The Lost Forest
Page 25
Chapter 25
NIAH
The Great Cave of Niah has been occupied by men for about 40,000 years. It’s really quite an extraordinary site, the floor of the cave covers ten hectares and the roof goes up seventy five metres from the ground,” Professor Lundy told Ennis.
‘In the guide book it says that caves have been occupied since Palaeolithic times.’
‘That’s misleading, Palaeolithic means the Old Stone Age, which is commenced about two million years ago until 10,000 years ago. The cave dwellers at Niah only go back about 40,000 years, so you see there’s a big difference.’
‘I see, almost Neolithic.’
‘Not quite, the corresponding geological period is called the Pleistocene, which commenced about 1.8 million years ago, so the Pleistocene and the Palaeolithic run together, one being a geological measure and the other a human development measure.’
‘It was during the Pleistocene that the most recent global cooling, or ice ages, took place,’ added Jean Barthomeuf. ‘When a large part of the world’s temperate zone was covered by glaciers during the cool periods, then uncovered as the climate warmed up again during the so called interglacial periods when the glaciers retreating.’
‘What about here?’
‘There were no glaciers here,’ he laughed.
‘So the Holocene started 10,000 years ago,’ said Ennis feeling a little peeved.
‘Yes that’s the period up to the present during which we had the New Stone Age, when metals were discovered by man. At the time Niah was first occupied by Homo sapiens, when a huge change was taking form in human development.’
Jean Barthomeuf went on to describe a skull called the ‘Deep Skull’ discovered deep in a trench named the ‘Hell Trench’ because of the heat and humidity in that part of the Niah cave. It was found at a level where stone tools had been unearthed together with the charcoal remains of a fire. Radiocarbon dating showed that it was around 40,000 years ago, and it was believed at that time of its discovery to be the earliest evidence of human settlement on Borneo.
Lundy had called Jean Barthomeuf in to join the team at the discovery site. He was an anthropologist specialised in the migration and had tracked Homo sapiens and their ancestors on their long journey from Africa to Australia and ultimately onto the Americas.
Together they had flown up from Kuching to Miri, the last large town at the eastern end of Sarawak, not very far from the border with Brunei. Miri was typical of most towns in Sarawak with its narrow crowded streets filled with noisy polluting motorbikes and a myriad of street vendors, selling everything from chickens to pirated CDs. It was their starting point for a brief tourist expedition to visit the Great Niah Caves about two hours by road from Miri.
When the arrived in Batu Niah afternoon storm clouds were gathering over the limestone cliffs that rose behind the small town, dominating local the skyline. At the site they took the three kilometres long boardwalk to the entrance of the Great Caves, a permanent structure that had been erected to facilitate the visitors’ almost one hour long walk through the steaming hot tropical vegetation.
The caves were the home to millions of bats and swiftlets, and a source of guano, the accumulation of bird and bat faeces, used as fertilisers by the locals. It was also a source of edible birds’ nests made from the glutinous saliva of the millions of swiftlets that built their nests fifty metres up in the ceiling of the caves.