530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 64 



Recently, tlie Sabali Government was faced with the necessity of blow- 

 ing up a whole islet to get "fill" for the extension of the airport of 

 Labuan, for this was the only hard stone anywhere near. In the 

 process the engineers came across a tiny cave. A Sarawak Museum 

 unit was rushed up there; and we were able to recover what remained 

 before the work of necessary destruction proceeded. On this one of 

 many small islands, in a cave hardly big enough for three bodies, 

 lay secondary burials associated with a three-color ware pottery and 

 polished stone tools. This is just one clue to the scale and extent of 

 human probing, that long ago. 



Borneo has an astonishingly rich, varying, and enterprising culture 

 today .^ I think that the part which Sabah and Sarawak are going to 

 play in the new Federation of Malaysia will amply demonstrate this 

 in the most modern of settings. A good deal of the strength in this 

 setup derives directly from a tremendous tradition of development 

 and human evolution going right back to the Brothwell skull — and 

 behind that. 



This is, necessarily, both a general report and a preliminary one. 

 Within a few months, I hope to be back working at Niah for at least 

 another 2 years. Meanwhile, also, we are training local personnel to 

 extend these investigations more widely in Malaysian Borneo and the 

 State of Brunei. We should welcome further outside support, par- 

 ticularly from specialists prepared to collaborate on specific sections 

 of the project, whether out there or back here in the West.. 



^ For a picture of living cultures inside Borneo, see the 1963 Dickson Asia Lecture to 

 the Royal Geographical Society in Geographical Journal, 1964. The megalithic culture and 

 past population of the uplands are also diseased there. 



