Items

• 031 Boys cooking dumplings
  Adolescent boys, sometimes together with girls, often live in separate shelters from their parents and do some of their own cooking. Here some boys are cooking dumplings made from wheat flour obtained by trade.
• 112 Men cleaning and storing dead fish
  Inevitably some fish die in the gill nets. Here a group of men are cleaning the dead fish and storing them in a large biscuit tin.
• 120 Burnt-off land
  Logging companies were required to cut and burn all remaining vegetation after they had removed the valuable timber, taking the former forest land down to bare earth.
• 100 Woman bathing baby in stream
  This woman is bathing her baby in the stream before fetching some water in a cooking pot. The baby has two rings and a protective amulet suspended from her neck.
• 085 Children jumping into stream
  Children learn to swim from older children, without adult instruction. Here some young children are jumping off a log into a pool. Parents seldom worry when children are playing in the water.
• 090 Woman climbing vine 2
  The woman continues up the vine by grasping it with her hands and between her toes and simply walking up.
• 003 Man making dart shaft
  Blowpipe darts consist of a shaft of palm wood, a cone of pith on the butt, and a coating of poison on the point. Here a man is smoothing a splint of palm wood and sharpening the end to make a dart.
• 127 Woman with facial decorations
  Women still use charcoal, lime paste, and colorful flowers, leaves, and stems to decorate themselves, even though they now wear manufactured clothing and trinkets.
• 080 Men assembling rattan
  Two men are assembling some thin rattan (foreground) and thick rattan (background) to be picked up by Malay traders.
• 093 Logged hills
  After all vegetation was removed from the land, plantation contractors bulldozed horizontal terraces around the hills to provide level bases for rows of oil palm trees. Some terraces can be seen in the background.
• 099 Traders buying fragrant wood
  Beginning about 1980, a great demand developed for Aloes wood or Eagle woodthe dense, resinous pieces of diseased wood found inside some, but not all, Aquilaria trees. The diseased wood and resin are highly fragrant and are in great demand in the Middle East for use in incense and cosmetics. The highest gradethe darkest and densest woodwhich is very rare, could be sold for as much as US$260 per kilogram in 1990. People get the wood by cutting down Aquilaria trees and chopping them into small pieces, separating the valuable diseased wood from the worthless healthy wood. Here two traders discuss the grade of some Aloes wood with the Batek collector. They will then weigh it in their portable scale and calculate its value.
• 087 Woman climbing vine 1
  Many women are good at climbing trees and vines, though men usually do the most strenuous and dangerous climbing, such as climbing the towering bee trees to cut down bees nests. Here a woman climbs a vine to get some fruit from the treetops.
• 115 Bridge under water
  Removal of the rainforest for plantations greatly increased the rate of runoff after thunderstorms, causing the water level of rivers to fluctuate wildly. Here a bridge across the Aring River at the Aring Lima oil palm plantation has become submerged after a brief storm.
• 014 Man shooting blowpipe
  Blowpipes are effective at killing small arboreal game. Here a man shoots at a monkey in a tree overhead. Because the darts are silent, they do not scare off the game if they miss. Hunters try to hit an animal more than once to increase the amount of poison in the victims blood and thus to increase the probability of killing it. The hunters bamboo dart quiver and his bushknife are fastened to his waist with rattan straps.
• 008 Man climbing fruit tree
  Groves of durian fruit trees (Durio spp.) a highly esteemed fruit throughout Southeast Asia remained at the sites of former Malay villages along the Lebir River in the 1970s. (The government resettled the villagers on the lower Lebir in the late 1940s to remove them from the influence of Communist terrorists.) Here a Batek man climbs a durian tree to cut down the unripe fruit, which can be eaten like a vegetable. He does not use any climbing aids, but simply grasps the trunk with his arms and feet and climbs up.
• 119 Men dibbling field
  Here two men are dibbling, punching holes in the ground with pointed sticks, in preparation for planting dry rice.
• 109 Bee tree
  The most common species of honeybees in Peninsular Malaysia (Apis dorsata) builds nests that hang below horizontal branches of the tallest forest trees. Some Batek are skilled at climbing the trees, sometimes with the aid of rope ladders made of rattan; stunning the bees with smoky torches; cutting the nests loose; and lowering them to the ground in bark baskets. This is usually done at night when the bees are in their nests and quiet. Here two nests, dark triangular protrusions, can be seen hanging below branches near the trunk of the bee tree (center).
• 092 Men cooking
  All Batek learn to cook in early childhood, and both husbands and wives cook for their families, although women do so more often. Here several bachelors who share a shelter prepare to boil a bunch of wild mushrooms.
• 020 Man cutting down fruit
  Fruits that do not fall when ripe must be harvested. A common method of harvesting is for someone to climb the tree and cut off the fruit-bearing branches. Here a man has cut most of the branches off a fruit tree. This looks bad, but it does not necessarily kill the tree.
• 079 Woman dragging thin rattan
  Most rattan work is done by men, but women also do some, usually before they have children or after their children are independent. Here a middle-aged woman drags a bundle of thin rattan to the place where the Malay traders will pick it up.
• 108 Man pulling in net
  Batek occasionally contract with traders to supply live fish of the larger, more desirable species. Here a man pulls in a gill net which is full of leaves. The bamboo container in the water behind him is a cage for storing live fish.
• 070 Woman digging tubers 4
  The woman has stopped to rest and is searching for some tobacco in her pandanus pouch. (Her pandanus back-basket lies on the ground at the lower left.) Her daughter is pressing her bat against the digging stick, while her son plays with the plastic bag that held the dried leaves used to roll cigarettes.
• 007 Man pounding nuts
  This man is pounding the husks off a species of nut (Pangium edule). Each grapefruit-sized husk contains several nuts in separate shells. Because the nuts are poisonous in their natural state, people boil them in their shells, then split them open, slice up the nut meats, and leach the slivers of nut meat in a stream before eating them. The nut meat is oily and highly nutritious.
• 069 Woman digging tubers 3
  The woman has now put her baby down on the cloth and is scooping dirt out of the hole by hand. Sometimes holes become so deep, diggers go underground to continue following a tuber. These children are smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, and one girl is blowing on the wings of her pet bat (center).
• 107 Honey-gatherer making torch
  Here the man who will climb the bee tree gazes at the nests while tying together a torch of dry leaves, which he will use to smoke the nest.