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The stone age in Malaya. Monograph No. 1

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The stone age in Malaya. Monograph No. 1

C. A. Gibson-Hill, W. W. Skeat, and F. F. Laidlaw published this comprehensive account of the Cambridge University Expedition to the North-Eastern Malay States and Upper Perak (1899–1900) in 1953, presenting the personal narratives of expedition leader W. W. Skeat and zoologist F. F. Laidlaw, edited and introduced by Gibson-Hill shortly before Skeat’s death. The work documents a multidisciplinary scientific journey through the Siamese-controlled Malay states—Patani, Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, and Perlis—and into the highlands of Upper Perak, yielding ethnographic, zoological, and botanical data of considerable originality for a region then almost entirely unexplored by Western science.

Summary

The expedition was conceived by W. W. Skeat, a Selangor civil servant and scholar of Malay magic and aboriginal peoples, who recognized that contact with European culture was rapidly disintegrating the social life of the aborigines and traditional Malay communities in the west coast states. With funding from the Worts Fund and the support of Professor Haddon (fresh from his Torres Strait expedition), Skeat assembled a team of zoologists, botanists, and himself as ethnographer, and obtained Siamese government permission to travel through the Ligor circle of states under Siamese suzerainty (pp. 5–6). The main party departed England in January 1899, reaching Bangkok in March, and proceeded south through Singgora, Patani, Jalor, Raman, Teluban, Kelantan, and Trengganu before splitting up for work in Kedah, Perlis, and the Perak highlands (pp. 6–8).

Skeat’s narrative, the bulk of the publication, is organized as a day-by-day diary covering the expedition’s full itinerary. It provides extraordinarily detailed observations on the material culture, religious practices, and social institutions of the Siamese-Malay states: the Phram (Brahmin) burial customs at Lampam, the Sleeping Buddha of Biserat (measured at nearly 100 feet in length), the elaborate circumcision and wedding ceremonies of Patani, the spirit-vessel (lanchang) launches, the bunga mas tribute system, and the administrative structures of each state (pp. 11–124). Skeat also recorded the first fossils from the Malay Peninsula, encountered Negrito groups in Patani and Kedah, and documented the linguistic phenomena of the Samsam (Malayo-Siamese) population (pp. 12–14, 142–145).

The most dramatic episode was Skeat’s solo reconnaissance of Gunong Tahan in August–September 1899, a mountain then entirely uncharted. With only seven Malay carriers and inadequate supplies, he penetrated deep into the Tahan massif before being turned back by monsoon rains, exhausted rations, and impassable cliffs; he reached a point from which he could see what he identified as the true summit but could not ascend it (pp. 99–111). Laidlaw’s supplementary narrative covers the party’s stay at Kuala Aring, their contact with Negritos at Kampong Buntar, and their subsequent climb of Gunong Inas in Upper Perak, where they collected numerous new species including two new rats, a new snake, a new millipede, and a new rhododendron (pp. 148–164).

Key Findings

  • The expedition produced the first recorded Peripatus specimens from Malaya, discovered by Evans at Gunong Besar, Jalor, and later at Kuala Aring, material critical to ongoing taxonomic debates about the group’s phylogenetic position (pp. 22, 152).
  • Skeat measured the colossal Sleeping Buddha in the Statue Cave (Gua Gambar) at Biserat at approximately 100 feet in total length, with a mouth 1.5 feet wide and toes of uniform length, and recorded that a black splash on the right breast was the result of a Malay striking it with a keris to extract supposed hidden gold (pp. 39, 44–45).
  • The expedition obtained the first anthropometric measurements and photographs of Kelantan Negritos (Orang Pangan) at Kuala Aring and Kedah Negritos (Semang Padang) at Siong and Jarum, documenting their physical characteristics, hut construction, and cultural practices (pp. 111–112, 142–145).
  • Skeat’s attempt on Gunong Tahan established that the mountain’s upper reaches consist of two main peaks of nearly identical height—the eastern (true Tahan) and western (Gunong Larong, “Coffin Crag”)—which together block the head of the Tahan valley, a finding later confirmed by Robinson’s 1905 government expedition (pp. 104–106, 110).
  • Laidlaw and Yapp’s climb of Gunong Inas yielded several new species: Rattus (alticola) inas, Rattus (edwardsi) ciliatus, Tropidonotus inas, Platyrrhachus humberti, and a new rhododendron, in addition to the first authentic record of the Long-tailed Porcupine (Trichys lipura) for Malaya (pp. 161–164).
  • The expedition documented the bunga mas (gold tree) tribute system in detail, recording that the combined gold and silver trees of Patani were valued at over $5,000, took two months to complete, and were sent to Bangkok once every three years as a mark of Siamese suzerainty (pp. 77–78).

Conclusion

The publication stands as the most comprehensive single account of the Siamese Malay states as they existed at the turn of the twentieth century, capturing a society in the process of transformation under Siamese administrative control but still largely intact in its traditional religious, social, and economic structures. Gibson-Hill’s introduction frames the work as the culmination of Skeat’s lifelong scholarly commitment to documenting Malay and aboriginal cultures before their irreversible alteration by modernization, and notes that the expedition’s ethnographic output—culminating in Skeat and Bladen’s The Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula (1906)—remains the only authoritative general survey of the subject (p. 174).

Context

  • The expedition’s ethnographic collections are housed in the University Museum of Ethnology and Anthropology, Cambridge, while zoological specimens are in the Department of Zoology, Cambridge, and botanical material in the Cambridge University Herbarium and Kew (p. 174).
  • The Siamese government provided substantial logistical support, including travel permits, the steam yacht Narubin for the initial passage south, and the cooperation of Phya Sukhum, High Commissioner for the Ligor circle, who hosted the party at Singgora (pp. 6–7).

References