1 In this paper, ‘southern peninsular Malaysia’ is defined as a mostly lowland region that extends south and west from the downstream eastward stretch of the Sungai Pahang, and includes Melaka, Johor, southern Pahang, and Negeri Sembilan.

2 Tachimoto, Narifumi Maeda, The Orang Hulu; A Report on Malaysian Orang Asli in the 1960's (Subang Jaya: Center for Orang Asli Concerns, 2001), p. 35Google Scholar.

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4 Wheatley, Paul, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the historical geography of the Malay peninsula before A.D. 1500 (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Malaya, 1980)Google Scholar; Dunn, F.L., Rain-forest collectors and traders: A Study of resource utilisation in modern and ancient Malaya, Monographs of the Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society (1975)Google Scholar. Mined metals (gold, tin and iron) were also major trade items from the interior but derived mostly from mountainous regions to the north.

5 Potter, Lesley M., ‘A Forest product out of control: Gutta percha in Indonesia and the wider Malay world, 1845–1915’, in Paper landscapes: Explorations in the environmental history of Indonesia, ed. Boomgaard, Peter, Colombijn, Freek and Henley, David (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997): 281–308Google Scholar.

6 There was also no tradition in the area of surplus rice production for sale.

7 Benjamin, Geoffrey, ‘In the long term: Three themes in Malayan cultural ecology,’ in Cultural values and human ecology in Southeast Asia, ed. Hutterer, K.L., Rambo, A.T. and Lovelace, G. (Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, 1985): 219–78Google Scholar; Hill, R.D., Rice in Malaya: A Study in historical geography (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

8 Kathirithamby-Wells, Nature and nation: Forests and development in peninsular Malaysia, p. 63.

9 Collings, H.D., ‘A Temoq list of words and notes’, Bulletin of the Raffles Museum, Series B 4 (1949): 72Google Scholar.

10 Elizabeth H. Moore, ‘Inventory of the Williams-Hunt Collection’, vol. 2 in ‘The Moated Mu'ang of the Mun River Basin’ (Ph.D. diss., Institute of Archaeology, University of London, 1986).

11 Ibid; McGregor, Duncan et al. , ‘Mapping the environment in Southeast Asia: The Use of remote sensing and geographical information systems’, in Environmental change in Southeast Asia: People, politics, and sustainable development, ed. Parnwell, Michael J.G. and Bryant, Raymond L. (London & New York: Routledge, 1996): 190–224Google Scholar.

12 McGregor et al., ‘Mapping the environment in Southeast Asia’: 208.

13 Klaus J. Bayr, Rosemary Gianno and Stephanie Derrick, ‘An Analysis of aerial photographs of peninsular Malaysia from the Williams-Hunt collection’ (paper presented at the Proceedings, New England – St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society, Keene, New Hampshire, 2005). Copies of the aerial photos (NA48 MALAYA:3C PR118/TF3001–TF3018) at a scale of 1:8,000 were obtained from E.H. Moore, University of London, and are now housed in the Orang Asli Archive at Keene State College.

14 Diffloth, Gerard, ‘Les langues mon-khmer de Malaisie: Classification historique et innovations’, Asie du sud-est et monde insulinde, 6, 4 (1975): 1–19Google Scholar; Benjamin, Geoffrey, ‘Map with “peninsular Malaysia”’, in Language atlas of the Pacific area, ed. Wurm, Stephen and Hattori, Shiro (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1983), p. 37Google Scholar.

15 But see Gomes, Alberto G., Looking for money: Capitalism and modernity in an Orang Asli village (Subang Jaya, Malaysia and Melbourne, Australia: Center for Orang Asli Concerns and Trans Pacific Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

16 Benjamin, ‘On being tribal in the Malay world’, pp. 10–1.

17 ‘It has also been suggested that non-Malayic Austronesians may have introduced Austronesian cultural and linguistic elements prior to the Malayic expansion 2,000 years ago. Benjamin, Geoffrey, ‘On being tribal in the Malay world,’ in Tribal communities in the Malay World; Historical, cultural and social perspectives, ed. Benjamin, Geoffrey and Chou, Cynthia (Leiden, Singapore: International Institute for Asian Studies; Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), p. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellwood, Peter, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, revised ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997)Google Scholar.’

18 Endicott, Kirk M., ‘The Economy of the Batek of Malaysia: Annual and historical perspectives’, Research in Economic Anthropology, 6 (1984): 29–52Google Scholar. Bulbeck, David, ‘Hunter-gatherer occupation of the Malay peninsula from the Ice Age to the Iron Age’, in Under the canopy: The Archaeology of tropical rain forests, ed. Mercader, Julio (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), pp. 119–60Google Scholar.

