Discovering Indonesia

Something that never ceases to amaze me about this part of the world, and in particular, Indonesia, is how scientists are constantly discovering things here. A few months ago, it was a new species that no one had ever seen until it was caught on camera in Borneo, then there was also the discovery of the three feet humans that used to inhabit Flores. Today, it appears that archeologists have unearthered a civilization believed to have been buried by an 1815 eruption on one of Indonesia's outer islands. It's fascinating.

I suppose one of the reasons these things continue to crop up like this here is that there are so many areas that are still unexplored here. It was only a few years back that satellite pictures revealed that Indonesia has about 1000 more islands than they had previously been aware of, bringing the total to something over 18,000.

Anyway, some links to some of these stories:
Tiny Hominids:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3948165.stm

New Mammal:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4501152.stm

Lost Indonesian Civilization: From the Jakarta Post
Scientists claim to find lost Indonesian civilization

NARRAGANSETT, Rhode Island (AP): Scientists have found what they believe are traces of the lost Indonesian civilization of Tambora, which was wiped out in 1815 by the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history.
Mount Tambora's cataclysmic eruption on Apr. 10, 1815, buried the inhabitants of Sumbawa Island under searing ash, gas and rock and is blamed for an estimated 88,000 deaths. The eruption was at least four times more powerful than Mount Krakatoa's in 1883.
Guided by ground-penetrating radar, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and the Indonesian Directorate of Volcanology recently dug in a gully where locals had found ceramics and bones. They unearthed the remains of athatch house, pottery, bronze and the carbonized bones of two people, all in a layer of sediment dating to the eruption.
University of Rhode Island volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson, the leader of the expedition, estimated that 10,000 people lived in the town when the volcano erupted in a blast that dwarfed the one that buried the Roman town of Pompeii.
The eruption shot 400 million tons (363 million metric tons) of sulfuric gases into the atmosphere, causing global cooling and creating what historians call "The Year Without a Summer." Farms in Maine suffered crop-killing frosts in June, July and August.
In France and Germany, grape and corn crops died, or the harvests were delayed.
The civilization on Sumbawa Island has intrigued researchers ever since Dutch and British explorers visited in the early 1800s and were surprised to hear a language that did not sound like any other spoken in Indonesia, Sigurdsson said. Some scholars believethe language more closely resembled those spoken in Indochina.
But not long after Westerners first encountered Tambora, the society was destroyed.
"The explosion wiped out the language. That's how big it was," Sigurdsson said. "But we're trying to get these people to speak again, by digging."
Some of what the researchers found may suggest Tambora's inhabitants came from Indochina or had commercial ties with the region, Sigurdsson said. For example, ceramic pottery uncovered during the dig resembles that common to Vietnam.
John Miksic, an archaeologist at the National University of Singapore, has seen video of the dig and said he believes Sigurdsson's team did find a dwelling destroyed by the eruption.
But he doubts the Tamborans were from Indochina or spoke a language from that area. If Vietnamese-style ceramics reached the island, it was probably through trade with intermediaries, Miksic said.
During the dig, Sigurdsson's team found the charred skeleton of a woman who was most likely in her kitchen. A metal machete and a melted glass bottle lay nearby. The remains of another person were found just outside what was probably the front door. (**)