KUCHING, Mar 5: The human skeletal remains from Niah Caves which was sent to the United States over 50 years ago is scheduled to return to Sarawak tomorrow.
Initially, the human remains which are more than 4,000 years old were supposed to arrive Kuching International Airport at 9pm yesterday evening but it was cancelled.
The remains were discovered by Tom Harrisson, who was the curator for Sarawak Museum during excavation finding at Kuala Hole, Niah Cave complex between 1965 and 1967 led by Dr Shaleigh Brooks when they were doing research at Neolithic Grave site.
The collection of 112 bone fragments pieces were then shipped to Nevada University in Las Vegas on loan basis in order to analyse with Carbon 14 on the actual age of the bones.
The first shipment contained 11 boxes of bone skeleton which arrived on 1966.
In early 1967, Dr Brooks joined Harisson research at Niah Cave, another 19 boxes containing earth sample, ethnology specimen book and bones were shipped out.
On Feb 14, 1967, Dr Brooks received another 30 boxes. All the collections were studied by anthropologists and archeologists, and kept at the University of Nevada’s Social Science section.
In 2016, a negotiation as made to bring back the 122 skeletons and by Mar 8, 2017, an MOU was signed to transfer the collection from Florida to Malaysia due to climate stability.
The skeleton collection will be stored and exhibited at the new Sarawak Museum Complex.
Meanwhile, speaking to the press at at a seminar on ‘The Return of Niah Skeletal Collections – Long Journey Home’ in Kuching today, John Krigbaum from University of Florida said currently the research is still on going and the team, consisting of himself, Ashley Deutsch, Rachel Lotze and Mohd Sherman Sauffi, have came up with several theses.
“Our research is ongoing and it will be facilitated by the unity of materials from Niah Caves in Nevada and materials from Niah Caves in Sarawak Museum. We also realised that a lot of the bones have shellac on them and it will be too much to take them off. We’ve decided not to use mechanical means to take the shellac off.
“What we did was select few key bones and scan them with micro CT scanner. After that, we hope to do surface scanning in Sarawak so we can create 3D models of the the key skeletons to represent prehistoric Sarawakians,” Krigbaum said.
However, the remains do not include Deep Skull or any of the early associated materials that were renowned in Sarawak which date to almost 40,000 years B.P.
“However, they do include a significant proportion of the burial assemblage that included so-called pre-Neolithic and Neolithic human remains mostly from an area referred to as the ‘cemetery’ that dated from 4,500 to 2,000 years ago,” Krigbaum explained. —DayakDaily