19 Benjamin, ‘On being tribal in the Malay world’, p. 39.

20 Ibid., p. 40.

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22 For example, Logan, J.R., ‘The Orang Binua of Johore’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 1 (1847): 242–93Google Scholar; Lake, Harry W. and Kelsall, H.J., ‘A Journey on the Sembrong River from Kuala Indau to Batu Pahat’, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 26 (1894): 1–23Google Scholar; Machado, A.D., ‘A Vocabulary of the Jakuns of Batu Pahat, Johore, together with some remarks on their customs and peculiarities’, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 38 (1902): 29–33Google Scholar.

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26 Austro-Asiatic languages probably extended into Sumatra and Borneo as well. Adelaar, K. Alexander, ‘Borneo as a cross-roads for comparative Austronesian linguistics’, in The Austronesians: Historical and comparative perspectives, ed. Bellwood, Peter (Canberra: Department of Anthropology, Australian National University, 1995), pp. 75–95Google Scholar.

27 Heng, Leong Sau, ‘Jenderam Hilir and the mid-Holocene prehistory of the west coast plains of peninsular Malaysia’, Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, 10 (1991): 150–60Google Scholar; Andaya, Leonard Y., ‘Orang Asli and Melayu relations: A Cross-border perspective’, Antropologi Indonesia, 67 (2000)Google Scholar. This does not explain the persistence of the foraging Semang, but see Bulbeck, ‘Hunter-gatherer occupation of the Malay peninsula from the Ice Age to the Iron Age’, pp. 150–2.

28 Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago, p. 164.

29 Gerard Diffloth, personal communication by email, [email protected] (the Orang Asli research distribution list) on 3 May 2004.

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36 Hervey, D.F.A., ‘The Endau and its tributaries’, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 8 (1881): 122Google Scholar.

37 Robert K. Dentan, ‘Some Senoi Semai dietary restrictions: A Study of food behavior in a Malayan hill tribe’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1965): 60.

38 Hill, Rice in Malaya: A Study in historical geography; Benjamin, ‘In the long term: Three themes in Malayan cultural ecology’; Benjamin, Geoffrey, Between isthmus and islands: Reflections on Malayan palaeo-sociology, Working Papers (Dept. of Sociology, National University of Singapore, 1986)Google Scholar; Benjamin, ‘On being tribal in the Malay world’.

39 Hill, Rice in Malaya: A Study in historical geography, p. 12. Semelai also have a story. ‘The Discovery of rice’ also implicates royalty in the adoption of rice cultivation. In this case, both the baten (‘chief’) and the raja (‘king’) lead their people to see the virtues of this new grain, but instead of millet, wild yams are superseded. Hood Mohamad Salleh, ‘Semelai rituals of curing’ (Ph.D. diss., St. Catherine's College, Oxford, 1978), pp. 316–9.

40 Lake, Harry, ‘Johore’, The Geographical Journal, 3, 4 (1894): 283–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lake and Kelsall, ‘A Journey on the Sembrong River from Kuala Indau to Batu Pahat’: 1–23; Miklucho-Maclay, ‘Journey in the Malay peninsula’, p. 4; Logan, ‘The Orang Binua of Johore’: 242–93.

41 Tachimoto, The Orang Hulu; A Report on Malaysian Orang Asli in the 1960's, pp. 27–8, 39–40.

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44 Skeat and Blagden, The Pagan Races of the Malay peninsula, p. 343.

45 Logan, J.R., ‘The Superstitions of the Mintira, with some additional remarks on their customs, & c.’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 1 (1847): 331Google Scholar.

46 Skeat and Blagden, The Pagan Races of the Malay peninsula, pp. 344–57.

47 Ibid., p. 358.

48 Reid, Anthony, ‘Inside out: The Colonial displacement of Sumatra's population’, in Paper landscapes: Exploration in the environmental history of Indonesia, ed. Boomgaard, Peter, Colombijn, Freek and Henley, David (Leiden: KITLV, 1997), pp. 61–89Google Scholar.

49 Ibid.

50 Bellwood, Peter, First farmers: The Origins of agricultural societies (Blackwell, 2005), p. 139Google Scholar.

51 Appell, George, ‘Systems of land tenure in Borneo: A Problem in ecological determinism’, Borneo Research Bulletin, 3 (1971): 17–20Google Scholar; Dove, ‘Development of tribal land-rights in Borneo: The Role of ecological factors’: 3–18.

