Niah National Park
The main entrance to the caves of Niah. Some of the excavations were made in the area that can be seen bottom right of the image.
The Niah Caves are located in the district of Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. They are known a major tourist attraction in Sarawak and for its swallows.
Position and shape
The caves are part of the National Park Niah. The Niah National Park was 31.4 km ² in size, when it was established in 1974.
The main cave, Niah Great Cave, is located in a limestone mountain with the name " subis " and consists of a number of voluminous chambers with very high ceilings. It is about a kilometer long in north-south direction and about half a kilometer wide. It is separated from the main complex of Gunung subis through a valley, which is about 150 to 200 meters wide.
The complex Gunung subis is at its highest point about 394 meters above sea level. The entire Gunung subis - limestone complex is located about 17 kilometers from the South China Sea in the inland and 65 kilometers west of the town Miri. It has approximately the shape of a heart, which is five kilometers from north to south and four kilometers in width. The Mount ( Gunung ) subis is surrounded by flat land with gently sloping hills, from which the limestone massif rises quite abruptly from the jungle. Some cliffs are over 100 feet high. Although this cave system compared to others in Sarawak, is not very large, it was estimated that it comprises approximately 10 hectares and that the cave roof rises 75 meters high in some places. In geological terms, the limestone is part of subis lineup. It dates from about 20 to 16 million years back to the early Miocene.
Archaeological and paleoanthropological finds
The cave is an important archaeological and paleoanthropological archaeological site in which is detected by the use of fossils that people were present here (Homo sapiens) before about 40,000 years ago. This is the oldest known archaeological site in East Malaysia a human, settlement '.
The most famous find is a human skull ( "Deep Skull" ), who discovered in 1958 in the Great Cove and its age has been dated to 45000-39000 years.
The exploration of the caves was started by Tom Harrisson in the 1950s and 1960s. Since that time, local universities and foreign research scientists continuously, and about the caves, many articles have been published, especially in the " Sarawak Museum Journal". The location was again from 1999 to 2003 re-examined by a British- Malaysian research group to determine the accuracy of the work of Harrison.
Items that were found in the caves of Niah, tools from the Pleistocene Neolithic Axes, disc hatchets include ( Dexeln ), pottery works, shell jewelry, boats, braided mats, and in younger strata iron tools, glass and ceramic work from the Iron Age.
The " Grotte ", located in a separate, much smaller limestone rocks, contains petroglyphs, which are about 1200 years old, including a " death ships " designed wooden coffins.