THE LENGGONG VALLEY, PERAK

The Lenggong valley in Ulu Perak is one of Peninsular Malaysia's most important areas for archaeology, as excavations have revealed many traces of Malaysia's prehistory. The town of Lenggong is situated some 100 kilometres north of Ipoh on the Kuala Kangsar to Grik road. A new highway runs from the Kuala Kangsar toll to Lenggong. It is the site of the oldest known place of human activity in the Peninsula. Today it is still a rural area, with small kampungs surrounded by green vegetation and limestone hills. Lenggong can be likened to an open-air museum, and is home to legends, skeletons, cave drawings and precious finds such as jewellery, pottery, weapons and stone tools. Many of the caves in the Lenggong area have revealed evidence of ancient humans having lived and hunted in this area. One cave, Gua Badak C, has preserved cemented alluvial material which is rich in herbivorous fossils.

The Lenggong Archaeological Museum, also known as the Kota Tampan Archaeological Museum opened in 2003. It exhibits artifacts excavated from the Kota Tampan area.

Just north of Lenggong on the main road is a sign listing an archaeological trail to the Gua Gunung Runtuh area, but unfortunately the signboards don't continue further in and its easy to get lost.

Perak Man

Perak Man, found in 1991, is the only complete human skeleton which has been found in Malaysia. The cave that was his final resting place is called Gua Gunung Runtuh and is situated in Bukit Kepala Gajah or Elephant's Head Hill in the Lenggong Valley. The skeleton has been dated at between 10-11,000 years old, which makes him a Stone Age man, from the Palaeolithic period. It is believed he was an important member of his tribe judging by the way he was buried, in a foetal position, accompanied by stone tools. He was about 157cm tall and probably aged between 30-55 when he died. Perak Woman was found more recently in 2004. This is an 8000 year old skeleton found in Gua Teluk Kelawar in Lenggong. Muzium Negara has some simple information on Perak Man.

Kota Tampan area and Bukit Jawa (non cave) - and worldwide comparisons

The Kota Tampan area in Ulu Perak was the earliest known site of human inhabitation in Peninsula Malaysia, until the Bukit Jawa site was found later. Excavations which began in 1983 at Kota Tampan revealed an undisturbed stone tool production area, and some 50,000 pieces of stone have been found and recorded, and the culture is referred to as Tampanian. The workshop was initially dated at 30,000 years old, but this figure has now been revised to 74,000 years. More recently (1996) a team has been digging a site at Bukit Jawa in Kampung Gelok, and found over 150,000 pieces of stone artifacts from 24 excavation trenches. Bukit Jawa has been dated at 200,000 years old by the Universiti Sains Malaysia Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia, (this centre changed its name to the Global Centre for Archaeology Research (CGAR),) which is therefore far older than the Kota Tampan workshop, which is just 6 km away. Together with the nearby Temelong and Lawin, it makes it one of the oldest Paleolithic sites in Malaysia, suggesting that the Lenggong Valley is the oldest human settlement in Malaysia. But all these findings are still very young compared to those from Africa, where the predecessors of the human species originated about 3 - 5 million years ago.

Bukit Bunuh in Lenggong (not a cave site) is a Palaeolithic site that was discovered in 2002. Initially finds were dated at around 40K years old. But now the area is said to be more than 1.86 million years old and considered the oldest Palaeolithic site in Southeast Asia, acording to Prof Zuraina (Bernama, 3 June 2010). A hand axe was found and the rock it was embedded in dated to 1.83 million years. This made big news in early 2009, but since then I've seen no reports on the actual age of the axe. According to press reports, an axe was made of quartzite rock and embedded in layers of suevite caused by meteorite impact.

Coincindentally this news came out just about a month after the news of stone tools from S.Africa.

In Dec 2008 it was announced in the international news that the earliest evidence of cave-dwelling human ancestors had been discovered at Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. Stone tools found in the cave were dated and believed to be 2 million years old. The tools were found in the bottom level of the cave, and geological evidence indicates that these tools were left in the cave and not washed into the site from the outside. This shows that human ancestors (hominids) were in the cave earlier than ever thought before and is the earliest evidence of intentional cave occupation. There were a number of species of hominids in southern Africa 2 million years ago. The most likely candidate as the manufacturer of the stone tools found at Wonderwerk is Homo habilis. Two methods are used for dating - Paleomagnetic Dating and Cosmogenic Burial Age dating.

