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Java's Megalithic Mountain

Across the Indonesian archipelago, people raised immense stones to honor their ancestors

Excavations beneath the retaining wall of Gunung Padang’s lowest terrace uncovered charcoal dating to around 117 B.C.The team found no animal bones that would have been evidence of feasting at the site, though they did unearth examples of pottery, as well as a grinding stone that suggests food was prepared there. In the early first millennium A.D., as merchants sailing the Maritime Silk Road between India and China traversed the Strait of Malacca, they brought with them not only great wealth but also the Hindu and Buddhist faiths, which spread along the coasts of modern-day Indonesia and Malaysia. The pyramidal temple known as Pangguyangan in western Java is composed of seven terraces topped by a Muslim grave placed there some time after the site’s construction.On the island of Sumba, archaeologist Ron Adams of Willamette Cultural Resources has studied how people conduct a ceremony known as tarik batu, or “pulling the rock.” This ritual involves acquiring stones from local quarries and dragging them to cemeteries where they are used to construct mortuary megaliths.

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