My Life in Lenggong

March 22^nd 1987, had been particularly hot. All day I had been traversing the hills and valleys around Lenggong, Perak, in the hope of not only locating a controversial prehistoric site that had been excavated decades before, but also a new site that could solve the controversy. Then, in the heat of the afternoon, while pausing for a rest at a road bend in Kota Tampan, I casually lifted the creepers covering the road cutting. Underneath, to my surprise, I noticed a horizontal band of pebbles. When I dug into it I found what was very clearly a stone tool. The excitement of being the first to see and touch an artefact after it has lain buried for  thousands a years is adrenaline plus! But little did I realize then, that this new site would not only solve the riddle of whether prehistoric people had lived in the area, but would ultimately lead to more discoveries turning back the clock to 200,000 years on Malaysia’s prehistoric.

Kota Tampan -seeing and touching a stone tool that had been 'hiding' for more than 70,000 years

The Archaeological Heritage of Lenggong Valley, which comprises both open-air and cave sites, provides a series of chronologically-ordered and spatially-associated culture sequences from the Paleolithic through the chronometrically dated from 1.83 million to 1,000 years ago. Thus, the Lenggong Valley is one of the longest archaeological culture sequences found in a single locality in the world.

At Kota Tampan I made the breakthrough we needed with the discovery of a stone tool. It was fortunate that H.D Tjia, was there as being a geologist he confirmed my belief that it was not a natural stone, but one that had been shaped by humans. Initially, however, we didn’t realize the significance of the find. At first Tjia thought that the band of pebbles the stone tool was found in could have once been in a river, which meant that the tool could have been washed along, making it a chance find. In order to determine if there were more tools, and if they were in their original position or had been moved, I decided to excavate the site where I had unearthed the stone tool. Meanwhile, Tjia helped to work out the environment of the artefact, to find out whether it had once been a river or a lakeshore.

My immediate goal when I began excavating was to establish whether the site was undisturbed, or in situ , where everything in the ground was last touched by the people who left them there. This is the most exciting and rewarding type of site as an undisturbed context allows archaeologist to connect all the various evidence found in the site, as it can be assumed that all the artefacts and other material remains nearby. 

Having discovered Kota Tampan, which proved the Peninsula Malaysia was inhabited during the Palaelotihic, we believed that there must be more sites dating from this period in Lengong Valley. 


In 1990-91, archaeological excavations were conducted at Gua Gunung Runtuh by my team from the Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. The excavations uncovered a primary burial of a 10,000-11,000 year old human skeleton. This skeletons was named “Perak Man” as it was found in the state of Perak in Malaysia. The Perak Man skeleton was an exceptional find as it was the most complete Paleolithic human skeleton so far discovered in Southeast Asia. Paleolithic burial practice and a deformity in the skeletons indicated that he also the only prehistoric skeleton with a congenital deformity knows as Brachymesophalangia. 

Perak Man

Twenty-five years have passed since and now the World Heritage Committee unanimously supported and approved the INSCRIPTION of AHLV as a World Heritage Site on Saturday 30^th June, 2012, at the resplendent Tauride Palace in the amazingly beautiful City of Saint Petersburg, Russia. This historic achievement is the fourth World Heritage Site for Malaysia and the 953rd in the world. This testifies another dimension of the global recognition of Malaysia as a nation endowed with and committed to the conservation and protection of its world renowned heritage. This is a very meaningful achievement by the government and people which we can be proud of.

The recognition would create a massive socio-economic spin-off for Lenggong Valley and Perak as a whole, adding that it would spur efforts to conduct more archaeological research in the valley. However, this was just the beginning and that there were bigger tasks ahead to maintain the status.