THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Bali and Lombok - page 376

Brief history
The majority of Lombok's 3.2 million inhabitants are indigenous Muslim Sasaks . Their his-
tory is not well documented but they probably converted to Islam in the sixteenth century,
with a minority following the animist-influenced Wetu Telu branch. About fifteen percent of
the population are of Balinese origin, practising Balinese Hinduism, introducing themselves
as Balinese even though their families may have been on Lombok for several generations,
and speaking both Balinese and Sasak. The history of the two islands has long been inter-
linked. The east Balinese kingdom of Karangasem invaded west Lombok in the seventeenth
century and established a Balinese community that still thrives in modern-day Mataram. West
Lombok's Balinese rulers extended their dominion over east Lombok, and were later also
granted control of Karangasem by the invading Dutch. But the disempowered Sasaks of east
Lombok fought back and in 1894 the Dutch seized the chance to take control, bringing the
entire island of Lombok (and Karangasem) under colonial rule until Indonesian independen-
ce. In 1958 Lombok and neighbouring Sumbawa became jointly administered as the province
of Nusa Tenggara Barat , or NTB (West Nusa Tenggara), with Mataram the provincial cap-
ital.
THE WALLACE LINE
Bali and Lombok are separated by the 35km-wide Lombok Strait, which is more than
1300m deep in places. An imaginary boundary, the Wallace Line , runs through it, marking
a division between the distribution of Asian and Australasian wildlife.
The boundary is named in honour of the nineteenth-century British naturalist Sir Alfred
Russel Wallace . He suggested that during the ice ages, when the levels of the world's
oceans dropped, animals were able to range overland from mainland Asia all the way down
through Sumatra and Java to Bali, but were halted by the deep waters of the Lombok Strait.
Similarly, animals from the south could roam only as far as Lombok on the other side of
the strait.
Some evidence supports his theory. Bali and the islands to the west have creatures mostly
common to mainland Asia (rabbits, monkeys, tigers), while the wildlife on Lombok and
the islands to the east is more characteristic of Australia and New Guinea (parrots, mar-
supials, platypuses and lizards).
However, research has since shown that many animal species are common to both Bali
and Lombok; for example, you're likely to see crab-eating macaques and silver leaf mon-
keys both in Bali Barat National Park and on the slopes of Gunung Rinjani. Today natur-
alists refer not to Wallace's Line but to a zone of transition from the Asian type of animal
life to the Australasian; in honour of Sir Alfred, this is known as “ Wallacea ”.