50,000 YEARS OF STONE AGE CULTURE IN BORNEO — ^HARRISSON 523 



Now, gradually, we are finding some of the same tools in stratified 

 excavation, in our cave sites and elsewhere. Only this year, for the 

 first time, have we fomid the crescentic adz in situ. This, most puz- 

 zling, in a new sector of the Niah Great Cave well in the darkness ; but 

 not in the ordinary succession in the enormous cave mouth, to which I 

 will refer again presently. Others of the cult stone-tools have not so 

 far been identified by excavation within Borneo, though known 

 outside. 



There is another significant linkage between the protohistory of 

 ethnology plus folklore and prehistory by excavation, which must be 

 briefly mentioned in connection with my present theme. Stories are 

 told (among some peoples) of the actual introduction of iron. The 

 Kelabits register this as a sort of miracle transformation, where sud- 

 denly a man appeared, with the first iron tool ; he was able to multiply 

 his agriculture enormously in one splendid day. 



As well as stories about iron, there are others about bronze, and these 

 again are in several cases associated with cult objects. One of these 

 cult objects, which has a 20+ generation genealogy, has recently been 

 presented to the Museum by the hereditary owner, a Kayan who no 

 longer felt his group had the necessary pagan basis and power to pre- 

 serve it in its deep spiritual context. This figure, called Imun A jo, is a 

 superbly modeled small bronze of a man with a hornbill headdress, 

 closely related to the D'ongson bronze age culture of Indo-China.^ 

 Imun Ajo is regarded as a sort of fossilized living person, in transfor- 

 mation from stone to metal. But the important inferences of stories 

 about him (and others) is that there was an almost direct transition 

 in Borneo from the late stone age (Neolithic) to iron. There was no 

 real bronze age in between, in Borneo; which moved from a tremen- 

 dously developed Neolithic bang to a massive explosion of iron (I 

 believe) . 



We have now traced some of the actual ironworking sites in the 

 Sarawak River delta, where metal is always associated with impressive 

 debris of a Chinese trade, noticeably ceramics of T'ang-Sung date.^ 

 Using mine detectors, we have been able to plot some of these. One 

 stretches for nearly a mile along a now silted-up creek ; another, cover- 

 ing about 3 acres, has accumulations of iron slag down to 12 feet in 

 depth — if it were not so inaccessible in what is now mangrove swamp, 

 it would be extracted by bulldozer to provide Sarawak with much 

 needed road metal. 



This iron, in the living context of the great and difficult Borneo rain 

 forest, had an even more radical efi'ect here than in many places. It 

 facilitated techniques for felling and clearing. And it provided a 



2 Photographs and particulars will be published in a forthcoming issue of Artibus Asiae. 

 s See papers In Oriental Art and Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society. 



766-746—65 42 



