Samosir Island

     All right, I have been rather remiss in finishing up in any timely manner our travels through Sumatra and Central Jakarta.  I realize I have been overly verbose, meandering and didactic.  It has now been six weeks since we were in Sumatra and I have not even finished up that trip.  So, herein out, I will try to be more short and sweet and let the pictures simply tell the story.
    

 
As you know from previous posts, the Island rose up from the caldera created 70,000 years ago when there was this incredible volcanic eruption.  It subsequently created beautiful Lake Toba and the island was pushed up subsequently by the pressure of the underlying magma.  Since then Samosir Island has been enticing tourists to come and enjoy the beauty of this land ever since.  Unfortunately, past events and the difficult terrain one must traverse to arrive at the Island does not make this place into a tourist mecca.  Too bad, because it is a wonderful, cool climate, with good accomodations, good food, and interesting history.  The Batak people live in this area of North Sumatra.  There are many different tribes and dialects of Batak and the Batak people identify themselves by the region wherein they reside.  Thus in and around Lake Toba, the people would be known as Toba Batak.  Their language is an Austronesian based language and the people originally probably came from Papua, the Phillipines and Taiwan about 2500 years ago.   Throughout Lake Toba you will find hundreds if not thousands of traditional Batak houses with the characteristic upswept roof lines and the stilt foundations.  You can see both the thatch roofs and corregated tin roofs on these houses.  

 

Two homes and a family burial plot



 Written Batak does not use a roman alphabet, but I do not think anyone really uses the written language anymore other than for local ceremonial and/or tourist purposes.  Back in 1997 I bought a Batak medicine book from a Jakartan antique trader.  It was written on bark pages with a bone cover, and each “page” was a miniature work of art.  I doubted then, as I still do now, that this was anything other than a creation for the tourists,  and this was confirmed on this particular visit where I found many such medicine books being hawked as souvenirs.  However, I would have to admit that the quality of my book was much finer.  Nevertheless, you can travel all over the island and find a “handicrap centre” selling traditional carvings, musical instruments and medicine books or calendars.

            The island is desperate for tourism.  About ten or fifteen years ago, it started to undergo a bit of a tourism explosion, and so a lot of investors built some rather large and fancy hotels.  But then there were the Ambon religious wars, the Bali bombings, and the collapse of the Southeast Asian economies all of which had a devastating effect on tourism.  Not to mention the 2007 earthquake, the lack of infrastructure and roads in and out of the Island, etc.   So, when we would visit the ancient stone tombs, burial grounds and ceremonial execution tables, it often felt a bit like the fat European being invited to the hungry cannibals’ home for dinner. 

 

ceremonial execution tables in Batak Village



All the villages rely to a certain extent on tourism, but the tourists are few and far between.  We went to one town which puts on some traditional music and dance for tourists.  They generally only want to do it when there is a minimum of ten people in the audience (for an hour long show with a dozen musicians and half a dozen dancers, plus one water buffalo.  When we arrived, there were four other tourists, which, when counting us made 8 people, and so they decided to put on the show.  Unfortunately the other four people got bored and left before the show could begin, so all of these people put on a show for the four of us.  They didn’t look too enthused about this performance.  But they gave it their Broadway Best.

 

            The bottom line:  This is a wonderful little piece of the world to visit.  The people are warm and friendly, the weather is great, the prices are good.  Its 70,000 years of history and geology are staggering (see previous post about Lake Toba).  Indonesia simply has to learn how to sell tourism.  Maybe they need a good catch phrase:  “Toba, it changed the world.  It will change you too.”

   

              And that concludes our trip through Sumatra.  After two nights on Samosir Island, we took the ferry back to the mainland and a five hour 150 km car trip back to Medan.  Wethen  flew back to Jakarta.  The following week, Ralph, Miles and I (but not Irene who had to work) flew to Yogjakarta (aka Jogjakarta) for several days to see the ancient Hindu temples at Prabanan and the Budhist Temples of Borobudor.  That will be the next posting and then after that more life in Jakarta (and a smattering of politics).

