IG_Indonesia

The United Nations has listed eight of Indonesia’s natural and cultural wonders as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage sites, one of which, in Sumatra, is earmarked as a Natural Heritage in Danger.

The Buddhist Borobudur monument (for more information, click here) in Central Java, built from around AD 788, was ‘rediscovered’ in 1814 buried in volcanic ash. Its restoration was completed by Unesco and Indonesia between 1973 and 1983.

Prambanan (for more information, click here), also in Central Java, is the largest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia. Completed in AD 856, some 244 temple remains are still found in the outer compound.

Ujung Kulon National Park (for more information, click here), West Java, has fewer than 50 endangered Javan (Lesser) one-horned rhinoceros and Java’s largest lowland rainforests, housing hornbills, deer, wild boar, black panthers and green turtles. The offshore Krakatau island is part of the park.

Komodo National Park (for more information, click here) in Nusa Tenggara is primarily the home of the protected 2,740 carnivorous monitor lizards known as the Komodo dragons.

Lorentz National Park, Papua (for more information, click here), the largest protected area in Southeast Asia, is one of the few areas in the world to have snow-capped mountains in a tropical environment. Its extraordinary biodiversity supports rare animals such as the spotted cuscus.

In 2011, three of Sumatra’s national parks were named Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra for their great potential for long-term conservation of the distinctive and diverse biota. Sadly, it also bears the label ‘World Heritage in Danger’.

Lorentz National Park is home to numerous isolated tribes, including the Amungme, Western Dani, Nduga, Ngalik, Asmat (Sempan, Komoro), Mimika and Somohai. It is one of the most ecologically diverse national parks in the world.

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Sangiran Early Man Site

In 1891, on the banks of the Bengawan Solo River near Surakarta (Solo), Central Java, Dutchman Eugene Dubois unearthed the site of Sangiran Early Man – one of the world’s first known specimens of Homo erectus (upright man), the ‘missing link’ that proved Darwin’s evolution theory. The more complete remains (sometimes called Solo Man) found by G.H.R. von Koenigswald in 1936 are now thought to be as many as a million years older than Dubois’s find, as old as those discovered in Kenya.

Many other fossils have been unearthed in the area, ranging from 1.2 million to 500,000 years old. Unesco proclaimed Sangiran a World Heritage Site in 1996, declaring this one of the most important places in the world for understanding human evolution.

In 2012, Unesco enlisted as the World Heritage Site ‘the Cultural Landscape of Bali’. The Subak – the unique Balinese rice farming culture – is a manifestation of their Tri Hita Karana cosmological doctrine. All the sites of the cultural landscape demonstrate the capability of the Balinese to make these doctrines a reality, practiced in their daily life through spatial planning and land use, settlement arrangements, architecture, ceremonials and rituals.