, some fallen, some broken. The intact jars are the size of a small, slim person. The area was used as a burial ground before the Christian conversion, Lagang says. Pointing to a giant tree with gnarled roots, he recalls the skulls—“a lot of them”—that used to sit at its base when he was a child. Wherever you see this type of tree, he says, ancestral remains may lie beneath.

Stories like Lagang’s are critical to understanding the region. Sometimes, local legends are the very foundation from which researchers work.

Another type of historical evidence, large glazed stoneware storage jars, were likely first produced in China in the seventh through tenth centuries, and became highly prized trade items in Borneo, according to Nyíri. In the Kelabit highlands, these jars—known as dragon jars for the designs that typically adorn their sides—were keepsakes, or were used for rice or wine. Others were used for storing the bones of the dead in pre-Christian cemeteries. “Dragon jars became treasured heirloom pieces passed down for generations,” Nyíri says. Only the wealthy upper classes owned them, and some Kelabit elders still keep these jars in their homes. “They put rice inside,” says a 43-year-old villager named Walter Paran, describing the jar his family bought, long before he was born, from traders across the border in Kalimantan for the price of two buffalo.

Today Paran takes care of several jars that his uncle, now deceased, kept in his house. His living relatives don’t know much about them, their origins, or their value. “We forgot to ask,” he says. “That’s a big mistake for us. That is why we are losing our history …that’s why our children, they don’t know.” He’s happy the CRF team is taking notes and recording data. Paran, like many elders, says Kelabit history is fading from memory. His nine-year-old daughter, Mujan, and her peers trek five hours to the town of Bario, where they attend boarding school. In class, they learn nothing about the Kelabit culture. “They teach history,” Paran says, “but not this type of history.”

When Lagang was a child, several dragon jars sat at the edge of his village, right above a river. Only the pieces of only one remain today. He recalls that when he was a young boy, he approached that place with caution because the jars held spirits that sometimes spoke—a story repeated by Kelabit elders across the highlands. “Ting, ting, ting … whoo whoo,” he mimics the voices. When he heard that, he ran away fast, he says. It’s been a long time since the spirits have spoken to Lagang.

(Jerry Redfern) Paran is the caretaker for an imported Chinese dragon jar that has been in his 
family for generations. 

Both Kelabit villagers and CRF researchers hope their collaboration can help fill the knowledge gap. “We have always been warmly welcomed, looked after, and supported, even adopted,” says Nyíri. She feels a responsibility in return, and a duty to inform. “We hear complaints that researchers collect data, publish it, and make a career out of a few months’ work,” without sharing their findings with local communities, she says. To remedy that, the archaeologists have exhibited their findings, tools, and future research plans for local audiences. The CRF has published annual reports in the Sarawak Museum Journal and distributed project pamphlets throughout the highlands. “It’s only ethical and fair to share even preliminary results with the local community,” Nyíri says.

(Jerry Redfern)

Brochures about CRF’s work have a place of honor in the guesthouse run by Henry Lagang.

 
It’s also what locals crave. “I’ve been interviewed many, many times, but I haven’t seen the results before,” says an elder named Jenette Ulun, who is active in Kelabit festivals and whose name often appears on travel blogs as an authority on Kelabit cultural traditions. “It’s good to finally know the results,” says Ulun. “It’s not only for us to see. Now our children can see this is what’s done for the Kelabits, for our people, and understand our culture and know what their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents did. Otherwise there is no written record.”

That record is critical in the fight to preserve local heritage. “‘Rural development’ is the buzz phrase in Sarawak these days,” says Lloyd-Smith. The term encompasses everything from palm oil and rubber plantations that replace rain forests after logging, to agricultural projects and homestay tourism. “Within such an environment,” he says, “only by the community realizing the cultural value of their archaeology, and being proud of how important it is for Borneo and the whole of Southeast Asia, can the protection of the cultural heritage of the Kelabit highlands be safeguarded. Archaeology can play a large role in this.”

One day, Lagang stands atop a perupun just a few hundred yards from his longhouse. From this vantage point, he looks to the past. “Before, when I was small, this was all jungle,” he says, gazing at his neighbors’ homes and vegetable gardens. Lagang used to hunt birds with his blowpipe right around here. Life was a bit different then. More people lived in the longhouse, gathering in the evenings and early mornings around smoky open fires in the communal hallway that traditionally connected one Kelabit family to dozens of others. It was a close, collective existence. But these days, many permanent village residents opt for individual family homes. Modern houses with metal roofs have sprung up around the perupun where Lagang used to hunt. Rice paddies and gardens sit where trees once stood. Though jungle still surrounds the village, times have changed, and so has Kelabit culture.

