Akar Nusa
Saturday morning in a Sabah town market. A Kadazandusun grandmother haggles in her own language, the stallholder answers in another, and the young woman between them switches to Malay without a thought. Nobody finds this strange. It is Sabah.
The story
Sabah is called the Land Below the Wind (Negeri di Bawah Bayu) because it lies south of the typhoon belt. People have lived here for a very long time. Archaeologists date settlement in the Madai-Baturong caves, near Darvel Bay, to 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Today the state has more than 40 native peoples, according to a 2022 review by Malaysian and Chinese geneticists. They fall into five groups by language. The Kadazandusun are the largest. Others include the Bajau, the Murut and the Rungus. The Kadazandusun Cultural Association describes itself as a body for 48 indigenous communities. Both numbers are fair. They count differently.
Where did these peoples come from? Scholars think the ancestors of most Sabah natives came with Austronesian-speaking farmers and sailors. The review finds Sabah natives are close relatives of the Taiwanese and Philippine native peoples. It also links a genetic signal against malaria, about 5,000 years old, to that same expansion. Some scholars question how simple the "out of Taiwan" story is. The review prefers a "multi-layer" picture, with several waves over time.
Later history is shared with the sea. Brunei's influence grew in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Sulu's after that. The British North Borneo Chartered Company took over in 1882. Sabah joined Malaysia on 16 September 1963.
Where you can still see it today
- Kaamatan in May, the harvest festival, at the Kadazandusun hall in Penampang.
- Sabah Museum in Kota Kinabalu, open every day, 9am to 5pm.
- Mount Kinabalu, 4,095 metres, the highest point in Malaysia.
- Languages: a Sabah classroom can hold Dusun, Kadazan, Bajau, Malay, Chinese and English speakers at once.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
A mother line tells the story of one line of grandmothers only. In 48 Kedayan people from Sabah and Sarawak, the most common mother line was B4a1a, at 25 percent. That line is widespread among Austronesian peoples from Southeast Asia to the Pacific. Malaysians we have tested who carry the B4 mother line may share that deep history.
DNA does not decide which people you belong to, your religion or any legal status. Those are matters of family, community and law. Sabah has also had fewer DNA studies than its neighbours, so a region estimate here is a broad picture, not a verdict.