The Heart and Spine of Things

            A couple of weeks ago I injured my neck, not in any substantial manner, and merely as a result of acting like a kid.  But it felt as though I herniated a couple of disks in my neck which pinched a nerve.  It was not a problem unless I turned my head in a certain fashion and then I would get pain shooting down into my elbow.  It felt similar to sticking your finger in an electrical outlet, something I tended to do (accidently) with some frequency when I was a little kid.  However, whereas with an outlet you get these driving pulses that flow up your arm from your finger to your chest, here I felt these electrical pulses travelling down from my neck into my left arm and elbow.  Sometimes the shock and pain would travel all the way down into my hand, but frequently it would stop at the elbow.  Then, after the initial shock, I would have some lingering pain in the arm and elbow, but no pain to speak of in the neck.  Indeed, I would never have associated this with a neck injury had I not previously been familiar with such pain as a result of a couple of herniated disks in my lower back which caused similar pain to shoot down my left leg into my foot.

            In any event, after I started experiencing this pain in my arm, I realized I had injured my neck, as well as re-injured my lower back (which caused a renewal of pain in my left leg.)  So I tried to stretch out my upper and lower back in hopes of alleviating the pain and the pinched nerves.  I initially thought this would clear up in a week or two, but then had to re-assess that initial impression after a week or so, and realized that it may take a full month or more to recover.  So I was prepared to grin and bear it. 

But Irene was more concerned about my condition than I was because she had a friend who had a pinched nerve in her back who did not receive proper medical care and ignored it (my preferred line of medical treatment), and the problem simply worsened until her friend was driven into traction for a couple of months.  However, I thought the analogy was totally inappropriate because I was getting better not worse, I argued; and therefore, I did not need any medical intervention.  In order to demonstrate that I was indeed getting much better, I decided to spend the night in our bed.  For the previous week, I had been sleeping in Miles’ bed because it is a platform bed with simply a foam rubber mattress and therefore much more firm than our bed.  Our bed, being an expensive coil mattress with a foam top, provided to us (top of the line) by the US government,  gave my back no rest and simply exacerbated my problems. 

            So that night, Miles was relegated back to his room, and I joined Irene for two hours of blissful sleep.  Then I woke up around midnight with pain up and down my back.  I got up and out of bed and decided to try to lie down on the floor to stretch out my back.  My lower back appreciated the hard wood floor, but my neck resisted.  And as soon as my head touched the ground, I felt this huge bolt of lightning shoot down my arm, through my elbow into my fingers and back up the elbow into my chest.  My arm, my chest and my back were wracked with pain which would not let go.  I had never felt anything quite like this before:  the intensity of the pulse and the lingering grip of pain.  It felt as though I was in the hand of God and God was not pleased with me at all.  I could imagine only that I was nothing but a lemon in the eyes of God and he wanted some juice.  I struggled to my feet and tried to walk it off, without success.  I slowly crept downstairs thinking that a change in scenery would help.  It didn’t.  I found it hot and stifling in the house and thought I needed to go outside for some fresh air.  I tried to walk but started to become dizzy and instead fell to the ground.  I didn’t think that I had passed out, but I found the next morning a small abrasion on my right elbow which may have been caused by the fall.  Since I have no recollection of hitting my elbow, I may have blacked out for a few seconds.  But after I fell, I got back up and crawled into a chair where I sat and collected my breath, wits and energy.  Slowly the pain in my arm, chest and back subsided.  Irene came down to see what was the matter.  She kicked Miles out of his bed and I took over that domain, promising to see a doctor the following day.

            Now medical care in Indonesia is a dicey proposition (or so they say).  The US embassy recommends that if you need any surgery, major medical care or diagnostic tests that you do not receive it in Indonesia, but rather go to Singapore.   I am not particularly well informed on the subject, but I understand that part of the problem is that Indonesia will not license foreign doctors, and therefore there is not that much competition within the profession.  An additional problem is that the Indonesian universities do not rank on a par with the first world universities and, for the most part, do not promote creative thinking.  As a result, Indonesia does not produce a lot of original thinkers/researchers in the sciences.  But also, Indonesian culture tends to favor the promotion of people based on their seniority and status, rather than their boldness and achievement, thus creating a bit of an intellectual stagnation.  Couple this with the fact that while this country has some fabulously wealthy people, and some hospitals can purchase state of the art equipment, it is not a particularly rich country and the equipment in most hospitals is something less than state of the art.  And, even if they have state of the art equipment, they do not necessarily have state of the art technicians to operate the equuipment or interpret the results.

