Sulawesi Island

Sulawesi Island

Seeing shape of the island, Sulawesi has four “Arms” pointing in different directions towards the provinces of East and West Nusa Tenggara to it’s south, Timor to southeast. Maluku took it’s east and the Philipines to the North, respectively. Almost the hole interior of the island is mountainous with spectacular scenery. Comparatively large plains exist only in a section of it’s southern  arms and in southeast. The coastal strips are almost everywhere narrow. Inhabited by about 12 million people, the island has plenty of space. Much of the landscape is unspoiled, the seas unpoluted.

The island has long been known to European seafarers as “Celebes”, presumably derived from the phrase “Celebres Mocassares, the infamous Makasarese”, found in a chronicle written in 1563 by the Portuguese Antonio Galvao. Another version has it that eraly Portuguese Traders, mistaking the arms for separate island, named the island “Ponto dos Celebres”, Cape of the infamous ones.

Whatever the case, Sulawesi, home to some of the oldest setlements in Indonesia archipelago, has kept it’s secret from western until relatively recently. Even in the 1920s and early 1930s, many parts of the island were still unexplored. Cave painting believed to be thausands of years old, have been found in the south of the island. Ancient sarcophagi were found in the north.

The island is home to a variety of ethnic population groups. Some of whom have a history of long and more or less intense contact with the world outside. Among them are the Bugis and the Makasarese, renowend navigators for centuries. Like wise the Toraja and the Mandar, the Minahasa, the Gorontalo and Bolaang Mongondow as well as the people of the Sangihe Talaud archipelago south of the Philippines. Some of them, as subjects of sovereign kingdom in the past, carry a tradition of stubborn resistance against foreign domination.

Sulaesi flora’s, like that of the other so called Greater Sunda Island, Sumatera, Java and Kalimantan, belongs largely to the mainland Southeast Asian type. It’s fauna, is rather peculiar, it’s belongs neither entirely to that of western parts. It has among it’s native species marsupials and three big mamals, the Black Crested Babbon, the Babirusa wild boar, and and the Anoa Dwarf Buffalo. It also has many bird species, among which the Maleo bush turkey with it’s huge eggs.

Sulawesi is also the most industialized island in the eastern part of Indonesia. The port of Makasar at Ujung Pandang is the busiest and most important in the region. It is a place of ancient civilizations and proud traditions, and roots strong enough to face the advent modernity with confidence.