Niah - Early Human Settlements

In 1958, a discovery was made which confirmed Niah's place as a site of major archaeological significance. Harrisson and his team unearthed a skull which was estimated to be 40,000 years old. The find was at first ridiculed by the scientific community, for it was the skull of a modern human (homo sapiens sapiens), and it was widely believed that Borneo was settled much later. However, as dating techniques improved, and as more evidence of the settlement of Southeast Asia and Australasia came to light, Harrisson was proved right.

What is most interesting about Niah, however, is the comtinued human presence over tens of thousands of years, and the sophistication of the societies that gradually developed there. A large burial site further into the mouth of the cave had clearly been used from palaeolithic times right up to the modern era, as late as 1400 AD. The earliest graves, found in the deepest levels, were simple shallow graves without adornment. Yet moving up through the layers, conffins and urns appeared, along with grave goods such as pottery, textiles and ornaments, and even glass and metal items, which came comparatively late to Borneo.

The Great Cave is not the only important archaeological site. The Painted Cave, as its name suggests, houses detailed wall-paintings depicting the boat journey of the dead into the afterlife. The meaning of the paintings was explained by the discovery of a number of "death-ships" on the cave floor - boat-shaped coffins containing the remains of the deceased and a selection of grave-goods considered useful in the afterlife, such as Chinese ceramics, ornaments and glass beads. The death-ships have been dated as ranging between 1 AD and 780 AD, although local Penan folklore tells of the use of death-ship burials as late as the 19th century.