INDONESIA, a term used to indicate the group of islands variously known as the East Indian archipelago, the East Indies and Philippine islands, etc. In Ethnologic usage the term relates to a family speaking languages of a well defined type, and having physical characteristics which are easily recognizable. (See Ethnology.) Geographically the term Indonesia comprises eight areas : (1) Malay peninsula, (2) the Sumatra group, (3) the northern part of the Malacca peninsula, (4) Java, Madura and Bali, (5) Celebes, (6) Borneo, (7) the Philippines and (8) the islands east of long. E. The basis of the classification is mainly linguistic, and the Indonesian language family has supplied many of the links between Polynesian, Melanesian and Micro nesian speech-systems. For the geography, etc., of Indonesia, see the articles under headings 1-7 above and PACIFIC ISLANDS.
For anthropology see ASIA; Anthropology and Ethnology, § Farther Asia. (X.) In Indonesia there have been found remnants of human types and cultures still represented in Australia and the Pacific.
The skull fragments found by Earl in a shell-mound in the Province of Wellesley on the west cost of the Malay Peninsula were described by Huxley as Australoidic. Skulls of Melanesian type were excavated in the caverns of Tongking by Mansuy and his collaborators. The skulls and fragmentary skeletons of a man and a woman, discovered by Van Riedschoten and Dubois in 1889 and 1890 in a mountain slope above Lake Rawa Bening near Wadjak in eastern Java, belong to a dolichocephalic tall race thoroughly different from the present inhabitants of Java and resemble the skulls of recent Australians. Dubois therefore terms the Wadjak men "Proto-Australians." The term palaeolithic is not used here as indicating that the palaeolithic civilizations of south-eastern Asia are of the same age as those of Europe. All the palaeolithic finds as yet known from Indonesia belong to the geological present.
The Palaeolithic Culture in Celebes and Sumatra.—The Lamontjong caves are situated in the interior of the south-western peninsula of Celebes, about 6okm. east of Makassar in the terri tories of the Toala, a tribe now tilling the soil, though they prob ably lived till recently by hunting and collection of natural products. The caves were discovered and examined in 1902 and 1903 by Paul and Fritz Sarasin. In five of them the ash stratum forming the ground contained remnants of game animals, imple ments of stone, bone, teeth and shells. The stone implements (mostly of quartzite, andesite, limestone, only exceptionally flint) betray a very crude manufacture. The whole stone lump was caused to burst with a blow after which the few suitably splintered flakes were selected for further fashioning and the rest were thrown away. Among the implements were scrapers, points and two-edged, more seldom one-edged knives. Especially numerous were stone arrowheads, partly with dented edges, partly barbed. Dented stone flakes of scale-like shape were probably inserted into wooden clubs like those now used by the Toala with metal flakes. Spindle or prick-shaped arrow-heads of bone or the teeth of the wild boar were probably used, the one end serving for a point, the other one for a barb as in the South Seas and America. Small whistles were manufactured of long and phalangeal bones; pieces of shells were used as scrapers and scratchers. Perforated fragments of human bones were probably worn as amulets. Re mains of domestic animals and cultivated plants are completely absent. The dog perhaps was known. All the animal species re mains of which have been found in the caves still live in Celebes.
Most of the stone implements of Lamontjong at first sight re semble those of late European palaeolithic times, especially the Magdalenian, but were manufactured in a far more primitive way. The barbed arrow-heads, however, show a form which, in other parts of the globe, only occurs in neolithic times. The culture of the cave-dwellers of Lamontjong was probably influenced by some neighbouring neolithic civilization. A fragment of an earthen pot was found in the ash layer. The occurrence of stone arrow-heads in the caves is also remarkable since the bow is al most unknown at present in Celebes, and with this sole exception stone arrow-heads are not found among the prehistoric finds of Indonesia and Indo-China. Since barbed arrow-heads are frequent in the neolithic period of Japan, and arrow-heads of stone are said to have been used in the Philippine islands as late as the I 7th century, these implements may be regarded as remnants of an ancient cultural current that in the neolithic period may have come from Japan through the Philippines as far as Celebes. In any case this contact must have been but slight. The culture of Lamontjong is therefore a culture of hunters and collectors of natural produce with a palaeolithic base and a slight neolithic touch. The stone implements were immediately covered by a very recent layer with iron implements and fragments of china. The present Toala may be considered the direct descendants of the stone-age cave-dwellers.
