Borneo-Dayak CRAFTS
indonesia exporter of dayak tribe's handmade crafts & tribal arts

Borneo's Dayak handicraft, the beauty of ancient tribal arts and handmade crafts

Historical background of Borneo

Early Times

Man-like creatures first appeared in the archipelago around 1.5 million years ago. Formerly famous as Java's Pithecanthropus, they have been since renamed Homo erectus. We know little about these hominids, not even whether or not they could make stone tools. Real men, Homo sapiens, who appeared here around 40,000 BC, were Australoids, a race of mankind similar to the contemporary Papuans and Australian Aborigines. They at first had a crude industry of stone chopping tools, but they later developed a more sophisticated set of fine small flakes and blades. They could use fire and, scattered in small groups, they hunted wild animals and gathered edibles in the forest. Some of them moved eastwards and populated New Guinea and Australia.

Traces of human activity and human remains were discovered at Niah, in Sarawak, in 1958, and have been dated hack to about 35,000 BC, along with sites in eastern Sabah dated ca. 30,000 BC. The Australoids remaining in these western regions evolved a more slender build. Between 15,000 and 5,000 BC, some of them may have produced edge-ground stone axes and practiced some fruit-tree and tuber cultivation. Around 10,000 BC, they started burying their dead, usually in a flexed or seated position.

The Austronesians

Another race of Homo sapiens, these with clear Mongoloid features, was by then living in mainland East Asia, presumably southern China. After a climatic change, some Mongoloids may have started to expand from Taiwan into insular Southeast Asia around 4,000 BC, using their recent invention, a primitive Outrigger canoe with a simple sail. These peoples. the Austronesians, moved slowly hut steadily southwards to the Philippines and Borneo. Some then went East and spread as far as the farthest Pacific islands and New Zealand, while others moved to Sumatra and up the Malayan Peninsula. Others finally reached Madagascar.

Major biological, linguistic, and cultural changes subsequently occurred in the western part of the Archipelago: The newcomers absorbed the Australoids, and the dominant population has remained Mongoloid; the Austronesian languages took over in the whole region; the neolithic culture was introduced. Borneo was populated by the Austronesians presumably between 3,000 and 2,000 BC, and the Neolithic culture they brought in featured the agriculture of cereals, polished stone tools, plain undecorated pottery, pile-dwellings, new burial styles with painted or half-burnt extended bodies (while the flexed-body burials continued), and perhaps also a set of new belief's centered on spirit animism.

After 1,500 BC, the Austronesians moved around a lot, sailing and trading. New pottery styles, decorated with impressions of carved paddles, spread widely. Domestic dogs and pigs were introduced. Alongside the established extended-body burials, jar burials (for bones and cremation remains) first appeared at Niah and in Palawan around 1,000 BC, probably as an indigenous development. Most of the latter, however, are not older than about 200 BC.

The Early Metal Age

The Metal Age began in the last centuries BC and brought insular Southeast Asia important changes, like cattle breeding, irrigated rice cultivation, and new technologies and trade items introduced from Vietnam, India, and China. Relations with the Dong-son culture of northern Vietnam and with China were likely established between 400 and 200 BC.

Among the novelties of the Metal Age, copper, bronze, and iron artifacts and their manufacturing technologies probably reached Borneo coasts, along with glass beads and perhaps textiles, around AD 1, likely connected with the Dong-son culture. Later Borneo and Sulawesi developed powerful bronze-brass industries, but in Borneo, due to the total lack of local copper and zinc sources, these were restricted to coastal areas (Brunei, for one) and their production diffused inland in small quantities. Iron technology, although really spreading after the 6th century and not reaching the remotest parts of Borneo until fairly recently, met with enduring success because of the profusion of local iron ore throughout the island. Local peoples developed a sophisticated smelting and blacksmithing tradition of their own that continued unchanged until recently.

Jar burials spread widely, reaching an apogee in the first millennium AD. They continued in the inland areas of Borneo, Sulawesi, and the southern Philippines well after 1000 AD, associated with imported glazed ceramics, and still do in the 20th century in remote parts of Borneo. A new burial style, the dugout boat coffin, also connected with the Dong-son culture, was common at Niah, and still is among inland groups.

