Kohlbrugge points out that there seems to be no ground for dividing the "Indonesians" into a taller and shorter group since the differences are slight. If this distinction were drawn, the Ulu Ayars (av. 1.571 m., med. 1.551 m.) would belong to the shorter group as would the Enganese (av. 1.570 m.). His 34 Kayan men (av. 1.584 m., med. 1.582 m.) and 14 Punan men (av. 1.583 m., med. 1.569 m.) and the Gorontalese (1.584 m.) are intermediate between these and the Tenggerese (1.604 m.) and Battak (1.605). I also find this distinction untenable, as our Kayans (av. 1.559 m., med. 1.550 m.) and Punans (av. 1.555 m., med. 1.550 m.) are of the same stature or even possibly shorter than his Ulu Ayars, whereas our 16 Kenyah men (av. 1.597 m., med. 1.608) are taller than his Kayans. He adds that the shorter "Indonesians" live in the plains, the taller in the mountains, but he cannot say for certain whether a mountain climate affects stature as many believe. It is to be regretted that Kohlbrugge extends in this instance the term Indonesian to the Kayans and Punans. Taking our measurements I find that the Kenyahs and the Muruts (av. 1.601 m., med. 1.590 m.) are the tallest groups, then come the Iban (av. 1.590 m., med. 1.585 m.), the Kayan and Punan medians come about half-way between the tallest Klemantans (Long Pokun, med. 1.590 m.) and the shortest (Lerong, med. 1.520 m). The above figures refer to men only, the women are markedly shorter.
Kohlbrugge gives the following information with regard to body measurements: the Kayan women are 14 cm. shorter than the men, usually the difference is 10 — 12 cm. The span is greater than the stature, the proportion is 105.2 : 100 in Kayans, 1034: 100 in Ulu Ayars and 106.5 : 100 in Punans and Tenggerese. In youths it is rather higher than in men. The difference between Tenggerese and Ulu Ayars is due to the latter having shorter arms, especially the upper arms, and the chest of the Bornean peoples is 2 cm. narrower. Other Indonesian peoples have a longer upper arm than the Ulu Ayars, who also have the tibia shorter in proportion to the femur. Kayan and Ulu Ayar men have a comparatively shorter femur than the Punan. The latter thus resemble the Tenggerese, the others have the same relative length as many other peoples of the Archipelago; there is no difference between the Malays and Indonesians in this respect. The Kayan women have relatively a much longer femur than the men. The shorter tibia makes the whole leg of the Bornean peoples shorter than in others — except that the Punans make it up with a longer femur. Women and young people have longer legs than men. The Punans have the fattest calves approximating to the Tenggerese, the other Bornean tribes are more like the Gorontalese. The chest girth of Ulu Ayars and Tenggerese is almost the same, despite the difference in the breadth of the chest, in which the Ulu Ayars resemble the inhabitants of Atchin measured by Lubbers. The proportion of the length of the foot to the stature is 16 : 100 in Kayans of both sexes, 154 : 100 in Ulu Ayars, and 15.2 in Punans. But the Kayan feet are shorter than those of the Gorontalese, who have the longest feet in the Archipelago. The other Bornean peoples are the same as Indonesians who resemble the Malays in this respect. The pelvic breadth of the Kayan men and women is equal (26 cm.), though men have the wider chest; the Punan pelvis is narrower than in the other two tribes; but in all three the pelvis is broader than in the Tenggerese.
We must now turn to the evidence of the crania, of which only a very brief account need be presented here. Owing to the fact that the people are head-hunters the skulls obtained by a traveller in any house are necessarily those of another community, group, or tribe than that to which the occupants of the house belong. Consequently it is necessary for a traveller to learn from the inhabitants the provenience of each cranium, and every one in the house knows it. It is useless for analytical purposes to deal with skulls of which the tribe is not accurately known; the information that a skull was obtained in a certain village or on a particular river is, as a rule, of very little value.