In the cave of Ulu Tjanko in the basin of the River Djambi, in central Sumatra, Dr. Tobler found a palaeolithic dwelling contain ing remnants of food and skeletal fragments, apparently of a slender-framed race, a number of implements manufactured of obsidian, especially knives and points of different size, and some scrapers. Typologically this Sumatra palaeolithic culture is con nected with that of the Toala caves of Celebes, yet differs from it by the diverse material, the better working of the stone, the lack of the barbed and dented arrow-heads and of any percep tible neolithic influence. In both cases we have "point and blade civilizations" with rather small implements, which cannot, how ever, be called microliths. They are radically different from the coup-de-poing culture of India, in spite of local differences, but are probably related to the stone-age culture of Ceylon and that discovered by Notling and Swinhoe at Yenangyaung in Upper Burma. This late palaeolithic point and blade culture must have been once widely spread over broad areas in southern Asia, pos sibly propagated by the small and cymotrichous race now sur viving in small, scattered remnants like the Veddah, Sakai, Toala, etc.
The number of neolithic objects in the museums is very large, almost exclusively stone axes found by chance. About pottery, as yet practically nothing is known. Most of the megalithic monu ments undoubtedly belong to the metal periods. The neolithic cultures of Indonesia may be divided by local criteria.
Eastern Indonesia and the Philippine Islands.—The neolithic period of eastern Indonesia (Celebes, Moluccas, Little Sunda islands, South-west and South-east islands) is characterized by two types of stone axes (a) somewhat clumsy broad-necked axes having the shape of a short rectangle or trapezium, often approaching the quadrate and square in the transverse section; (b) narrow or pointed-neck axes with lenticular or oval transverse section. The second type is very frequent in ancient Europe, is characteristic of the neolithic period of India, occurs, though seldom, in Japan, and is still present in New Guinea and Mela nesia, directly derived from the ancient forms of east Indonesia. It is not known how this type came into Eastern Indonesia as, except there and in Borneo, it is not known in Indonesia or further India. It may be due to influences from India, or, with the stone arrow-heads of the Toala caves, to a cultural current from Japan. The occurrence of ancient stone hooks reminiscent of the magatama of the Japanese neolithic period possessed by some Dayaks in Borneo might thus be explained. As is shown by the shouldered celts found in Formosa the neolithic culture of this island must at some time have been in close connection with that of Indo-China. The existence of stone axes is however proved with certainty at least for Mindanao and the Visayas. Two such axes from a cave on the Island of Masbate have been published with illustrations. Of oblong-rectangular shape they resemble certain Indo-Chinese stone-axes more than those from Indonesia. In the same place numerous pottery fragments decor ated with scratched waving lines and points were found. It is, however, impossible to say with certainty, whether they were coeval with the stone implements.
The division between the territories of the neolithic axe-types of Eastern and Western Indonesia, seems to correspond with the division between the East and West Indonesian languages and represents to-day the limit of distribution of many important cultural elements. In Borneo Eastern as well as Western In donesian axe-types (also pick-axes) are found side by side, and the Dayak languages are intermediate between those of Eastern and Western Indonesia. Thus the present distribution of tribes and languages in Indonesia goes in substance back to the neolithic period, at least therefore to the first millennium B.C.
More accurate criteria for the chronology of the Indonesian neo lithic period are derived from the distribution of the Indo-Chinese shouldered celts. The distribution of these celts closely agrees with that of the Austro-Asiatic languages and from that it is to be inferred that they belonged to the cultural inventory of the ancient Austro-Asiatics (Mon-Khmer) . They are found in Indo-China (except the south of the Malay Peninsula) in Assam, Orissa, Chota Nagpur, in the Santal Parganas and near Allaha bad, in regions of India in which Mon-Khmer or Munda (Austro Asiatic) languages are either spoken to-day or once were spoken. There was probably a tribal migration starting from Indo-China, hardly later than between 150o to i 000 B.C. Since the shouldered Celt is missing in Indonesia and the south of the Malay Peninsula, we may infer that the separation of the Austronesians (Malayo Polynesians) from the Austro-Asiatics (Mon-Khmer) and also their migration to Indonesia took place at a time when the shouldered celt had not yet been developed, that is about from 2000 to 1500 B.C., though it may have happened earlier. Since the late phases of the Indonesian neolithic period are ascribable to these migrations, we must suppose a considerably greater age for the earlier phases.
The stone-age appears to have terminated at very different times in the different parts of Indonesia. In Western Indonesia (Java, Sumatra) the foundation of Indian expansion and rule commenced at the latest in the second century A.D., perhaps earlier. Yet it is almost certain that mining and the manufacture of iron were known there before the arrival of the Hindus. Traces of a bronze age spread to the remotest east of the archi pelago, and are especially numerous in Sumatra, Java, Celebes and Sumba. Therefore it is probable that in some parts of In donesia the neolithic period had terminated in pre-Christian times. In other parts, however, it appears to have lasted much longer. The working of metals has not yet been fully established in every part of Indonesia, and the use of implements of stone, bone, wood and bamboo still survives.