Traces of megalithic activity - stone tombs, sarcophagi. urns, dolmens, menhirs, circles of erected stones, stone seats, carved slabs and posts, and rock carvings - appear in many ancient sites in West Java, South Sumatra, Central Sulawesi, Mindanao, and as far as Sumba. One stone urn of southern Mindanao is dated 6th century AD, and no evidence exists that megalithic activity in Borneo pine-dates the early Metal Age. Funeral stone urns and sarcophagi may have replaced, respectively, earthenware jar burials (for cremation remains) and log coffins (for extended-body), after the advent of metals. Among the Batak, Nias, and Toraja peoples, megalithic activity carried on into the 20th century. In northern Borneo the density of stone monuments is as high as that in Celtic regions of Western Europe, and their erection continued until the 1950s, mainly during funerals for important persons. Smaller-sized sac red stones play an important part in the religious system of a number of ethnic groups.

The Development of Trade Networks

In the first millennium AD. insular Southeast Asia likely received a constant influx of Austronesian newcomers from the North. In Borneo they either mixed with earlier Austroneslan settlers, or settled in unfavourable coastal areas, or fought their way to better agricultural lands. Others took a marine economic orientation, as fishermen or sea traders. Some arrived relatively late in the first millennium, and some even in the first half of the second millennium.

The first millennium marks the gradual integration of insular Southeast Asia into wider regional spheres. With the developing first-century AD maritime trade, petty coastal kingdoms emerged. In Borneo. probably touched by Indian influences before the 4th century AD because of its gold fields, prominent local tribal leaders may have borrowed elements of Indian culture in order to secure their positions, and some Indians may have settled here during the Gupta expansion at the same period. Brahmnanical priests introduced Indian cults to such early kingdoms. Taruma, an Indianized kingdom of Java, appeared in the 4th or 5th century AD; another in East Kalimantan, Kutai, started before 400 AD and left the oldest written inscriptions of Indonesia; and Brunei may well be as old. A number of Hindu-influenced stone artifacts have been found in Borneo: linga and yoni. Nandi bulls, and statues of Indian gods.

After 500 AD, trade developed with the Middle East and increased notably with China. Chronicles of the Chinese Liang Dynasty mention a kingdom of P'oli or Poni (possibly in Borneo, possibly Brunei) which later, in the early 7th century, sent tribute to the Chinese Tang emperors. Trading towns appeared in the Sarawak River delta and Brunei, likely connected with the massive diffusion of iron technology along Borneo coasts; indeed, around AD 1000 the former was a major trade center with an important iron-smelting industry, and it later developed into one of the richest towns of 14th-century Southeast Asia.

Brahmanism spread from the seaports into the island, as remains found on the upper reaches of the Kapuas and Mahakam rivers suggest. Brahmanical and Buddhist statues in the Kombeng Caves of East Borneo supposedly date hack to the 10th century AD, and Hindu-influenced remains in Santubong and Limbang, in Sarawak, to the 12th century. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Chinese achieved maritime domination. Borneo was then known as Tanjung Pulo or Tanjung Pura, after a trading town in the southwest, and Brunei was at an apogee. The Javanese took Tanjung Pura in 1292, and the same year the Mongol emperor of China, Kublai Khan, sent an expedition against Java. This possibly induced the creation of an early Chinese colony in northern Borneo, and the foundation of Kutai Kertanegara, an east coast kingdom, by Javanese refugees

The 14th and 15th Centuries

In the 14th century. much of Borneo's coastal regions fell within Javanese Majapahit sphere of influence, causing new Indianized kingdoms to emerge: Berau in the East. Sukadana in the West. Banjarmasin in the South. The name Kalimantan, possibly deriving from lamanta ("raw sago") was then reinterpreted in Javanese as Kalimanten, "river of the precious stones". Brunei, mentioned as a Javanese 'conquest", had to pay symbolic tribute. The Chinese trade, however, remained strong, and a Chinese Ming colony eventually settled around 1375 on the Kinabatangan River of Sabah, in close association with the last Hindu kings of Brunei. The first European, the Italian Odorico de Pordenone, may have visited Borneo around 1320.

A major trend in the 15th century was the spread of Islam. While small Islamic states had already appeared on the northeastern coast of Sumatra before 1300, by the end of the 14th century the king of Kutai Kertanegara became the first in Borneo to embrace Islam. The first account of Islam in Sabah dates from 1405 and, in 1410, the king of Brunei converted. Malacca founded in about 1400, soon became a Chinese calling port, and an Islamic sultanate in 1440. Around 1450 Islam spread to Java, leading to the final collapse of Majapahit in the face of the Islamic Sultanate of Demak in the early 16th century. But trade relations continued after the advent of Islam, and Hindu Javanese influences are still visible in Banjarmasin, Kotawaringin, and Sambas.

China made its maritime presence stronger during the 15th century, and Imperial Eunuch Cheng Ho. travelling over the Archipelago between 1405 and 1433. may have called at Brunei and, indeed, Brunei sent tribute in 1406. The Sarawak River delta trading center waned around 1450, perhaps because of the rise of Malacca.