52 Dale, W.L., ‘The Rainfall of Malaya, Part I’, Journal of Tropical Geography, 13 (1959): 27Google Scholar.

53 Ibid.: 37.

54 Ibid.: 29.

55 Ibid.

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59 Wust, Raphael A.J. and Bustin, R. Marc, ‘Vegetation classification for a sedge/forest wetlands system, Tasek Bera (peninsular Malaysia) based on Landsat-TM imagery and aerial photo-based field mapping’, Asian Journal of Geoinformatics, 4, 1 (2003): 62Google Scholar.

60 Bera, Tasek is 34.6 km at its broadest and 25.3 km at its longest points, with an area of 61.50 km² (Tasek Bera: The Ecology of a freshwater swamp, vol. 47, Monographae Biologicae, ed. Furtado, J.I. and Mori, S. (The Hague: Dr. Junk Publ., 1982): 7)Google Scholar in a watershed measuring 625 km². Wust, Raphael A.J. and Bustin, R. Marc, ‘Late Pleistocene and Holocene development of the interior peat-accumulating basin of tropical Tasek Bera, peninsular Malaysia’, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 211 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Wavell, Stewart, Lost world of the east: An Adventurous quest in the Malayan hinterland (London: Souvenir Press, 1958), pp. 152–3Google Scholar; Miller, Harry, Menace in Malaya (London: George G. Harrap, 1954)Google Scholar.

62 Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the historical geography of the Malay peninsula before A.D. 1500. Because of conflicts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between the Dutch, Portuguese and Achehnese, eastern traders preferred the relative safety of the inland route to reach Melaka. After the Portuguese defeat in 1641, the sea route became safe again. Linehan, W., ‘A History of Pahang’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 14, 2 (1936): 39, 189Google Scholar. However, interior peoples continued to use the inland route (Leary, John D., ‘Orang Asli contacts with the Malays, Portuguese and Dutch in peninsular Malaya from 1400 to 1700’, Asian Studies Review, 18, 2 (1994): 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

63 Gray, Charles, ‘Journal of a route overland from Malacca to Pahang, across the Malayan peninsula’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 6 (1852): 369–75Google Scholar; Daly, D.D., ‘Surveys and explorations in the native states of the Malayan peninsula, 1875–1882’, Proceedings of the Geographical Society, London (n.s.), 4 (1882): 393–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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65 Cardon, R., ‘A Malay tradition’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 18, 2 (1940): 145Google Scholar.

66 Lake, ‘Johore’: 293–4.

67 Foenander, E.C., ‘A Trip up the Bera River’, Malayan Forester, 1 (1931)Google Scholar.

68 Bellwood, Peter, ‘Cultural and biological differentiation in peninsular Malaysia: The Last 10,000 years’, Asian Perspectives, 32 (1993): 44Google Scholar.

69 Andaya, Leonard Y., ‘A History of trade in the sea of Melayu,’ Itinerario, 1 (2000): 87–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Andaya, ‘Orang Asli and Melayu relations: A Cross-border perspective’: 60.

71 Nathan, J.E. and Winstedt, R.O., ‘Johol, Inas, Ulu Muar, Jempul, Gunong Pasir and Terachi: Their history and constitution’, in Papers on Malay Subjects, ed. Burns, P.L. (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 391–468Google Scholar.

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73 Wilder, William D., Communication, social structure and development in rural Malaysia: A Study of Kampung Kuala Bera, Memoir 56, Monographs on Social Anthropology (New Jersey: Athlone Press, 1982)Google Scholar. ‘Intermarriage between Minangkabau men and local women in the rantau resulted in the children adopting the adat or customs of their mothers and thus modifying Minangkabau identity’ (Andaya, Leonard Y., ‘Unravelling Minangkabau ethnicity’, Itinerario, 2 (2000); 24Google Scholar).

74 Endicott, Kirk M., ‘The Effects of slave raiding on the aborigines of the Malay peninsula’, in Slavery, bondage, and dependency in Southeast Asia, ed. Reid, A. (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983), pp. 216–45Google Scholar.

75 Logan, ‘The Superstitions of the Mintira, with some additional remarks on their customs, & c.’: 329.

76 Logan, ‘The Orang Binua of Johore’; Evans, I.H.N., ‘Notes on the aborigines of the Ulu Langat and Kenaboi districts of Selangor and Jelebu,’ Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums, 5, 2 (1914): 75Google Scholar; Endicott, ‘The Effects of slave raiding on the aborigines of the Malay peninsula’, p. 233.

