40,000-Year-Old Human Remains in Malaysia's Niah Caves | Riding into History 🇲🇾

This cave in Sarawak, East Malaysia isn’t just a cave, it’s an enormous cave! And more than being even just an enormous cave, it’s an archeological site with some of the oldest modern human remains in Southeast Asia.

So how big and impressive is Niah Cave? Well, you’re just going to have to take the journey with us into the darkness to find out…

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Transcript

Previously on “Two Up and Overloaded” -

Marisa: We were riding our KTM 250 Adventure motorcycle in East Malaysia, journeying through a region that is famous for its natural beauty. And we were about to enter one of the world's largest caverns, Niah Caves, which is also home to some of the oldest human remains of Southeast Asia. And besides its incredible history, Niah Caves is also massive, like on a world record-breaking scale big. Like even the Big Room of the Carlsbad Caves in New Mexico could fit neatly inside. We are talking about a cave that is breathtakingly enormous. 

Not surprisingly, Niah Caves are located very near to the most extensive cave system in Asia, the Clearwater Cave System, which includes the Mulu Caves and the Sarawak Chamber, which is the largest known cave chamber by area in the world.

[Batu Niah - Malaysia]

Marisa: Even though the Sarawak Chamber is only accessible with a permit and by boat or plane, neighboring Niah Caves are accessible to tourists like ourselves, and we could get there by motorcycle. So we knew we simply had to go and see if these caves were really as impressive as everyone said they were.

Intro: Hey everyone! Nice to have you here. We are Tim, and Marisa Notier. I ride in the front. And I’m in the rear. We travel the world and we pack too much gear. Oh, all the places we’ll go! Through rain and through sleet and through mud and through snow. Oh, all the things we’ll see! We’ve been to a country or two. Or three! Oh, all the fun we’ve had! To have you along, would make us real glad. So give us a like, and hit subscribe to join us along our epic ride.

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Tim: So we got to the entrance and we parked the motorcycle. But as we found in a couple of different places here in East Malaysia, they make you go online to register. 

Marisa: Oh my goodness, getting tickets was not easy. There's nobody else here, but they're like, "You have to register on your phone." 

Tim: Normally, it's for other Malaysians that are filling out this paperwork, and there was no America or United States for the country of origin. 

Marisa: And then we register on our phone, but because we're not Malaysian, it's like, "The state is not entered." It's like there wasn't even a state category. It was one of those technological things.

Tim: It's like using the self-checkout lane at a convenience store and none of the things registering. And then being like, “Hey, can you just ring me up?” And they're like, “No!” All I want is, I had the money, they had the ticket, and it was just so difficult to be like, “I'll just trade you, dude. Just trade me that little piece of paper for this paper and just let us in.” 

But whatever, we got it. We're good.

Marisa: Yay! 

Tim: But through effort and Marisa's patience...

Marisa: Yes.

Tim: We got ourselves officially registered as visitors to the Niah Caves. 

Marisa: Woohoo!

Tim: Woo! To the caves! 

Marisa: Finally to the caves! 

Tim: I still don't know how to get there. 

Marisa: But first, to the ferry. We have to go to the jetty and take a little tiny boat across a little tiny river to get to a 3 kilometer hike to the caves. So here we go. 

So right away we had to take a ferry that would go from one side of this little

river to another. Before we took the ferry, we were forced to watch an introduction video, which was also a safety video. Of course, we watch these things, but I thought, wow, that seems a bit excessive. They were talking about bringing your own med kit. 

Tim: Flares. 

Marisa: Things for these really serious emergency circumstances. I was like, "I think I'm going to be fine in the cave." Little did I know that that safety video actually had it right. 

Tim: In my mind, I was like, well, the ticket buying is pretty ridiculous, this video we're watching is pretty ridiculous, and then there's like this little ferry we need to take. I could literally throw a grain of grass across. There's not a grain of grass, a stone to the other side. 

Marisa: Yeah. 

Tim: My expectations were dwindling quickly. 

Marisa: Yes, they were.

Thank you. Whoa.

The journey has begun. 

Tim: We have left port on this day. 

Marisa: Yes. 

Tim: Land ho, I say! Land ho!

Jack Sparrow was there waiting for us. 

Marisa: Oh my gosh, that ferry was ridiculous. 

Yeah, I think they really need to build a bridge.

Tim: Cannot wait to feel the Earth beneath my feet. My sea legs may lead me astray. 

Marisa: I think if we ran fast enough... 

Tim: I know, we could probably skip across it. 45-second boat ride. All right. 

Marisa: That was definitely the fastest boat ride I've ever been on. 

Tim: No, that was the slowest boat ride. The shortest distance. 

Marisa: Shortest distance.

Thank you, terima kasih!

And then our jungle walk began.

Tim: Super silly.

We got to the slipper path. 

Marisa: Slipper path! 