The Early Colonial Period

After the fall of Malacca into the hands of the hands of the Portuguese Alfonso de Albuquerque in 1511, trade in Brunei, as in many other ports of insular Southeast Asia, developed notably. Islamic influence increased in Brunei, which became a new center of dissemination for Islam, later leading to the conversion of all the coastal populations. Early in the 16th century, Islam spread in Borneo, where new Muslim states were founded in Banjarmasin and Pasir. Under the active Sultan Bolkiah of Brunei, it spread also to the Philippines, which remained the eastern limit of Islamic influence. The 16th century was a golden age for Banjarmasin, then controlling the coasts of Borneo as far as Sambas and Sukadana in the West, and Kutai and Berau in the East. Brunei, too, flourished, controlling the northern coast, Sulu, and part of Palawan.

Among the first Europeans, Pigafetta arrived with the Magellan round-the-world expedition at Brunei in 1521, soon after the Portuguese Tome Pires. The Dutch appeared in Borneo later (1598). Real colonial power interference in Borneo began in the early 17th century with British and Dutch attempts to establish trade points. Later, after a number of short-lived trade agreements with Banjarmasin, the Dutch finally took the town in 1747. In the North, the British East India Company obtained in 1764 a territory in Sabah from the Sultan of Brunei.

Bugis from South Sulawesi settled in the 17th century in Kutai, which they governed for forty years, and later, in coastal western Borneo, they eventually founded a sultanate in Mempawah. In the 19th century they maintained important trading centers all along the eastern coast. Among successful newcomers to Borneo was an adventurer who founded the Sultanate of Pontianak in 1770.

Recent Times

In the early 19th century, the Dutch traded with the sultanates, but only after the English-man James Brooke had obtained territory in Sarawak from Brunei in 1842 did they actively start forcing trade contracts on them. Dutch and British expeditions penetrated inland to map the territory and to contact, pacify, and later evangelizes the various Dayak tribes.

Kalimantan was then divided among a number of small sultanates which maintained complex vassalic relations with one another. Controlling river trade, they exacted taxes on goods, and received tribute in paddy, forest goods, and slaves from their vassal tribal peoples, whom they kept at a subsistence economic level by practising a divide-and-rule policy, thus preventing the development of any intertribal organization. Some tribes yielded and paid tribute; others, however, were strong enough or lived far enough upstream to maintain independence; the Kayan even attacked Brunei.

The Dutch had to break the resistance of the sultanates and vassal tribal groups: they fought the Banjarmasin War from 1859 to 1863 and the continuing rebellion further upstream (the Wangkang War) from 1870 onwards. Then they confronted the free tribes of the interior. In the West in the 1890s, the Tebidah and Ot Danum rebelled against the Sultan of Sintang, and there was later tribal unrest in the East. All the rebels ultimately submitted to the Dutch army. After the great peace-making of Tumbang Anoi in 1894, which brought about thirty tribes together, the explorer Nieuwenhuis could safely cross the Muller mountain range in 1896. The upstream territories came under direct colonial rule in the early20th century, but only around 1930 did the Dutch really occupy the whole of Kalimantan.

In Sarawak, while expanding its territory at Brunei's expense, the Brooke Raj led a protracted fight against the Sulu pirate-traders and slave-raiders, the last indigenous Southeast-Asian maritime power. At the same time, it subjugated the Kayan of the interior in 1863 and sent a number of expeditions against Iban rebels between 1868 and 1919. It gained complete control of the situation around 1930. In 1846, the British settled on Labuan island off the northern coast, and the British North Borneo Chartered Company took over the territory of present-day Sabah in 1881. The Company had to deal with local rebellions, particularly that of Mat Salleh, between 1894 and 1900, and further troubles ensued until 1920. Chinese migrants settled in Borneo in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the Northwest and the Barito area to work in the gold mines, and later in Sahah to work on the plantations.

By 1930 the whole of the island, with the notable exception of a much reduced Sultanate of Brunei, was effectively in the hands of colonial powers. After the Japanese occupation of Borneo (1941-1945), Sarawak and Sabah became British Crown Colonies. In 1963, as newly independent states, they joined the Federation of Malaysia, and Sahah's capital Jesselton was renamed Kota Kinabalu in 1967. Indonesia achieved its independence from the Dutch in 1949, incorporated the sultanates in 1950, divided Kalimantan into three provinces in 1956, then created Central Kalimantan and its capital, Palangkaraya, in 1957. Brunei achieved full independence in 1984 under the name of Brunei Darussalam.

Borneo: An introduction on the island, Historical background of Borneo, The populations of Borneo.