Interesting Facts about Indonesia

Before leaving, I’m also taking the time to do some research on the places I’ll be visiting. Last time I followed the “grab the guidebook, and go!” approach, which left me feeling foolish way too often during conversations with locals and other travelers. This time I’m making full use of the internet to research my destination. So, here is just some of the interesting information I found out about Indonesia.

My first searches were to learn about general country information and about Indonesia’s past and present. Indonesia consists of over 17,000 islands straddling the equator, with approximately 3000 of these islands being inhabited. I was surprised to find of these 3,000 islands, Java and Sumatra are home to nearly 80% of Indonesia’s population. I also read about the now defunct transmigrasi policy, the aim being to move people from populated islands like Java to less populated islands like Papua. The height of this forced migration occurred from 1984-1989 when over 2.5 million people were moved, mostly urban poor and landless peasants. As you can guess, this policy greatly changed the cultural makeup of remote islands, and tensions resulted from this “javanisation.” Current policies including family planning programs and a national campaign, “Two Children is Enough,” are the new methods being used to combat population growth. Though population growth has dropped, the total is still around 234 million making it the 4th most populated nation, and largest Muslim population in the world.

Indonesia’s history is long and varied, with human presence first occurring around 1 million BC when Java Man walked over the land bridge connecting Australia and Asia. While Java Man became extinct, other immigrants arrived from Southeast Asia to populate the archipelagos. Another interesting piece of Indonesia’s evolutionary history is the presence of “the hobbits.” The Manggarai inhabits of Flores told stories of little people, covered with hair, who roamed the jungles. Then, in 2003, and later in 2005, archeologists started to find skeletons of little people only about 1m high, with gangly arms and the worn down teeth of adults. This race of small humanoids was thought to have inhabited the jungles as recently as 12,000 yrs ago, until they were wiped out by a volcanic eruption. So scientists think ;)

“Artist's impression of how the hobbit may have interacted with Homo sapiens”

Image: Kevin Stead