Geographically
the Indonesian archipelago is located in a very strategic position since it is
the link between the Asian mainland and the Australian continent, and between
the Indonesian and the Pacific Oceans .
In this position, the Indonesian archipelago serves as a melting pot with a
wide variety of different peoples inhabiting it.
According
to genetic history, the Indonesian people originate from 2 (two) main races :
Mongoloid and Australomelanesoid. The Mongoloid race came from the Asian
mainland, first inhabiting western Indonesia ,
while the eastern part of the archipelago was the home of the
Australomelanesoid. However since 6,000 years ago, the Mongoloid peoples began
to dominate almost the entire of the Nusantara archipelago.
Since
the Nusantara zone is an archipelago, the initial inhabitants of the zone were
separated into small groups inhabiting different islands and eventually
creating a variety of tribes or ethnic groups with their cultural varieties.
In
its later development, a heterogeneous Indonesian people was created by the
interactions of its inhabitants between immigrants, local people and the
various ethnic groups. The merging and preservation processes later added
variety to the multicolored appearance of Indonesian people.
The
evidence indicates that humans and animals in the Nusantara archipelago came
from the Asian mainland. Faunal migration from mainland Asia to the Nusantara
archipelago began around 2 (two) million years ago (at the end of the Pliocene
era), while human migration occurred later on from 1.7 million to 700 thousand
years ago, a group of new fauna arrived in Java from South China among which
were the gibbons, orang utans and other primates. Faunal fossils of these
groups have been discovered in Cijulang West Java.
Also
during the Early Pleistocene era, around 1.5 million years ago, groups of
humans started to arrive in the Nusantara archipelago. Prehistoric sites along
the banks of the Bengawan Solo river preserved many prehistoric human fossils
of these humans. Later around 40,000 – 11,000 years ago, when the structure of
the sea and land was more stable, modern humans –called Homo sapiens- like us
emerged in Nusantara. Evidence of their existence is indicated by the discovery
of fossils in Wajak Central Java.
Human
migration continued. Next was the migration of the Mongoloid races from Asia
to the archipelago pushing the Australomelanesid race to the eastern part of Indonesia .
In later historical periods evidence points to the Nusantara area being visited
continuously by people from a wide variety of nations around the world.