The Population of the Malay Peninsula: A Study in Human Migration

1 HETHER or not those authorities who would place the original home of the human race in Indonesia are justified in their belief, there can be no question that, from the earliest times, Malaysia has been the scene of vast human migrations. There are few regions of the world around which the controversies of paleogeography have raged more furiously and the fascinating game of building and destroying imaginary land bridges for prehistoric man has been more enthusiastically played. But we are not concerned here with the ancient migrations: it is the present distribution of land and sea that sets the stage for our problem.