Borneo's hunters-gatherers as an independent culture and some implications for Borneo's culture history

Abstract

Bornean hunter-gatherers' origins have long been disputed, and a recent trend argued for a economic switch from rice cultivation to forest foraging. This paper, based on ethnohistorical, cultural, and linguistic data, suggests that these groups have more in common, historically, culturally, and possibly linguistically, than each of them might have with its closest rice-farming neighbor; and that they belong to an independent hunting-gathering culture pre-dating the diffusion. to, or emergence in, Borneo of rice agriculture, and possibly even of horticulture. In a second stage, this paper proposes an alternative reconstruction of Borneo's culture history, featuring a widespread horticultural civilization.