Comparison with other Asian countries -
In Indonesia 880,000 year old stone artefacts are known from Flores, and more recently artefacts dating to one million years ago have been found, indicating that hominins had colonized the island by then (Nature). Hominins are known to have been on Java since 750,000 years ago.
Some of Japan's oldest human bone fragments were found in a cave on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa Prefecture between 2007 and 2009. Tests have shown the bone fragments are between 15,000 and 20,000 years old, so date back to the country’s Paleolithic Period. The bones include fragments of the skull of a man aged in his 20s to 30s, bone from the foot of an adult of unknown gender, and bone from the calf of an adult male. Radiocarbon-dating found that the skull is about 20,000 years old, the foot bone about 18,000 years old and the calf bone about 15,000 years old. In the 1960s fragments of human bones estimated to be 18,000 to 32,000 years old were found on Okinawa’s main island, but were dated through analysis of carbides excavated together with the bones. See more on Japan Today 5 Feb 2010.
At the end of 2009 it was announced on many websites that a 110,000 year old putative Homo sapiens mandible had been uncovered from a cave in southern China's Guangxi province.

POTTERY
In June 2009 it was announced that the world's oldest pottery may have been found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province. The specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old. The Yuchanyan cave was the site where the oldest kernels of rice were found in 2005, and it is viewed as an important link between cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer peoples and the farmers that arose later in the basin of the nearby Yangtze River.
The previous oldest-known example of pottery was found in Japan, dated to an age between 16,000 and 17,000 years ago, but debate has raged in the archaeological community as to whether pottery was first made in China or Japan.

TASIK KENYIR, TERENGGANU

Tasik Kenyir in ulu Terengganu is the largest man-made lake in south east Asia. When the area was flooded with water between 1978 and 1985, most of the hilltops and highlands remained above water level, thus creating about 340 man-made islands. Before the creation of the lake, there were probably several caves accessible and some were of archaeological importance. However when the area was flooded, most of the caves were lost underwater. Batu Tok Bidan cave in Gunung Bewah was one of those. Prior to its disappearance, archaeologists had discovered Neolithic artifacts such as kitchen utensils, stone adzes and pottery sherds. Mollusc shells with the tips broken off suggests the site was frequently used as a shelter in the prehistoric past. Even a Neolithic burial was found, with broken pottery laid at the foot of the deceased. The Neolithic or New Stone Age era occurred roughly 10,000 years ago. The cave was probably adjacent to two well-known routes used by the aborigines in prehistoric times through Terengganu to Sungai Tembling. The cave was first dug in 1959 by R.Noone, and later by Malaysian Historical Society in 1976.

In Feb 2010 the media announced the discovery of human skeletal remains believed to be from the Mesolithic Age in Bewah Cave. Initial estimates are put at 8,000 and 11,000 years old. Pottery was also found. The digs are ongoing.
On Mar 10 Bernama reported that the skeletal remains are confirmed to be 16,000 years old. If this is correct, that makes them older than Perak Man.

NIAH, SARAWAK

An older discovery is a 40,000 year old human skull found in Niah Cave in Sarawak in 1958. Since then archaeologists have continued to make important finds in Niah which reveal a period of human activity in the cave dating around 50,000 years ago.

In June 2007 six Neolithic skeletal remains were found in Gua Kain Hitam near the Painted Cave in Niah, Sarawak, by a joint team led by Associate Professor Stephen Chia of USM. These are the most important finds in 50 years. See fuller report with photos on SEArch .

Arrival in SE Asia
Scientists such as anthropologists and archaeologists have always wondered how the first people reached the islands of southeast Asia. Niah, on Borneo was inhabited 40,000-50,000 years ago, and Tabon Cave on the island of Palawan, southwest Philippines at roughly the same time (47 ± 11 ka). More recently the Luzon foot from Callao cave in the Philippines has been dated at 67,000 years old. It was found in 2007. This shows that people had settled on Luzon, the largest and northernmost major island in the Philippines, at least 67,000 years ago. And stone tools older than the Luzon foot bone have also been found recently on Sulawesi and Timor.
However Malaysia’s archaeological past is older than this (but is not directly cave related).

general archaeology in Malaysia

Cave archaeology in Peninsular Malaysia started in the 1880’s, pioneered by scientists with an interest in geology. Gua Cha in Kelantan was one of the first sites dug, and revealed a Hoabinhian (10,000- 3,000 BC) occupation and burial site. Several caves in the same area along the Nenggiri and Galas rivers in ulu Kelantan have revealed archaeological relics. Perlis is another area which contains caves of archaeological interest.

