Ancient peoples

Press, 23 October 1980, Page 15

Ancient peoples

In remote corners of Indonesia’s vast archipelago of 13,000 islands, the “ancient peoples” maintain a belief in the spirits of nature and the ghosts of their ancestors, ■ whom they strive to please with sacrificial rites and the erection of megalithic monuments — tall columns and massive slabs of stone.

Because of their isolation, they experienced little or nothing of the imported Indian culture which had so profoundly influenced more accessible places, and ' they offer today a fascinating glimpse of life as it may have been throughout Indonesia two thousand years ago. In “The World of Shadows,” Sunday’s episode of “Spirit of Asia” on Network One, David Attenborough goes to four islands widely separated from each other across 3200 km of the archipelago,’ but having in common their animist religion and their use of stone monuments to honour the dead. The magic islands of Indonesia visited by David Attenborough include Sumba, a small barren island halfway between Bali and Timor, celebrated for its st..rdy breed of horses and the beauty of its traditional “ikat weaving”; and the small mountainous island of Nias, where the art of the megalithic age flourished as nowhere else in the world. ’