In Table C I give particulars of three head indices of 83 crania, of which the history is known in each case. Fifty-eight of these have been presented by Dr. Hose to the University of Cambridge. I have added to these 5 Murut, 1 Lepu Potong, 1 Kalabit, 1 Tring, 1 Bisaya, and 1 Orang Bukit, which Dr. Hose presented to the Royal College of Surgeons, London, 1 Ukit skull in the same museum, 3 Dusun in the British Museum, and 5 Murut, 3 Maloh, and 3 Kayan, which I measured in Sarawak. I have chosen the cranial length-breadth, length-height, and breadth-height indices, as these are more directly comparable with the corresponding cephalic indices of Table A. A detailed account of these crania must await a more suitable occasion.
The dolichocephalic crania are, as a rule, distinctly akrocephalic, that is, the length-height index is superior to the length-breadth index, but this is not the case with the brachycephals. I find the average length-height index in the living subject of a dozen inland tribes is 72.5 for 131 males and 78.2 for 40 females. That is, so far as our measurements go, the women are more akrocephalic than the men, which is unusual.
The conclusions to be drawn from a somatological investigation are necessarily limited. In my introductory remarks I stated that one could distinguish two main races among the principal groups of the peoples of Sarawak, a dolichocephalic and a brachycephalic, and that the former might be termed Indonesian and the latter Proto-Malay; further, no one group is probably of pure race, though it appears that some may be predominantly Indonesian and others Proto-Malay. I do not for a moment suggest that there was one migration of pure Indonesians and another of pure Proto-Malays which flooded Borneo and by various minglings produced the numerous tribes of that island, though I do suggest that there have been throughout the whole Archipelago various movements of peoples, some of which may have been relatively pure communities of these two races. There can be little doubt that we must look to the neighbouring regions of the mainland of Asia for their immediate point of departure southwards, for we now know that two similar races have inhabited this area from a remote antiquity. The light- (or light-brown) skinned dolichocephals of south-east Asia, assuming for the present that they are all of one race, have frequently been termed Caucasians — for the present I prefer to speak of them as Indonesians — and of these there are doubtless several strains. The light- (or light-brown) skinned brachycephals are usually grouped as Southern Mongols. In the south-east corner of Asia there are probably several strains of these brachycephals which hitherto have been insufficiently studied. Even when an Indonesian element has been recognised in the population of the Archipelago there has been too persistent a practice of terming the brachycephalic element "Malay." The true Malay, Orang Malayu, is merely a specialised branch of a stock for which I prefer the non-committal name of Proto-Malay, even "Southern-Mongol" is preferable to "Malay." The Proto-Malay race has its roots on the mainland. It has yet to be shown how far the brachycephals of this region belong to what is here termed the Proto-Malay race or to what extent other, and doubtless allied, stocks are implicated. If, as is very probable, there have been migrations of differentiated peoples from the mainland into the islands, the Bornean peoples may be of more complex origin than the earlier generalisations might suggest. The dissecting out and the tracing of the migrations of these peoples is the work of ethnography, somatology can be of little assistance; all that I have done is to provide a certain amount of material for the use of students in the future. It must also be remembered that the immigrants from the mainland may have had at one time infusions of Negrito or Pre-Dravidian (Sakai) blood, not to speak of Tibetan, Chinese, or other mixtures. Similarly when the first migrations from the mainland took place the fairer-skinned immigrants probably found an indigenous population of Negritos, Pre-Dravidians, and possibly to some extent of Papuans in various parts of the Archipelago. We know that many of the islands, including Borneo, have been subject to direct migrations from India and China, and there has doubtless been a certain amount of movement of peoples from island to island. The racial history of this region is therefore extremely complex.
Dr. Hose has suggested the following classification[229] of the peoples of Sarawak (exclusive of the Malays), which I have followed in arranging the descriptions given below. For the sake of comparison I have recast the data published by Kohlbrugge concerning the three types studied by Nieuwenhuis; it is unfortunate that our several results cannot be more closely correlated.
A Classification of the Peoples of Sarawak
1. Murut Group:
Murut, Pandaruan, Tagal, Dusun;
Kalabit, Lepu Potong;
Adang, Tring.