            So, if you want state of the art, academic/intellectual rigor, and exacting science, you must go to Singapore.

            Irene had previously spoken to the medical unit at the American Embassy and had discussed my back with them, asking for suggestions for the name of a doctor in Singapore I could see.  They gave Irene the name of a woman who served as a medical coordinator in Singapore.  This woman is not affiliated with the Embassy.

            The following morning, I called this woman.  I explained that I had injured my neck and wanted to get an MRI of my neck and consult with a doctor.  I also explained that I was concerned because the previous night I had this episode which felt like I had a small heart attack as a result of the pain.  Unfortunately, I did not choose my words carefully because the utterance of those two words: heart and attack, causes people to act very differently.  If you ever want to jump to the head of the line at the emergency room of a hospital, all you have to do is breathlessly murmur those two words.  Want out of jury duty?  Try a variant:  heart condition, leading to a heart attack.  You will be stricken for cause.  Be careful (hati hati) those two words are very powerful, but once uttered their power is detonated like a bomb, and just like a bomb, once it goes off, there is no putting back the pieces.  I tried to backpedal, “no, I do not think it was a heart attack” and “I really want to see someone about my back”.  But it was decided, just to be on the safe side, I would see the cardiologist first, today, ASAP.    The medical coordinator would call me back with the time of my appointment. 

            After I hung up I called Irene to report, and then started to balk at the thought of racing off to Singapore.  Irene suggested I call a friend of ours, who has lived in Jakarta for 15 years and used to work as a nurse.  She re-iterated that if I have a back problem which may require surgery, I should definitely go to Singapore, but she also indicated that if I had a heart attack, I can determine that from a simple blood test here in Jakarta.  As a result, I decided to call the medical coordinator back and tell her not to bother finding a cardiologist.  Of course throughout this time I am experiencing shooting pains down my arm and am now thinking I may have done more than simply herniated a disk in my neck.  When I speak to the medical coordinator, I am told she has already made an appointment for me with the cardiologist and I should drop everything and get the next flight out to Singapore. 

I drop everything.  I miss the next flight out to Singapore and the one after that because I am stuck in Jakarta traffic.  Eventually I get to the airport and get a flight that will arrive one hour after my appointment.  My medical coordinator tells me not to worry the doctor will stay here until I arrive.

To make a long story short(er).  I eventually get to the cardiologist who, before he has seen me or spoken to me, has ordered up a battery of tests for me.  He takes a quick history as they conduct a cardio echo test, which establishes that I did not have a heart attack.  “I am not a good diagnostician” he comments.  “But I never said I had a heart attack”  I protest.   He then sends me down for a battery of other tests, including a CT with contrast, and an MRI for my back.  Several thousand dollars later.  (Oh, did we tell you we do not accept BlueCross BlueShield and you must pay now?)  I am to come back the next morning when my cardiologist and the neurosurgeon (surgeon??) will discuss the test results.

After an uneventful night in a Singapore hotel with the aid of some pain killers thanks to my cardiologist and 4 hours of HBO, I am ready the next morning to meet my fate.   So here’s the verdict:

My cardiologist tells me that I have an excellent heart.  No damage, no sign of cholesteral, good clear circulation.  My aorta is a little larger than usual, but not that unusual for my size.  I should not have any worries about my heart for years to come.  He gives me some beautiful photos of my heart as a parting gift.

