Indonesia: Islands of the Imagination

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Michael Vatikiotis. Indonesia: Islands of the Imagination

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The Land Under the Rainbow

“Men came down the Asian mainland into the archipelago, and crossed to the emerald-green islands around the equator, the Land Under the Rainbow. They came in small dug-outs and outriggers a very long time ago, in the dim and distant past, far beyond the memory of the present Indonesia.”

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The Indonesian archipelago has collected people like a giant colander, as waves of itinerant mariners, passing traders and refugees, invaders and migrants have over the ages passed through or across the seas between these islands. The earliest Indonesians were some of man’s earliest forbears. Fossils of “Java Man” (Pithecanthropus Erectus) dating back some 500,000 years, were first discovered in Central Java, suggesting that some of man’s earliest ancestors inhabited the island of Java. The “original” human inhabitants of these islands were black-skinned relatives of the Australian aborigines and present-day Papuans. Later migrations to the Indonesian archipelago have been traced as far back as 3,000–500 B.C. They were lighter-skinned peoples from what is now southern China who arrived by boat via Taiwan and the Philippines and have been credited with introducing to the region new Stone, Bronze and Iron Age cultures as well as the Austronesian languages and rice agriculture. Recent discoveries on the island of Flores have uncovered evidence of an early humanoid species (Homo floresiensis) that stood no taller than 90 centimeters (three feet) high.

The elephant “school” in Lampung, South Sumatra, where elephants are trained to extract timber.

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