ON TRAIL OF THE HISTORY OF KUNAK - PART 7

Between 5000 BC to 2000 BC the Madai Caves were totally uninhabited. During that period, the Madai Tribe improved their skill on making huts from woods and other forest material. As a nomadic tribe, they continued to move along the shores to where they could find food. Along the way they met with two other tribes whose ancestors had been separated from theirs, tens of thousands years before. They were the Taiwan Tribe and the Sulawesi Tribe. Together, they proceeded to explore the coasts until they reached Bukit Tengkorak in Semporna.

Around 30,000 BC, in place now known as Indochina, several tribes from the band that included the Tingkayu Tribe, broke away and took a different path (see part 2 of this series). They arrived at a place now called Taiwan. Like the Tingkayu Tribe they continued their tradition as hunter-gatherers for 20,000 years.

As the massive ice blocks melted and flooded the lowlands, Taiwan was cut off from mainland Asia and the Malay Archipelago. Their hunting and gathering grounds shrank while their population increased causing shortage of food. In such a challenging situation, the human mind was forced to work and function more efficiently. The Taiwan Tribe began to explore into two new ventures that were vital to their survival. First, they began to practice agriculture to ensure continuous supply of cereal. Second, they learnt to construct rafts and boats to cross lands across the sea for hunting and gathering. In the course of their adventures, some had crossed back to mainland Asia while others arrived at Luzon Island in the Philippines.

In Part 5 of this series we mentioned that sometime in 16,000 BC, some group from the Tingkayu Tribe had crossed from Kalimantan to Mamuju in Sulawesi. They were the ancestors of the Sulawesi Tribe, the pioneers of sea travel. Their descendants kept on improving their sailing skill and in the construction of sea-going vessels that had made them the most competent sailors in the southern hemisphere and earned them the nickname “Vikings of the South Seas”.

With the sinking of the land bridges, the Sulawesi Tribe became advocates that re-linked tribes that had been separated thousands of years earlier. Sea travel had brought them to Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, the Pacific Islands and Australia. With the arrival of the Taiwan Tribe, the long separated people of common ancestry were reunited. Intermingling among them had generated a blended culture, characteristics, temperament and skills of a big family referred by anthropologists as the Austronesian.

At Bukit Tengkorak Semporna, experiences and skills were shared among the tribes particularly, though not the only, in pottery industry. Archaeological findings indicated that those tribes of different groups had interacted with each other around 5,000 BC or perhaps earlier. This is manifested by the similarities in pottery and microliths excavated in Bukit Tengkorak with those from other sites dated back to between 5000 BC to 4000 BC at Madai and Baturong in Kunak, at Balobok in the Sulu Peninsula, at Leang Tuwo Mane’e in the Talaud Islands, as well as at Paso and Ulu Leang in Sulawesi.

ON TRAIL OF THE HISTORY OF KUNAK - PART 6

Thousands of stone tools had been excavated from Madai caves. The tools were mostly made from local river pebble chert, of an industry similar to that of Baturong. Mortars that were used by the prehistoric people of Madai for grinding food, cracking shells or ochre preparations were also found.

The presence of abundant shells in Madai Caves indicates that the inhabitants frequented the shores to gather seafood from the beaches. Hunting of animals continued. The hunted animals include large animals such as seladang and two species of rhinoceros, i.e., javanese rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) and sumatran rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sumatrensis). Today, javanese rhino no longer exists in Sabah.

Around 5,000 BC the Madai Caves were abandoned. There are no detail studies yet to determine the reason for the inhabitants to leave or where they had gone.

However, with their skill in manufacturing many types of stone tools for any particular purpose, the Madai Tribe must had tools for cutting trees and woods. With the warmer climate, they did not need the caves for shelters against the cold nights. Human nature to continue in search of comfort and wellbeing had driven the tribe to move closer to the easy source of food. They had found easy source of food from the beaches that assure them that their family need not go through hunger anymore at times when the hunters returned home empty-handed.

Obviously, there were no reasons for the Madai Tribe to continue living and sharing the damp, dark caves with bats and swiftlets. They were fed up with the thickening guanos on the cave floor. Thus, the tribe left the cave and moved out closer to the beaches.

With their skill in manufacturing stone tools for any particular purpose, they had no problem in making tools specially for cutting trees and woods. They began to build shelters from small timbers, barks, vines, rattans, and palm leaves. Hence, in 5000 BC the foundation of kampongs began in the District of Kunak, Sabah.

COMMUNISTS ARE WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO STRIKE

Communism has stamped its mark on the 20th century— a mark of aggression and cruelty, bloodshed and tears. Historians have estimated that its ideology has caused the death of 120 million people since the Russian Revolution of 1917. 

These casualties include not only soldiers killed on battlefields, but citizens murdered by their own governments. The whole world has seen the pitiless slaughter carried out by Communist leaders (including Chin Peng). One hundred million men and women, from the elderly to young people and infants, lost their lives to this cold, hard, savage ideology. Communist regimes have deprived tens of millions of their most basic rights and freedoms, ejecting people from their homes and systematically subjecting them to famines, slavery in labor camps and imprisonment. 

Millions have been the targets of Communist guerilla groups and terrorist organizations, and still others have lived in the fear of becoming targets for their bullets.

So sad for for our beloved country Malaysia, for within the first decade of the 21st century some of its citizens make efforts to bring back to the country the murderous leader of the banned Communist party of Malaya. 

Many people believe that the communist era had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Regrettably, it seems not to be the case. Communism is waiting in ambush! This well of bloodshed, which has cost the lives of 120 million, still exists. Communism has covered the top of the well to conceal its insidious activities and camouflaged its surroundings, setting it as a trap for the unwary. Its outward appearance may have changed, its adherents' names may be different, but it still awaits an opportunity to wreak pain on humanity once again, as it has in the past. 

 

- Main Reference: "Communism in Ambush" by  Harun Yahya

BEST TIME TO HARVEST SWIFTLET'S NEST

One of the reasons for the dwindling of swiftlets nest production in Madai Caves could have been lack of Good Animal Husbandry Practices (GAHP). If this is the case, then the people who held the rights to the Madai Caves birds’ nests have something to learn from former Assistant Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Datuk Karim Bujang.

          The New Sabah Times (3rd June 2009) quoted Datuk Karim as explaining that harvesting (of the birds’ nests) must be conducted in adherence to GAHP and only at suitable times.

“The best time to harvest is when the nests are empty, and not when there are eggs or young birds in them,” said Karim.

          A few years back Datuk Karim built a three-storey building in Kimanis specially for swiftlets to colonize but he had to wait for at least two years before any swiflets decided to set up home there.  He had been patient and once a wallet or two started building nests, more will flock in to the building.  

Now he has a few hundred “wallet” birds in his building but he is not in a hurry to harvest the nests just yet. He wants them to continue building the colony. He also does not want to disrupt the birds’ environment at this moment as the birds might just leave for good if the peaceful environment is disrupted.

The population of wild swiflets also decreased due to the destruction of their habitat.