(Jerry Redfern) One of Lagang’s hunting dogs sits by several toppled stone jars at Long Diit.

At sunset, Lagang works in the longhouse kitchen, preparing a dinner of paddy rice, fried pork fat, bamboo shoots, and mouse deer soup—all harvested from the forests that feed him every day, the same forests that fed millennia of highlanders. That evening, he shows snapshots of the researchers who have stayed with him through the years. When dinner is finished and the dishes are cleaned, Lagang sits alone beside the open-hearth fire, staring into the night. It’s Sunday, the last evening of a weeklong holiday. Almost all the young adults have returned to school and work in the city. Just a few elders sit and chat on the wobbly wooden floor planks, 300 feet away from Lagang, at the end of the longhouse. The lights are out, and the lengthy common corridor ends in blackness. How long will this longhouse last? How long will the Kelabit forest and the archaeological sites within it endure? Will the Kelabits have a chance to learn their own history before it disappears? Ties to the ancestral past, imprinted in stone and carved into the land, still bind the Kelabits today. The perupun Lagang remembers as a child remains intact, undisturbed. He’s happy the archaeologists are studying it. “They write the story about the Kelabit people. They can protect the megaliths, the culture,” he says. “Good.”

Karen Coates is a Social Justice Reporting Fellow at the International Center for Journalists and a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.

The great Sarawak cat drop

http://www.theborneopost.com/2014/02/09/the-great-sarawak-cat-drop/

by Tom McLaughlin. 

Posted on February 9, 2014, Sunday

Rice ready to be harvested is seen in Bario.

Bario cats and rats — Sketch by Borneo Niki, Kuching Waterfront

PROBABLY one of the most bizarre and unbelievable stories ever to come out of Sarawak was the report that the Royal Air Force parachuted cats into Bario in 1960.

The story begins with the attempt to eradicate malaria in the Kelabit Highlands.

A report in the Straits Times states that F LaChance, a World Health Organisation (WHO) entomologist was leaving Sarawak after successfully eradicating malaria. He had also sprayed houses in the “inaccessible Kelabitt (sic) Plateau”.

According to an article in the American Journal of Public Health, LaChance and his team would enter a longhouse and spray the insecticide DDT and/or BHC on the walls and under the beds of longhouses.
The residue would dry into white powder and remain effective for six months where the application would have to be applied again. It was felt this was enough to eradicate the mosquito carrying the malaria parasite plasmodium.

However, during a local malaria conference, the Kelabit community reported a  deterioration of the thatch on the roof of the longhouse. A team of WHO investigators was sent to investigate and found that a moth caterpillar population, which lived in the thatch, had exploded. They were literally consuming the roofs.

An investigation followed and it was found the DDT had affected a small chaclid wasp, which laid its eggs in the body of the caterpillar controlling the population.

Counts showed the caterpillar population had increased by 50 per cent. It was decided to spray the homes and roofs with a very toxic pesticide, which killed both the caterpillars and the wasps.

From around the world, including Sabah and Sarawak, reports flooded in about the die off of cats who licked their paws after walking across the roofs and rubbing their sides after the more potent spraying.

Villagers reported that the cats “would have the shakes, get sick, linger for a few days, and die”. Toxicology reports from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA confirmed the levels of insecticide in the cats’ systems were enough to cause the die off.

With the demise of the cats came the rats. A 1959 WHO Field Report informed the “field rats were a greater menace than usual, partly as a result of anti-malarial spraying which accidentally killed many cats”.

In his book ‘Fairland Sarawak’, Alastair Morrison reported that the popular and debonair district officer Malcom MacSporran was sleeping when a rat chewed through his pillow, apparently to remove the stuffing for a nest.

The bon vivant screamed out word that the town was being overrun by rats. John Seal, the assistant director of Civil Aviation in Kuching, received the call and another report stated the Kuching Fire Brigade was enlisted to round up cats to save the Bario rice crop from devastation.

MacSporran then enlisted an RAF plane to drop cats over Bario. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and the plane had to proceed to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu). The kind-hearted crew let the cats out for the night in a secure shed.

The plane took off the next morning after a battle to put the unwilling cats back into the wicker baskets. The plane was diverted to Brunei because the clouds had not dissipated.

