The Nage are an indigenous people living on the eastern

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

n island of

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and t ...

and

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, ...

. They descended from the indigenous population of

They are largely assimilated by the neighboring people. They speak Nage, one of the major languages in the Austronesian languages group.

Agriculture

The Nage people mainly engaged in manual

slash-and-burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed veget ...

farming (tubers, rice, corn), hunting and gathering. Until the middle of the 20th century, communal land ownership with large families participation were still preserved. They live in cumulus-type settlements, located on the slopes of mountains and surrounded by stone walls. Houses are piled up in rectangular position and connected by an open gallery into a single complex, which is intended for joint residence of several large families.

Lifestyle

The clothes of the Nage people are loincloth and skirt or ''kain''. Women fasten it over the breast, and men around the waist. The diet is dominated by plant based foods (cooked groats and tubers with spicy seasoning), while meat is eaten only on holidays. Agrarian cults have survived and are still being practiced. Before the sowing, rites of cleansing the field and the grains of rice will be performed on the first new moon, before the start of cultivating the fields.

Study of the tribe

In 1940, Officer Louis Fontijne produced a

Dutch Colonial Service Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People ...

study entitled ''Grondvoogden in Kelimado'' (Guardians of the land in Kelimado), Kelimado being a region included in the Nage district of central Flores. Commissioned as an investigation of indigenous land tenure and leadership, the study was the only comprehensive description of Nage society and culture produced during the colonial period. In 1983, anthropologist

Gregory Forth Gregory Forth, also known as Gregory L. Forth, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta. He earned his PhD from University of Oxford in 1980. Beginning in 1986, Forth was a professor at the University of Alberta for over ...

renewed interest in the tribe, revisiting the islands while seeking a copy of Fontijne's complete study. Forth has also hypothesized a possible connection between the local stories of the Ebu Gogo, a creature in Nage mythology, and the discovery of ''

Homo floresiensis ''Homo floresiensis'' also known as "Flores Man"; nicknamed "Hobbit") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago. The remains of an in ...

'', a possible species of extinct hominid, hence a renewed interest in the tribe. (Abstract, Wiley Interscience)

References

External links

* - an example of Nage art * * {{Portal, Indonesia Ethnic groups in Indonesia Flores Island (Indonesia)

Agriculture

Lifestyle

Study of the tribe

See also

References

Further reading

External links