77 Endicott, ‘The Effects of slave raiding on the Aborigines of the Malay peninsula’, pp. 233–4.

78 Hill, Rice in Malaya: A Study in historical geography, p. 27.

79 R.J. Morley, ‘Origin and history’, in Tasek Bera: The Ecology of a freshwater swamp, ed. J.I. Furtado and S. Mori, pp. 12–45.

80 Maloney, ‘Man's impact on the rainforests of west Malesia: The Palynological record’: 555.

81 Wust and Bustin, ‘Late Pleistocene and Holocene development of the interior peat-accumulating basin of tropical Tasek Bera, peninsular Malaysia’: 241–70.

82 Ibid.

83 Collings, H.D., ‘Aboriginal notes’, Bulletin of the Raffles Museum, Series B, 4 (1949)Google Scholar; Hoe, Semelai communities at Tasek Bera; A Study of the structure of an Orang Asli society, pp. 3–4; Hood, ‘An Ethnographical investigation of the Semelai of Malaysia’; Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology, pp. 134–5.

84 Daly, ‘Surveys and explorations in the native states of the Malayan peninsula, 1875–1882’: 400. Note that, according to both Daly and Charles Gray (‘Journal of a route overland from Malacca to Pahang, across the Malayan peninsula’, p. 372), during the nineteenth century, the Sungai Serting emptied into Tasek Bera and not into the Sungai Bera as it does today.

85 Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology. This contrasts with conflicts that developed when Iban were pioneering in Borneo (Padoch, Christine, Migration and its alternatives among the Iban of Sarawak (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), pp. 15–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

86 Gianno, ‘Malay, Semelai, Temoq: Semelai concepts of ethnicity in south-central Malaya’, pp. 51–83.

87 Temoq agriculture in the Jeram River valley more closely resembled Semelai practices with swiddens three to five acres in size but hill rice only the fourth most important cultigen (Laird, Peter, ‘Ritual, territory and region: The Temoq of Pahang, west Malaysia’, Social Analysis, 1 (1979): 54–80Google Scholar).

88 Kathirithamby-Wells, Nature and nation: Forests and development in peninsular Malaysia, p. 176.

89 Logan, ‘The Orang Binua of Johore’, 261: 88–9.

90 Carey, Iskandar, Orang Asli: The Aboriginal tribes of peninsular Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 251Google Scholar.

91 Hood, ‘An Ethnographical investigation of the Semelai of Malaysia’, p. 34.

92 Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology.

93 Luce, G.H., Phases of Pre-Pagan Burma (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 3Google Scholar; Higham, Charles, ‘Languages and farming dispersals: Austroasiatic languages and rice cultivation’, in Examining the language/farming hypothesis, ed. Bellwood, Peter and Renfrew, Colin (Cambridge: McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, 2003)Google Scholar.

94 Diffloth, Gerard, ‘The Contribution of linguistic paleontology to the homeland of Austro-Asiatic’, in The Peopling of East Asia: Putting together archaeology, linguistics and genetics, ed. Sagart, Laurent, Blench, Roger and Sanchez-Mazas, Alicia (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), pp. 77–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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96 Collings, ‘Aboriginal notes’: 89–90; Hoe, Semelai communities at Tasek Bera; A Study of the structure of an Orang Asli society, pp. 19–21; Hood, ‘An Ethnographical investigation of the Semelai of Malaysia’, pp. 34–8.

97 Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology, pp. 32–7.

98 Collings, ‘Aboriginal notes’: 87.

99 Evans, I.H.N., ‘Further notes on the aboriginal tribes of Pahang’, Journal of the Federated Malay States Museums, 9 (1920): 17Google Scholar.

100 Hood Mohamad Salleh, ‘Semelai rituals of curing’ (Ph.D. diss., St. Catherine's College, Oxford, 1978), pp. 316–24.

101 Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology, p. 123.

102 Evans, ‘Further notes on the aboriginal tribes of Pahang’: 18–9. Evans' description of a Semelai (‘Bera Tribe’) rice harvesting regimen is similar.

103 Collings, ‘Aboriginal notes’: 89.

104 Given the El Niño Southern Oscillations (ENSO), while this may not strictly be true, it is what people say.

105 J.I. Furtado, ‘Conservation survey of the Tasek Bera, Pahang’ (A report to the Malaysian Wildlife Conservation Foundation, 1987), not paginated.