The neurosurgeon tells me a different story.  He asks me first whether I played a lot of sports as a kid.  I tell him no, I just worked in a lot of manual labor jobs.  I don’t tell him how I started out pulling weeds and digging clams at eleven, and then later raking up clams by the bushel bag, then slinging pots and pans and stacking fish, nor do I mention all of the ditches I have dug in my lifetime.  I don’t think he is particularly interested.  My back he tells me is old and malformed.  It is no longer the straight highway for my nerve canal.  It is an old country road full of twists and turns.  Those nice square building blocks of  vertebrae are chipped and worn like the ruins of Prabanan.  I have bulging disks in my lower and upper spine.  It is not so bad I need surgery, but it will cause me periodic pain and only get worse over time.  What can I do, I ask.  Not much, he tells me, when I am pain free, exercise.  When you have pain, don’t exercise until the pain goes away.

So the conclusion:  I have a big heart but not the backbone to support it.  I may have had a spine when I was younger.  But now . . .  And so I flew back to Jakarta, none the better but a little bit wiser.  It was because of my back bone or lack thereof that I panicked the other night.  I did not stand up for what I truly knew and believed, but instead succumbed to my worst fears and nightmares.  As a result, I needlessly spent several thousand dollars on diagnostic medical tests that told me nothing I did not already know in my heart.  And now the cost of those tests tears at my heart when I think of how that money could have been better spent. 

Singapore and Jakarta are a world apart.  Singapore is the modern miracle.  A gleaming new city with decent mass transportation systems, good clean and abundant housing, a well educated and professionally employed populace, little poverty, little pollution, almost non existent public corruption.   The schools are excellent.  The people work hard but have their needs taken care of.  Jakarta has no safe and clean mass transportation.  It is riddled with slums and unsafe and unsanitary housing.  You cannot drink the water.  You cannot breath the air.  You had best not walk along the canals.  It suffers mightily from public corruption.  Education is compulsory only up to age 13 and the education you receive up to that point is heavily based in rote learning.  The money I spent confirming what my heart already knew could have been used to make a substantial difference in the individual lives of many Jakartans who earn less than three thousand dollars a year.  Or it could have made a systemic difference to a small village in Sulawesi which lacks toilets, or class rooms, or sanitary water.  Instead it went to support the city of abundance, and nothing has changed.

But while Singapore is a beautiful manageable and well managed city, I still prefer Jakarta.  It is a city with heart.  The people here will break their backs working like dogs, digging ditches, pulling hand carts through the street, sweeping the debris and detritus every morning.   Later on I will post photographs of the work being done by Jakartans in building a new elevated highway in the city.  For the most part all of the prep work is being done all by hand.  You see scores of men digging up the street and sidewalks with pick axes.  They fell huge trees along the side of the road and then dig out and pull up a huge root ball five or six feet in diameter, all by hand.   The root ball must weigh half a ton.  They push it up out of the hole to the side of the street later to be disposed of.  You may see three guys working in a hole 6 feet deep by 3 by 4 feet square handing up bags of dirt to someone at street level.  This is back breaking work, for which they are paid about twenty-five hundred dollars per year. 

Yet, Indonesians will still bend over backwards to help another person, if they can.  Our housekeeper, who is paid well but not much, saves all of our aluminum cans and takes them to a man in her neighborhood who will sell them to a scrap metal dealer.  She does not profit from this endeavor.  She does not need to do this, but she does it because she knows he has a family to support.  She saves all of our old newspapers and takes them to another of her neighbors, who will use them to clean and wrap fish which she sells on the street.  A few months ago, our housekeeper told me that she was going to the open air market.  I offered to go with her, but she told me no, she did not want me to come, which I thought was rather unusual.  I later learned that she had gone to the market to sell a small gold necklace her husband had given her for their 10^th wedding anniversary over ten years ago.  It was her one piece of jewelry of any value.  She was selling it, after discussing it with her husband, in order to get some extra cash to give to her brother’s oldest child.  He was newly married and soon to be a father.  He had lost his job and could not find new employment.  He wanted to buy a small handcart from which to sell noodles on the street.  Our housekeeper had sold her necklace so he could buy the handcart.

 I have had some dealings with an attorney here in Jakarta who has called on me for some consultations regarding legal issues in America.  Each time I have met with her, we first must discuss life in general, then she will tell me a little about her family, and I will tell her a little about my family.  Then she will tell me the problem or issue, but not really get to the point until she has introduced all of the players involved, their families and backgrounds.  It takes time.  A fifteen or twenty minute meeting can take two or three hours.

