Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The fi rst of these channels was the deep-water passage between Bor-
neo and Sulawesi. A narrower and much shallower passage separates Bali
and Lombok to the south, but it may have been even more dii cult to cross
because anyone venturing out in a primitive boat or accidentally carried out
to sea would have been swept by the strong currents to almost certain lonely
death in the Indian Ocean to the south. Other formidable channels separated
islands further to the east, cutting of New Guinea and Australia from the
island area that is now known as Wallacea.
Michael Morwood of Australia's University of New England suggests that
the migrants may have been able to make the crossings most easily along the
northerly route from Borneo to Sulawesi and then through the Spice Islands
to New Guinea, where the currents were less likely to sweep them south
and out to sea before they could make landfall. Regardless of their route, the
migrants had to make several sea passages as they moved further east. They
might have possessed the seafaring technology to brave the swift currents,
or the transits of the passages might have been as simple as an accident of
weather—a coastal boat, laden with men, women, and children, blown out
to sea by a sudden storm. When they managed to reach Australia and New
Guinea they once again found themselves on a vast continent-sized region
that awaited exploitation.
Throughout all these population movements the early migrants relied
on a warm climate, plenty of fi sh and game, and the absence of truly daunt-
ing physical barriers. They were unlikely to have traveled very far inland at
fi rst, but soon population pressure and the disappearance of animals as they
were over-hunted drove them to exploit areas away from the coasts.
We know something about the Southeast Asia migrants from some of
their descendants, groups of hunter-gatherers who live in the dense rainfor-
ests of the Malay Peninsula.
The lowland rainforests of the peninsula covered vast areas through-
out the Age of Mammals. Although individual forests have come and gone,
there have always been substantial regions of forest on both the peninsula
and the Greater Sunda Shelf. These forests are by many measures the most
diverse on the planet. Dense and deeply shaded, they are dominated by
immense
Shorea
and other Dipterocarp trees. Giant jackfruit and other fruit
