page_title: History of Sarawak
section_title: Prehistory
hierarchical_section_title: History of Sarawak / Prehistory
caption_attribution_description: English: The entrance to the main cave at Niah Caves National Park, Miri, Sarawak, East Malaysia.
context_page_description: History of Sarawak can be traced as far as 40,000 years ago paleolithic period where the earliest evidence of human settlements is found in the Niah caves. A series of Chinese ceramics dated from 8th to 13th century AD was uncovered at the archeological site of Santubong. The coastal regions of Sarawak came under the influence of the Bruneian Empire in the 16th century. In 1839, James Brooke, a British explorer, first arrived in Sarawak. Sarawak was later governed by the Brooke family between 1841 and 1946. During World War II, it was occupied by the Japanese for three years. After the war, the last White Rajah, Charles Vyner Brooke, ceded Sarawak to Britain, and in 1946 it became a British Crown Colony. On 22 July 1963, Sarawak was granted self-government by the British. Following this, it became one of the founding members of the Federation of Malaysia, established on 16 September 1963. However, the federation was opposed by Indonesia, and this led to the three-year Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. From 1960 to 1990, Sarawak experienced a communist insurgency.
context_section_description: The first foragers visited the West Mouth of Niah Caves (located 110 kilometres (68 mi) southwest of Miri) 65,000 years ago instead of previously believed 40,000 years ago when Borneo was connected to the mainland of Southeast Asia. The landscape around the Niah Caves was drier and more exposed than it is now. Prehistorically, the Niah Caves were surrounded by a combination of closed forests with bush, parkland, swamps, and rivers. The foragers were able to survive in the rainforest through hunting, fishing, and gathering molluscs and edible plants. This new timeline of 65,000 years was concluded when five pieces of microlithic tools that were aged 65,000 years old and a human skull that was aged 55,000 years old were discovered at part of the Niah Saves complex, Trader cave, during excavation work. An earlier evidence is the discovery of a modern human skull, nicknamed "Deep Skull", in a deep trench uncovered by Barbara and Tom Harrisson (a British ethnologist) in 1958; this is also the oldest modern human skull in Southeast Asia. The Deep Skull probably belongs to a 16-to 17-year-old adolescent girl. When compared with the Iban skull and other fossils, the Deep Skull most closely resembles the indigenous people of Borneo today, with their delicate features and small body size and it has few similarities with the skull of the indigenous Australians. Mesolithic and Neolithic burial sites have also been found. The area around the Niah Caves has been designated the Niah National Park.
  Another earlier excavation by Tom Harrisson in 1949 unearthed a series of Chinese ceramics at Santubong (near Kuching) that date to the Tang and the Song dynasties in the 8th to 13th century AD. It is possible that Santubong was an important seaport in Sarawak during the period, but its importance declined during the Yuan dynasty, and the port was deserted during the Ming dynasty. Other archaeological sites in Sarawak can be found inside the Kapit, Song, Serian, and Bau districts.
caption: The main entrance to the Niah Caves
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