FROM THE STONE AGE UP TO NOW

This vast region constitutes 21 % of the surface of Indonesia and is considered the last inaccessible frontier of the archipelago. Irian Java is on the Western side of New Guinea and is part of the second largest island in the world after Greenland, covering 414.800 square kilometres in surface area. The Province was transferred by the Netherlands to Indonesia in 1963.

For the most part, Irian Java is an impenetrable territory, made up of swamps and marshes, the thickest of jungle and imposing highlands crossed by rivers with rapids and spectacular waterfalls. This landscape is dominated by very high rocky peaks reaching 5.000 m. in height and which are covered by perennial glaciers. The Mandala is one of the highest peaks, then the Trikora and the Puncak Java, this last has a height of 5.000 m. and plunges headlong on the reefs of the Arafura Sea.

Beyond the (geography, Irian Java also features unequalled flora of orchids, ferns, lianas and age-old trees and is the habitat of more than 700 species of birds, among which the big Cassowary and the mythical bird-of-paradise. In addition there are a variety of mar­supials and dreadful reptiles, dangerous crocodiles and poisonous snakes.

Irian Jaya is the home of the most primitive and isolated populations in the world adding up to only 1,6 million inhabitants, with a density of only three inhabitants per square kilometre. This territory comprises of a distracting and colourful match of cultures and ethnic groups. Many isolated tribes such as the Sawuy, the Asmat, the Moni, the Ekari, the Dani and the Damal, rarely have any contact with the outside world and still belong to a primitive time where tribes fought each other with spears and arrows, practiced cannibalism and spoke completely different languages.

Among the groups that can be reached and who are being carefully studied by anthropologists and missiona­ries, is the tribe of the Dani, living in the Valley of Baliem. About 210.000 persons who have been able to keep their style of life and traditions unchanged, despite the pre­sence of missionaries and contacts with foreigners in these last years.

This culture is completely primitive; numbers, the value of money and art are unknown. Pigs and bones are considered merchandise for exchange and circulate freely as dowry for marriages, funerals and ritual feasts. These people live on agriculture and the breeding of pigs and measure their technological success from their elaborate system of irrigation.

The attire of the Dani is of the most astonishing and odd; the men are naked, covering their penis with an empty gourd of different sizes tied to the waist, called Koteka. The women wear skirts made from reeds or grass with the behind being covered by bags made of laces tied together to protect them from spirits who might try to enter their bodies. These same laces are also used to carry children or the harvest.

The unpretentious male attire is often adorned with feathers, leaves, flowers and multi-coloured make-up, the noses adorned with pieces of bone and boar's tusk and during festivities they wear a bodice made of pig-skin.

The Dani people live in the highlands of 1.700 m.; an altitude that records very low temperatures. To neu­tralize this problem they smear their bodies with animal fat.

One surprising fact is their family and sexual usages: men and women live separately one from the other and the relations between the sexes are very rare, in fact, there is a rule for the respect of sexual abstinence for a period of five years after giving birth to a baby; a practice that is still widely complied with and attributed to the will of the spirits.

Another group that can be easily reached are the Asmat tribe, who live in different physical conditions compared to the Dani. The Asmat live in swampy land which is continuously flooded, both by the rains and by the tides.

This hostile environment of dangerous crocodiles and reptiles is one of the reasons why the Asmat are nomads without permanent villages. They live by hunting, fishing and by eating herbs, shrubs, insects, lizards and sago (a flour extracted from the sago-palm, which is cooked in palm-leaves).

The Asmat who are well-known head-hunters are also gifted and talented sculptors.

Among the tribal masterpieces, one can find the Bisj or totems, vet tall tree trunks carved with crouching phallic figures, ceremonial shields, reproducing crocodiles and animals from the jungle, as well as elaborate canoes, with richly carved bows. Among their furnishings, there can still be found throughly decorated skulls.

Complicated rites stress the ceremonial cycle of the Asmat; among these a quaint ceremony for sexual purification, d n^g which the women of the village deny their husbands upon their return from the forest, by flinging stone^y and blunt spears. The practice of exchanging wives with the aim of strengthening tribal solidarity also occurs, with such exchange agreements sometimes lasting a whole lifetime.

Swift changes are taking place in several parts of Irian jaya and especially in areas nearer to the coast: the exploitaing of huge mineral deposits at Tembagapura or on Mount Bijih, where whole mountains have been stripped in a few years for the extraction of copper and gold: the discovery of vast oil-fields; the reserves of timber, thanks to the boundless forests that cover 75% of the region; and the wealth of its seas which happen to be the most abounding in fish in the world, are all factors that favoured the coming of multi-national enterprises with foreign capital and American, Japanese and Euro­pean technicians and engineers.

All this has, in a single stroke, thrust these isolated people into the bustling threshold of the moden age. In a few recent years entire infrastructures have been built with cities, roads, modern ports, air­ports, schools and hospitals.

The people of the highlands were abruptly in­troduced to planes, helicopters and other modern ma­chines, benefitting in part, by this flow of these modern pioneers.

However, all this has not changed the lives, the traditions, the customs and the tribal way of live of these people. In fact, both the Dani and the Asmat continue to live their traditional way of life; revering their ancestors and practicing warfare in homage to those warriors who have fallen in battle. The men wear unbelievably multi­coloured martial attire and are equipped with spears and axes and carry out wars that may last tens of years. Victo­ries can be celebrated with cannibalistic rites and abundant war-booty including bones, pigs and women. The presence of the missionaries has only subdued but not stopped this martial instinct.

From its side the Indonesian Government has pro­moted the martial arts and sports competitions with a view to direct and channel this instinct for violence, and has favoured a transmigration programme by bringing people to Irian Jaya from Bali, Java and other regions of Indonesia.

These contacts have not modified the primitive reality of the people, who are experiencing a drama of having to face cultures that are so very different from its own, without having the advantage of absorbing them slowly in the centuries and phases of passage, of which all the previous civilizations had benefitted.