About Indonesia 

The modern Republic of Indonesia is relatively young as a nation, but it embraces a people whose roots stretch deep into antiquity. When ice sheets still covered Europe and North America, there was already human life in the archipelago, as evidenced by the discovery of the remains of "Java Man" (Pithecantropus Erectus). The main peopling of the area is attributed to a series of migrations from the Asian mainland over the second and third millenia B.C. This, the majority of Indonesians are of Malay stock, except for the Dani, Asmat, and other tribes further east inhabiting Papua, which are of Melanesian stock.

About the beginning of the Christian era, Indonesia’s position on major sea lanes brought emissaries and traders from India, China, and Arabia. Indonesia’s profitable spices lured the traders, and wet rice agriculture gave Indonesian society the capacity to support the great kingdoms of Sriwijaya, Sailendra, Majapahit, and many smaller chiefoms. Throughout the islands, the prevalent belief in animism and ancestor worship blended with the world’s religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, followed by Islam and Christianity.The Republic of Indonesia embraces more than 500 ethnic groups. Of these. The most numerous are the Javanese, and more than 60 percent of Indonesia’s population live on the island of Java. But equally enduring cultural traditions are to be found among the Bugis and Toraja people of South Sulawesi, the Dayaks of Kalimantan, the Bataks of Sumatra, the Asmat of Papua, and the Balinese, to name only a few. Each ethnic group has its own cultural identity, expressed through religious ritual, celebrations and ceremonies, music and dance. Their time-honored tradtions are preserved and strengthened by a spirit of unity expressed in the national motto of Indonesia, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or “Unity in Diversity.”