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.