Bisaya Fables

Durate Barbosa This small essay describes Borneo before 1518 from the point of view of the Portuguese. This was after the Brunei incursion into Santubong in ~1512. The Isles of Borneo “Further on towards China, from the Island of Solor (Sulu) there is another island as well furnished with victuals, inhabited by heathen with a […]

Irrawaddy Dolphins Our results indicated that the Irrawaddy dolphin lineage split from the Australian Snubfin dolphin lineage (Orcaella heinsohni) in the Late Miocene ( 6.82 million years ago) The Australian Snubfin dolphin inhabits the coast of southern New Guinea and northern Australia and is separated from the Irrawaddy dolphin by Wallace’s Line. DOI: 10.1111/mms.13159 Early

Children of the Missions 1862 Polly Polly is the eldest and a Kanowit Dyak orphan. She is between 15 and 16 and has lived with us since she was a baby. She was brought to Sarawak by English sailors who were engaged in the Sanskrit and Sakarran pirates in 1849. She is now a good-looking

People who have Died Have Ghosts Once there was a longhouse. There was someone who had just died in that longhouse. After four days a young man went out hunting. He called his dogs to follow him. They did not meet any wild pigs that day. Then he looked up at the sun and saw

This article was extracted from The Hakkas of Malaysia to 1970 by Phin-Keong Voon from Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies 2024 (13)137-59. © 2024 Reprinted with permission. The entire article may be found at http://doi.org/10.6993/MJCS.202406_13(1).0003 The Hakka of Borneo The ancestral homeland of the Hakkas was the uplands of the Guangdong-Fujian-Jiangxi border region. Hence the

New Species A new species of blind cave crab has been made known to science from Sarawak. 10.11646/ZOOTAXA.5476.1.13 New Species A new species of intertidal barnacle has been made known to science from the waters off of Sarawak. 10.11646/ZOOTAXA.5476.1.6 Orangutan Extinct orangutans of the Pleistocene(2.58 million years to 11,000 years ago) lived in tropical rainforests.

Journal of Antonio Pigafetta as it relates to Borneo part 2 The following part of Pigafetta’s Journal relates to items and foods used in everyday life by the people of Brunei in the early 1500s. The term “moors” is used by the Spanish to refer to any people of the Islamic faith. According to the

Journal of Antonio Pigafetta as it relates to Borneo This journal relates to the visit of Antonio Pigafetta of Spain to Brunei. Apparently there were two cities on Brunei one run by the Moors and the other governed by the “heathens”. Pigafetta entered the first city run by the Moors and then visited the second

These land rights are considered a basis for inheritance by the people of the Bakong River in the Miri district of Sarawak. Iban Land Inheritance There are two types of land recognized in terms of inheritance or transfer. These are termed “old land” and “new land.” New land is considered land that is open for