Tim: Yeah. Most people, they're like, "You need to wear good hiking boots or at least tennis

shoes or something." But this, it said, "This is a slipper path." We didn't have slippers. It wasn't in the instructional video, how were we to have known?

Marisa: It wasn't!

So this path actually started off on firm ground but eventually turned into a boardwalk that was hovering over a wetland swamp jungle forest.

Tim: Definitely felt like we were in The Witcher or something, like there could be some crazy little monsters that popped out. But it was absolutely beautiful.

Marisa: And I have never seen more butterflies in my life than in Borneo. These forests are full of gorgeous, big, beautiful butterflies just fluttering everywhere. The sun would shine through the trees, everything is this golden-green color, and even the water is sparkling in the sunshine of the swamp. You'd think it would be dark and dingy, but no. It was beautiful and glorious.

Amazing! Wow, this jungle is amazing!

All these vines kind of look like snakes though, a little scary. 

So we are headed right now to the Great Cave, which is the largest cave. Yeah, it is great. It's the largest cave of the cave system here. It is also the place where they found a 40,000-year-old human skull. So this is not just a nature reserve with a cave, but this is an archaeological park as well. They have found other remains of prehistoric man, such as stone tools and, I believe, a

fire pit where they would cook their food.

There is also another cave here called Painted Cave, where there are paintings, depictions of what they say are boats bringing their souls, the souls of people, and different animals to the afterlife. People have said that it's almost impossible to see these paintings anymore. But that is still really, really cool. 

So the water started getting deeper and deeper. At one point in time, we were walking on these boardwalks, and I was thinking, wow, this has turned into a little bit of a river. There was even a slight current to it. And these boardwalks were just built over this river, swamp, forest... 

Tim: Nailed it. 

Marisa: Jungle. 

Tim: Yeah.

Marisa: Whoa.

Tim: Don't go that way.

[Music]

After even more beautiful walking down this boardwalk that some moss had been growing out, it kind of had a green tint to the boards because they're just out there in nature, in the weather, getting weathered and getting, you know...

Marisa: Eroded like the caves themselves. 

Tim: This is true.

Marisa: Oh. Wow!

But then we started noticing these limestone crags sticking up out of the ground.

Tim: Looking like, you know, dragon teeth shooting into the sky. So incredible.

So this is actually super cool. We're on our own little private boardwalk. Look at all these little crazy rock formations sticking out. And then behind us are like these Cliffs of Dover that you won't be able to see in this, but it's absolutely awesome. 

Marisa: Huge cliffs. 

Tim: So cool.

And we had no idea that this little boardwalk walk was going to be, what was it, 3 meters? That doesn't seem nearly long enough. 

Marisa: Kilometers. 

Tim: Kilometers.

Marisa: After that ferry ride... 

Tim: I don't know if we can make the 3-meter boardwalk.

But we were having a fun little adventure, and it was really, really cool.

[Snail down. Do not trample on us.]

We love adventures like this. We love finding the little hidden gems within countries and places, and being blown away, and we love sharing those adventures with you guys. We've had a lot of inspiration in the past, let it be from Sam Manicom, or other people riding around the world on motorcycles.

Road Dog Publications is a great source for where a lot of these authors have collectively all come together and are printed in the United States. It's an amazing list of just motorcycle adventurers, people telling their story. You can scroll all the way down through all these books to see if anything captures your eye or your interest or your spirit of adventure. 

Marisa: And it's all started and founded by our dear friend Michael. So please check out roaddogpub.com.

So this boardwalk had a lot of really great features to it, not just the natural features, but they built little places to stop. You know, it was a 3-kilometer walk through the hot jungle. Even though we were loving every second of it, it was nice to take a little break, and I could see that if it was raining, this would be perfect.

It was either a small crocodile or a giant lizard.

They also had this way station where things broke off in a fork, where one of the paths went to an Iban village and the other path led to the Niah Caves. I knew that ahead eventually we would get to something called the Great Cave. But before we arrived at the Great Cave, there was another cave, which technically is not a cave, it's a rock overhang. 

Tim: Like an awning, yeah. 

Marisa: And this was called Trader’s Cave.

[Trader's Cave - Malaysia]

It was full of scaffolding, these old wooden beams that they had used long ago for their bird nest harvesting. 

So this scaffolding was built a long, long time ago, this is not new. It's because people used to live in this cave. They were trying to get bird nests to sell. They were trying to mine things. This is called Trader’s Cave.

There are these little birds called swiftlets that make nests up in caves and cliffs. 

Tim: Using their spit.

Marisa: Yes, the nest is made out of their spit, and people would collect these nests and sell them to the Chinese for their traditional medicine because these bird nests are said to have health benefits. 

You can smell the bats. It smells like a zoo, like a strong pungent monkey smell. Oh man, and you can hear them too.

[bat squeaks]

Tim: And then there's another thing. It was almost like a subway entrance. 

Marisa: It was!