106 Collings, ‘Aboriginal notes’: 89.

107 Hoe, Semelai communities at Tasek Bera; A Study of the structure of an Orang Asli society, p. 20.

108 Collings, ‘Aboriginal notes’: 89.

109 Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology, p. 33.

110 In Borneo, ‘such unconservative practices as the making of many fields contiguously, the cutting of very large fields … are reported for Baleh Iban groups’ (Padoch, Migration and its alternatives among the Iban of Sarawak, p. 61).

111 P.D.R. Williams-Hunt, ‘Jungle clearings’, P.D.R. Williams-Hunt Collection, School for Oriental and Asian Studies (Mimeographed guide disseminated by the Royal Air Force, 1948), 1.

112 Hoe, Semelai communities at Tasek Bera; A Study of the structure of an Orang Asli society, p. 21.

113 Ibid., p. 33.

114 Gianno, Semelai culture and resin technology, p. 33.

115 Collings, ‘A Temoq list of words and notes’, p. 72.

116 Semelai did buy and sell fish from each other, however, and traded for monkey and gibbon meat from Temoq.

117 Jumbalang is a Minangkabau variant of jembalang in Malay and means ‘gnome of the soil’ or ‘hantu tanah’. ‘The j. are the spirits to whom offerings are made when the soil is disturbed for planting or to provide foundations for a house; and ill-luck about a house or building is put down to them,’ Wilkinson, R.J., A Malay-English dictionary (Romanised), (Mytilene, Greece: Salavopoulos and Kinderlis, 1932), p. 458Google Scholar.

118 Hoe, Semelai communities at Tasek Bera; A Study of the structure of an Orang Asli society, pp. 141–2.

119 Ibid., p. 20; Hood, ‘An Ethnographical investigation of the Semelai of Malaysia’, p. 36.

120 Hoe, Semelai communities at Tasek Bera; A Study of the structure of an Orang Asli society, p. 20.

121 Hood, ‘An Ethnographical investigation of the Semelai of Malaysia’, p. 36.

122 Some Semelai subsequently swiddened intermittently, commuting from the Pos Iskandar settlement complex. In a 1987 survey of Kampong Bapak households, 17 of 34 were swiddening, but in secondary forest. The average size was 2.6 acres, ranging from 1 to 5.5 acres. The average household had 6.8 individuals. On occasion, households have, at least temporarily, returned to their old ways: planting rice and cassava in primary forest and matured secondary forest and then rubber after the harvest.

123 Another, more direct way of measuring rice production, commitment, and skill is to compare the ratio of rice produced relative to rice seed used. Along those lines, according to one Semelai man, ‘Before with five gallons of rice, you got over 100 gallons of rice. Now you get much less’. This 1:20 ratio is similar to yields obtained by Iban households. Refer to Freeman, J.D., Iban agriculture: A Report on the shifting cultivation of hill rice by the Iban of Sarawak (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1955), p. 110Google Scholar. The gallon in Malay is gantang, the unit in which rice is usually measured. See, for example, Freeman, Iban agriculture, p. 142.

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127 Ibid.: 49.

128 According to Semelai, the communists there did not grow crops. Also, because the communists bought only cassava, which is plentiful, from them, swiddens were not enlarged.

129 Williams-Hunt, ‘Jungle clearings’, p. 3.

130 Bayr, Gianno, and Derrick, ‘An Analysis of aerial photographs of peninsular Malaysia from the Williams-Hunt collection’.

131 While these kinds of data can lend themselves to population density estimates, space limitations prohibit that discussion here.

132 Williams-Hunt, ‘A Technique for anthropology from the air in Malaya’, p. 51.

133 Williams-Hunt, ‘Anthropology from the air’, p. 50.

134 Ibid.

135 While the article dates the clearing to 1941, based on the incipient regrowth visible in the aerial photos, 1947 seems more likely.

136 Because they occur at the beginning of a flight line, only 20 per cent of Swidden 3 and none of Swidden 4 could be viewed stereoscopically.

137 Only the eastern section could be viewed stereoscopically.

138 Cole, R., ‘Temiar Senoi agriculture: A Note on aboriginal shifting cultivation in Ulu Kelantan, Malaya’, The Malayan Forester, 22, 3, 4 (1959): 203Google Scholar.

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142 Dove, ‘Development of tribal land-rights in Borneo’, pp. 3–18.

143 Semelai at Bukit Rok did adopt wet rice cultivation from nearby Malays at Kuala Bera.

144 Padoch, Migration and its alternatives among the Iban of Sarawak.

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