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| Sunday, 7 August 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Different outlook Orang Pendek: The missing link? Part I
"Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past..." - T. S. Eliot The natives of Sumatra believed in an ape-man long before the remains of one such peculiar creature was discovered in neighbouring Java. In "The Origin of Species" Darwin did not carry his theory of evolution to its conclusions to avoid confrontation with religious opinion. But his German colleague Ernest Hackle had no such qualms. He coolly put forward a complete family tree showing how man had risen from the animal kingdom. He invented quite a hypothetical creature between man and his nearest ancestor of the anthropoid age and called it Pithecanthropus or the "Ape-man". A painting of a family of ape-man by Gabriel Max was gifted to Hackle on his 60th birthday in which the ape-man was depicted as being a mixture of both man and ape in equal proportion. Like men, their skin was bare, their hair long and loose and they walked upright. Like apes they had a receding forehead, beetling brow, receding chin and slightly splayed big toes. While this was being presented, the West was oblivious of the fact that Eugen Dubois, one of Hackle's disciples had actually discovered the remains of an ape-man in Java. Indonesia was the country of the Gibbon, man's closest relation according to Hackle, and Dubois had started his trail there. Proceeding from there he finally dug out, on the banks of the river Solo at Trinil in Java, a fragment of skull with a receding forehead. Its cranium capacity seemed to be between an anthropoid and a man. There were also two molars and a pre-molar as well as a human looking femur, which suggested that the creature walked upright. On the basis of this Dr. Dubois announced the discovery of the missing link in 1894 and called it the Pithecanthropus. Dr. Dubois' conclusions were severely criticized but in the end they were confirmed as a result of systematic excavations in Java from 1936 to 1939. The discovery at Pekin of rather more complete remains of the ape-man has increased our knowledge of these creatures. Were they really man's ancestors? It is hard to maintain this view. Most anthropologists see them as a branch that split from the human family tree at the end of the Tertiary era. But others think they were giant gibbons, which had given up living in trees. At all events they existed in Java. And across the Sundra Straits in Southern Sumatra ape-like men have been believed to exist since times immemorial. Marco Polo was the first to bring this story to the West, writing of Lambri (probably the province of Jambri) he says: "...in this kingdom are found men with tails, a span in length, like those of the dog, but not covered with hair. The greater number of them are formed in this manner, but they dwell in the mountains and not inhabit towns." William Marsden, who was secretary at the Residence at Benkoelen in Sumatra and edited an English edition of Marco Polo in 1818, thought that this fable arose from the existence of two types of natives in the Sumatra hinterland who lived in the woods and avoided all contact with the other inhabitants. They were known as 'Orang Kubu' and 'Orang Gugu'. The first were fairly numerous, especially in the county between Plaengbang and Jambi. They had their own language and ate anything - deer, elephants, rhinoceros, dogs, snakes and monkeys. The 'Gugu' were more rare and were covered with long hair. Mardens' Orang Kubu is very famous today and is a tribe of natives who live in the mountainous forests in the south of Sumatra. One thing about both these creatures is certain - neither of them has a tail. Marco Polo apparently had not seen these appendages himself; he trusted a legend that already existed. More recent stories that are still prevalent today, say nothing about men with tails in Sumatra; on the contrary they tell of little wild creatures that walk upright like men and are hairy like apes. The Dutch settlers called them Orang Pendek, which means 'little man'. Orang Pendek is the local name only in the north of Benkoelen and south of Palembang. The natives insist that the Orang Pendek is not any of the three species of gibbons to be found in Sumatra, nor is it an Orang Utan, though people who are ignorant of the Malaya language have often been misled into thinking that the two names are connected because the first word is the same and the natives therefore believe in several species of Orang Utan. Actually Orang means man or man like creature wherever it is used in phrases like Orang Pendek, Orang Utan or Orang Malayu. The Malays also use the word Orang for non anthropoid apes. The Orang Pendek, according to reports, is a very shy biped that speaks an unintelligible language. It is between 2 feet 6 inches to 5 feet high. Its skin is pinkish brown and is covered all over with short dark brown hair. It has a head of jet-black hair forming a bushy mane down its back. It has no visible tail. Its arms are not as long as an anthropoid ape's. It hardly ever climbs on trees but walks on the ground. It is supposed to walk with its feet reversed, and heels facing forward. Otherwise its habits are very ordinary. It eats young shoots, fruit, fresh water mollusks, snakes and worms which it finds by turning stones and with Herculean strength, even the trunks of fallen trees. It is very partial to durian fruit. And sometimes it raids the banana and sugar cane plantations or the native gardens. This man-faced beast is found all over southern Sumatra below the equator. Part II next week |
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By Arefa Tehsin 
