Akar Nusa
A river bend in the Batang Lupar. A group of families pull their boats ashore and look up the slope. Is this good land for rice? The elders walk the ground first, and they decide whether to stay.
The story
Iban tradition places their homeland in the Kapuas basin in West Kalimantan, around the Ketungau river. From there, some families moved north and west into what is now Sarawak.
Historians do not agree on the date. The Iban writer and historian Benedict Sandin placed the start of the move in the 1550s. A summary of Sarawak's history places it from the 1750s. Both agree on the direction and the pattern. Families moved in small groups, found a river valley with good land, settled there and then pushed on to the next valley.
According to the summary of Sandin's account, early settlers reached the Batang Lupar area near the Undop river. Over about five generations they spread to the Batang Lupar, Batang Sadong, Saribas and Batang Layar rivers. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they continued across Sarawak's river systems.
Why did they move? The sources mention conflict with other groups and the search for fertile land for farming. The Iban are a people of the longhouse, and a longhouse is a village under one roof. Farming and moving went hand in hand. A young man traditionally went on a bejalai, a journey away from home before settling down. It is one reason the Iban became widely spread.
Headhunting (kayau) was once central to Iban social life. It ended in the early 20th century. A well-known saying records the balance: weaving was the women's path to honour, and kayau was the men's.
Today the Iban are the largest native people of Sarawak. About 702,579 Iban live in Sarawak, which is 28.8 percent of the state. Smaller communities live in West Kalimantan and Brunei.
Where you can still see it today
- Longhouses along the rivers of Sarawak, still the heart of many Iban villages.
- Gawai Dayak, the harvest festival, which most Iban keep, including many Christians.
- Pua kumbu, the woven ritual cloth (see our page on the cloth).
- Iban language, a Malayic language, spoken across Sarawak.
- Hand tattoos called entegulun, which in the past marked the taking of a head and are now a heritage mark.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
A 2022 review reports that the Iban showed closer genetic ties to Indonesia than to mainland Southeast Asia. That fits the memory of a homeland across the border in Kalimantan. It suggests the Iban story and the Sarawak-Kalimantan region are linked.
We found no study of Iban mother lines or father lines alone that we could open. The wider mother line B4 is common among Borneo peoples. A Malaysian we have tested with a B4 line may share that regional history, but this is not specific to the Iban.
DNA does not decide which people you belong to, your religion or any legal status. A family and a community do.