Caves in Sabah, at Bantuong, are known to have been occupied by Man from 17,000 years ago. Wooden coffins, dating to the 14th century have been found in many caves in Sabah. Balambangan Island off Kudat has limestone caves where 16,000 year old artefacts were found by researchers from the Malaysian Archaeological Research Centre (PPAM) of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in August 1997.

Cave paintings

There are not many cave paintings in Malaysia. The oldest known only date back to about 2000 years (unconfirmed), at Gua Tambun, near Ipoh. They are not actually in a cave, but on a cliff face, and sadly nothing has been done to protect the drawings which are exposed to bright sun, monsoon rain, wind and humidity. The possibly Neolithic paintings were discovered in 1959 and first reports mention some 25-30 drawings of animals and people, but there are in fact a lot more. The paintings are red and orange in colour, and are made from haematite (ochre). In Jan 2009 some researchers from USM studied the site and the team erected scaffolding to access the paintings and one researcher used a polecam. They made some new discoveries including a number of ‘new’ motifs, resulting in a total count of just over 500 distinct rock art elements, spread over ten distinct panels, making Gua Tambun one of the largest rock art sites in Malaysia, if not the largest. A paper will be published soon. However the age of the paintings is still not known.

Other ochre paintings in southeast Asia include those at the famous Padah-Lin Cave in the Taunggyi district of Myanmar. They are Neolithic (maybe 11,000 years old). In Maros in Sulawesi, Indonesia, are the hand stencils and pig drawings in Leang Leang and other caves. Thailand has several examples, especially along the Thai-Myanmar border, in Petchabuan Range in central Thailand and along the Mekong in Nakhon Sawan Province.

Further away in China, 6,000-year-old coloured paintings and fingerprints were found in caves on Yabrai mountain in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. These Paleolithic paintings are believed to be painted with mixed dyes of ochre powder, animal blood and water. Painters may have used bone pipes to blow the dyes onto the cave walls. They are simiiliar to European Paleolithic cave paintings.

The famous paintings at the Painted Cave of Niah have been dated at about 1200 years. The paints were made from tree sap. Across the Indonesian border in east Kalimantan, from around 2000 onwards, several caves were found containing rock art, much of it in the form of negative hand prints and overpainted hand stencils. Around 1,500 negative handprints have been found in 30 caves. Handprints are a common motif in prehistoric rock art around the world. But unlike hands discovered at sites in France, Australia, and elsewhere, many in Kalimantan caves are decorated with dots, dashes, and other patterns, the significance of which is yet unknown. In some designs the hands are linked to other hands, or to drawings of people or animals, by long curving lines. The paintings are ochre based. Ochre lumps up to 15 cm in diameter have been found in the caves along with anvils and mortars. It is thought that to create the design, the painter would place a hand on the wall, then spray it by mouth with pulverized pigments made of ochre. The oldest representations are older than the end of the Pleistocene, 10,000 years BP. Other caves were found in the 1990s also containing art - hand stencils, figures, lines and dots. It is interesting that the art is older and quite different from that found at Niah. However whereas Niah was inhabited around 40 or 50,000 years ago, the Kalimantan caves have only been occupied for around 10,000 years. See more on the Kalimantan art.

There are various cave sites in Peninsula Malaysia that have rock paintings, especially in Pahang, Perak and Kelantan.

The Negrito aboriginal cave art at Lenggong is modern graffiti by comparison, only 100 years old. And there are a few more "modern" sites in the peninsula. But all these pale into insignificance compared to cave art at places such as Lascaux in France, and Altamira in northern Spain, which date back more than 30,000 years. In Australia, in the northern Kimberley region, rock art could date to the height of the last Ice Age - about 20-25,000 years ago.

Cave paintings are found in many places around the world, and questions have always been asked about what these paintings of animals, humans and symbols mean. Some of the paintings are done with a high degree of artistic ability. Experts have long debated the meaning of the rock art. Some say they were done by shamans (bomohs), others say they represent an early religion.

Cave paintings are generally dated by a technique known as uranium series dating. In Oct 2008 there was a lot of news in the international media about new ways to date cave paintings, resulting from work done by archaeologists at Bristol University in England. You can read more on Archaeology Briefs





© Liz Price 2007 - 2010

Page last updated 3 Aug 2010