Singapore, the modern city has big machines to do all the backbreaking work you see the people of Jakarta sweat over every day. What would take years to accomplish in Jakarta can be done in a matter of months in Singapore.  But the people of Singapore also act like a machine.  They are programmed for efficiency and maximum profits.  My Singapore doctors were not particularly interested in an oral history of my aches and pains.  I guess they felt that they did not need it when they could get a snap shot of my back or heart.  After all, is not a picture worth a thousand words?  Particularly when it is computer enhanced?  The doctors in Singapore were like the ones you see working in the States.  They must see twenty or more patients during the course of a day.  It is a mill designed for maximum efficiency and profit.  It is also a very pleasant mill.  I was assigned a young lady who shepherded me from room to room  and who was extremely nice and cordial.  She made me feel very special, like a shopper at Tiffany’s.  But it was all very efficient. 

Walking the city streets in Singapore you see a lot more serious expressions, dark pinstriped business suits, and determined, harried, individuals.  People cross the street at a cross walk, when the light tells you can cross.  The streets are clean, straight, and well marked.  There is no reason for you to jaywalk in this City.  But if you did, watch out, for they still employ caning as a form of punishment in Singapore.  And violators of the law are handled quite strictly, without leniency.

Whereas in Jakarta the streets are maddening and chaotic.  The streets twist and turn and come to deadends, or suddenly become one way, opposite to the direction you had been traveling.  Cross walks are non existent.  Traffic lights more rare than the Sumatran Tiger.  The city streets are teeming with poor people strumming guitars for a few rupiah, or protesting for or against some righteous cause,  or engaging in some street theater with a monkey on a chain.   Rarely will you see someone, other than a foreigner, dressed in a dark business suit.  Business attire for men is, for the most part, a button down batik shirt.  When you want to conduct business and must engage someone in conversation about business, first you must talk about everything except the topic at hand.  Personal questions are never improper.  In fact, often you cannot conduct business until you first meet the person  face to face and come to know that person on a more familiar basis.  But be careful before you go to the bank on what they promised, for they might not have the backbone to back up what they promise, even if they believe in their heart that they will at the time they tell you so.  I guess I can relate.

Okay, since no blog is any good without some pictures.  Here are some real beauties.  They cost me a pretty penny, so I can’t let them go to waste.  One caveat:  I was led to believe these were pictures of my heart, but upon second examination I cannot say if they are or are not.  The color pictures of the heart may be mine, or they may be used only for illustrative effect while the true pictures are the black and whites to the sides.  I simply do not know, my doctor didn’t have the time to fully explain it to me.

Lake Toba

          Lake Toba has been described as the largest lake in Southeast Asia.  It is approximately 1130 km², approximately 100 kilometers long by 30 kilometers wide.  It is a huge caldera filled with water and you can see from these photos that it looks just like what it is: the top of a huge mountain that blew off and filled up with water. 

       

Somewhere between 67,500 and 75,500 years ago Toba erupted into a super volcano.  It was quite simply the biggest volcano in 25 million years.  It is estimated that it ejected about  2800 cubic kilometers or 670 cubic miles of ash, lava and other material.  Scientists estimate that approximately 2000 cubic kilometers of lava flowed from the eruption and 800 cubic kilometers or 192 cubic miles of ash blew out of the eruption.  To give you an idea of its magnitude, scientists believe that it deposited a layer of ash 15 centimeters thick over the entire Indian Subcontinent.  In parts of Malaysia the ash was 9 meters (almost thirty seven feet) thick.  Today, the ash layer around Lake Toba is up to 6 meters deep.   Scientists have also estimated that Toba blew out anywhere from ten thousand million to six thousand million metric tons of sulphuric acid into the atmosphere.  By contrast, Mt. St. Helens ejected only about 1 cubic kilometer of material.  The 1883 eruption of  Mt. Krakatoa  (between the Islands of Java and Sumatra) ejected approximately 21 km³ (5.0 cu mi) of lava, rock, ash, and pumice.  The next largest supervolcano eruption known to man occurred  in Idaho about 2.1 million years ago and blew out about 2500 cubic kilometers of material.  But Toba was more than three times the size of the last eruption to have occurred at Yellowstone National Park (well before it was designated a National Park) about 630,000 years ago.  Just in case you think we are living in a dangerous area here in Indonesia,  just remember the US was a hot spot too at one time, and according to a rather breathless report on the Discovery Channel, Yellowstone could blow again anytime in the next 500,000 years. 



