16 CAVE DWELLEKS OF PERAK. 



Malays, and the Malays themselves use articles of European 

 manufacture. 



So far pottery has not been found, except some fragments 

 of coarse earthenware in the superficial layers of the earth of 

 some of the caves, and this is undoubtedly of, comparativly 

 speaking, recent Malay origin. At the present time the Malays 

 are acquainted with the potter's art, but the wild tribes are not. 

 They use bamboos for cooking rice and other grains when they 

 cannot get Malay cooking pots. 



The burial customs of the cave dwellers would appear, from 

 the only interment which has been discovered, to have been 

 of the most primative kind, that is the bodies were left 

 where they fell, with possibly a slight covering of earth, and 

 the family or tribe, as the case might be, left the place. This 

 same custom is still followed by both the Sakais and the 

 Semangs. Not only the house in which the death takes place, 

 but the clearings, often of some acres in extent, planted up with 

 crops, are also abandoned. If anything was wanted to prove the 

 recent date when the cultivation of the land was adopted by the 

 wild tribes a custom such as this is sufficient. It is incon- 

 ceival)le that such a habit could long sitrvive in a community 

 which depended for its sustenance on the produce of the soil. 

 At the present time it is dying out in places, and as the 

 cultivation of the land increases it must ultimately fall into 

 disuetude. The Malays bury their dead in amongst their 

 " kampongs," and this custom seems to shew a close connection 

 between the wild tribes and them in this respect. It is really 

 only a step. In fact what is now taking place amongst the 

 Sakais in the less remote places will supply instances of all 

 the phases between the two customs. From shutting up the 

 body in the house, leaving the body in the house but covering it 

 with earth, to making a grave in the garden near the hou.se. 



There would appear to be no available data by which 

 even the merest approximation to the age of these cave remains 

 can be made, but it must be very considerable, as in some 

 of the caves at least twelve feet of a mixture of shells, bones 

 and earth has been accumulated, and subsequently removed 

 again in the floors of the caves. In places two and three 

 layers of solid stalagmite have been formed and removed, some 

 of these layers having been five feet in thickness. Portions 

 of these layers are to be seen sticking on to the walls of the 

 caves or on to the ends of the stalactites hanging from the roof. 

 As already mentioned the level of the caves is, as a rule, 

 very much higher than the present level of the valleys in which 

 the hills stand, though there is nothing to shew what 