Later the weather improved and the now bloody, scratched and testy crew parachuted the felines into Bario.

It is not known how many cats survived the drop or the condition of the man who opened the wicker baskets to let out the by then very angry cats.

Both the Straits Times and the Singapore Free Press of March 17, 1960 reported that 23 cats “expertly packed in wicker baskets” were airlifted and parachuted into Bario via an RAF Beverly Transport plane along with seven tons of other supplies.

They were engaged to help the Bario people to fight the rats, which had virtually destroyed the food supplies. The Straits Times report stated they were a gift “from the citizens of Kuching”.

Two years after the ‘parachuting cats’ incident, Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ was published, kicking off the environmental movement. Many think Carson wrote the book after reading about the incident.

The United States banned DDT after testimony about the deaths of cats in Bario and other incidents. A worldwide ban of DDT was signed in 2001.

DDT has now been shown to cause breast and other cancers, male infertility, low birth rate, miscarriages and organ damage in humans. The facts are indisputable.

There is an organised attempt to bring DDT back to control malaria in Africa and Asia. Based on the ill effects of DDT, the global community must be vigilant against its return.

Rainforests in Far East shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140124082608.htm

Date:

January 24, 2014

Source:

Queen's University, Belfast

Summary:

New research shows that the tropical forests of South East Asia have been shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years. The rain forests of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Thailand and Vietnam were previously thought to have been largely unaffected by humans, but the latest research suggests otherwise.

New research from Queen's University Belfast shows that the tropical forests of South East Asia have been shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years.

The rain forests of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Thailand and Vietnam were previously thought to have been largely unaffected by humans, but the latest research from Queen's Palaeoecologist Dr Chris Hunt suggests otherwise.

A major analysis of vegetation histories across the three islands and the SE Asian mainland has revealed a pattern of repeated disturbance of vegetation since the end of the last ice age approximately 11,000 years ago.

The research, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, is being published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. It is the culmination of almost 15 years of field work by Dr Hunt, involving the collection of pollen samples across the region, and a major review of existing palaeoecology research, which was completed in partnership with Dr Ryan Rabett from Cambridge University.

Evidence of human activity in rainforests is extremely difficult to find and traditional archaeological methods of locating and excavating sites are extremely difficult in the dense forests. Pollen samples, however, are now unlocking some of the region's historical secrets.

Dr Hunt, who is Director of Research on Environmental Change at Queen's School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, said: "It has long been believed that the rainforests of the Far East were virgin wildernesses, where human impact has been minimal. Our findings, however, indicate a history of disturbances to vegetation. While it could be tempting to blame these disturbances on climate change, that is not the case as they do not coincide with any known periods of climate change. Rather, these vegetation changes have been brought about by the actions of people.

"There is evidence that humans in the Kelabit Highlands of Borneo burned fires to clear the land for planting food-bearing plants. Pollen samples from around 6,500 years ago contain abundant charcoal, indicating the occurrence of fire. However, while naturally occurring or accidental fires would usually be followed by specific weeds and trees that flourish in charred ground, we found evidence that this particular fire was followed by the growth of fruit trees. This indicates that the people who inhabited the land intentionally cleared it of forest vegetation and planted sources of food in its place.

"One of the major indicators of human action in the rainforest is the sheer prevalence of fast-growing 'weed' trees such as Macaranga, Celtis and Trema. Modern ecological studies show that they quickly follow burning and disturbance of forests in the region.

"Nearer to the Borneo coastline, the New Guinea Sago Palm first appeared over 10,000 years ago. This would have involved a voyage of more than 2,200km from its native New Guinea, and its arrival on the island is consistent with other known maritime voyages in the region at that time -- evidence that people imported the Sago seeds and planted them."

The findings have huge importance for ecological studies or rainforests as the historical role of people in managing the forest vegetation has rarely been considered. It could also have an impact on rainforest peoples fighting the advance of logging companies.

Dr Hunt continued: "Laws in several countries in South East Asia do not recognise the rights of indigenous forest dwellers on the grounds that they are nomads who leave no permanent mark on the landscape. Given that we can now demonstrate their active management of the forests for more than 11,000 years, these people have a new argument in their case against eviction."

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Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Queen's University, Belfast. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. C.O. Hunt, R.J. Rabett. Holocene landscape intervention and plant food production strategies in island and mainland Southeast Asia. Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2013.12.011