THE PEOPLE

The original Indonesians perhaps came to the islands long before our era, probably from Southern China about 2000 B.C. (Heine-Geldern), found extremely primitive aborigines of the Vedoic or Negrito type already there, perhaps the most undeveloped form of humanity.

The Indonesians spread their culture over the islands and introduced the cultivation of rice, outrigger canoes, domestic animals-pigs, dogs, chickens, and water-buffaloes-ironwork, mats, pottery, megalithic monuments, and probably the making of tapa cloth. They were often head-hunters and cannibal,, and Dr. D. J. H. Nyessen suggests that they may have been the ancestors of the Polynesians.

The islands were at the crossroads of the ancient sea-routes, favoured by winds and currents, so the natives mixed freely with the peoples of neighbouring regions: India, China. Arabia, and the Melanesian and Polynesian islands. The Hindus established great colonies that became powerful empires, like Madiapahit in Java and Srivijaya in and they exerted a marked influence upon the Indonesians, but they did not come in great numbers and were eventually absorbed. The same happened to the Chinese, who had come to Java since the beginning of our era, and it is possible that part of the army of Kublai khan became incorporated into the native population around 1292, when Chinese influence predominated over the Hindu.

I have been told by Chinese scholars that at one time they considered Bali as their colony. noses, and tine mouths; others have the concave, flat, broad noses, the squinty eyes, bulging foreheads, and prognathic jaws of the more primitive Indonesians. Thus the Balinese of today are the same people as the Hindu-Javanese of pre-Mohammedan Java, in the sense that they both underwent the same racial and cultural influences.