Tim: The first thing we hit was the smell of a million bats because, each individually, bats don't smell. But collectively, it's like the Notier family. It's like when all my brothers are together, there's a little bit of a stench. 

Marisa: These bats, oh my goodness! Whoa, they were stinky. We couldn't hear them yet, but we could just smell them. I knew it had to be bats. It's that smell of monkey stink, right? That's super pungent, and it's already hot and humid out, and it just kind of hits you in the face. Right in the nose. 

Tim: Absolutely.

Marisa: And finally, we climb up and over and around, and we are confronted with the Great Cave.

[Great Cave - Malaysia]

Tim: One might call it grand. 

Marisa: Yes. Or big.

Tim: In Malay, it's called something besar, which means big cave. 

Marisa: Gua Besar. 

Tim: I'm going to guess it means big old cave. 

Marisa: The Great Cave, or Gua Besar in Malay, is truly great. With the size of 10.5 hectares, you enter it through a gaping 250-meter-wide cavern mouth. That's 820 feet. The roof of the cave is covered in millions of bats. You see them, you hear them, you smell them, and worst of all, you feel them pooing on you!

There are also lots of human remains in this cave, in particular a Paleolithic human skull nicknamed Deep Skull, which dates back to more than 40,000 years ago. First discovered in 1958, these are the oldest authenticated modern human remains in all of Island Southeast Asia.

It is simply fascinating to think that the middle-aged woman of Deep Skull lived in this very cave. She may have stood right where we were standing.

In addition to Deep Skull, there are 25 human burials dating to the early Holocene and over 200 burials with Neolithic material culture, comprising the largest Mesolithic and Neolithic cemeteries in Island Southeast Asia. 

We also noticed a wooden house built inside, along with more scaffolding poles stretching up to more than 60 meters high into the cave, nearly 200 feet. These are the remnants of the old swiftlet nest harvesting industry. These bird nests would be collected by the local Penan people and then sold to China, where they are still used for traditional medicine. 

Some evidence suggests that the Penan people have been harvesting bird nests as far back as the Tang Dynasty, between 600 and 900 CE. Even up until the 1960s, the Penans were the sole harvesters of these swiftlet nests here, selling them straight to Singapore for processing and export. And so, these structures are the ghostly remains of that industry.

Tim: So we made it to the gallery of the Grand Cave. 

Marisa: Great Cave. 

Tim: I upped it, it was Grand, indeed. It was absolutely beautiful, and this is usually the furthest that most tourists penetrate into the depth of the cave. 

Marisa: Yes, I mean, when you stand in that grand cave, you've got... 

Tim: Yeah! Upgrade. 

Marisa: Great Cave. When you stand in that Great Cave, you've got the sunlight streaming in from one side of it, and then the other side leads into this dark blackness. Not only that, but there are tons of stairs that go up and up and up. It's super hot, super humid, and you are just engulfed in this bat stench. The bats were actually pooing on us. It was coming from the ceiling of the cave. It was not just like cave water dripping down, it was bat poo dripping onto us as we stood there in this cave.

And so I completely understand that a lot of people did not carry on further into the cave system. 

Tim: Guano showers are not really something on the brochure. People aren't like, "Oh hey, you want to take the guano shower tour?" You know? 

Marisa: Guano is the bat poop. 

Tim: It's the bat poop.

Marisa: It's really dark.

Tim: There was the curtain of darkness and stench and heat, and we said, "We shall forge on." 

Marisa: Yes. 

Tim: And I had a hat, Marisa did not. 

Marisa: I did not, but I was like, "Let's go!" Let's do this!

Whoa!

Next time, there is so much more to this cave system to explore, giving us glimpses of both glorious heaven… and horrific hell.

But that will all be in the next episode. So thank you so much for watching this video, and I hope you liked it. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below. And if you've been enjoying all of our videos and travels through Southeast Asia, please check out our Patreon page in the link in the description below.

Tim: For as little as a dollar a month, you can get our videos ad-free and early, as well as a bunch of behind-the-scenes and sneak peeks of what we've been up to, and a postcard from random spots of where we've been around the world.

So yeah, we would love to have you along in the deep dive behind the journey, behind the scenes, and a huge thank you to all of our current patrons. We love you, we thank you for the support, and thank you for getting us to wonderful places like this. Sometimes we get pooped on in your name, and sometimes we ride down beautiful beaches in your name, and so it's a nice spread.

So thank you for all of the support, and we hope to see you guys further down the road. 

Marisa: Thanks for watching this video, and we'll be seeing you next time. 

Tim: Stay safe everybody. 

Marisa: Bye! 

Tim: Peace.

We set course on, I think it was a Thursday. We set sail around like 9:00 or 9:04 a.m., and around 9:04 and 30 seconds we made it to the opposing side of the river. 

Marisa: That's right, and our ferry had come to its end. 

Tim: This is true.

Marisa: Oh my gosh.