Satelite photo of Lake Toba

             In the center of Lake Toba lies Samosir Island, which arose from the caldera when the magma cap, which had crusted over after the eruption, was pushed up about 1500 meters due to the building pressure from the partial refilling of the magma chamber.  Samosir Island at approximately 630 km²  is about ten times the size of Manhattan¸  or slightly smaller than the entire area of New York City (which is approximately 786 km²).

            Scientists now estimate that the Toba eruption was so intense that it plunged the earth into a six to ten year volcanic winter wherein global temperatures dropped by 3-3.5 degrees with a subsequent cooling episode that lasted up to one thousand years.  Some scientists believe that this single event may have created a bottleneck in human evolution which reduced the human population to somewhere between three and ten thousand people.  They base this hypothesis on genetic evidence that suggests all humans alive today are descended from a small population between one thousand and ten thousand pairs of people about seventy thousand years ago.  Some scientists conjecture that the immediate effects of the Toba explosion, felt over the first couple of years, plus the subsequent ten year volcanic winter, caused massive deaths of human populations across the world.  The majority of survivors of homo sapiens were situated in Africa.  And most scientists agree that this population of homo sapiens  journeyed out of Africa to Europe, Asia and the eventually the Americas  sometime between 75 and 50 thousand years ago.  But there is still a lot of debate over this theory, and there is evidence that local people survived this cataclysmic event.

            At the time of the explosion there were several variants of hominid living on this earth:  homo erectus, homo sapiens neanderthalis,  homo sapiens sapiens, and possibly also the recently discovered homo denisova and homo florensiensis.  Also at the time of the eruption, there were undoubtedly people living throughout Sumatra, Java and Malaysia.  Recall that the first discovered evidence of Homo erectus was that of Homo erectus erectus, aka Java Man, discovered in 1891 near  the city of Solo on the island of Java.  About thirty years after the discovery of Java Man, Solo Man was found.  Whereas most other subspecies of Homo erectus died out before or about the time of the Toba eruption, Homo erectus soloensis aka Solo Man may have persisted until as recently as 50,000 years ago.    Java Man dates back to about 1.8 million years ago.  But Solo Man lived on the island of Java between 1.6 million years ago until about 50,000 years ago, and that would mean that Solo Man survived the Toba eruption. 

            An additional possible local survivor of the Toba explosion may have been Homo Florensiensis aka Flores Man or nicknamed the hobbit because of their small stature.  However, it is still being debated as to whether Flores Man is indeed a whole new species or merely a small pool of  mutated homo erectus.  Nevertheless, although the skeletal remains discovered date from 38,000 to 13,000 years ago, tools and implements attributed to them date to between 95,000 to 13,000 years ago.  Thus, the hobbit may also have  been around at the time of, and therefore survived, the Toba explosion.  However, as far as I know, there is no fossil record of the hobbit living that long ago, only circumstantial evidence of their existence through the dating of tools.

            Varients of homo sapiens date back to almost 250,000 years ago, thus we know that homo sapiens were also living at the time of the Toba explosion.  And recently scientists have found genetic evidence of interbreeding between homo sapiens and homo erectus dating to about 75,000 years ago or at the time of the Toba event.

            The Denisova hominin like the florensiensis hominin is a very interesting recent discovery, and it’s characterization as a separate hominin species is the result of genetic testing on a small finger bone and tooth discovered in 2008 in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.  Human artifacts discovered at the same level at that site were carbon dated at 40,000 years ago, thus indicating that denisova also survived the Toba event.  From the mitochondrial sequence, the Denisova population along with Neanderthal shared a common branch from the lineage leading to modern African humans. 

You have to love the new science of genetic anthropology, which is quickly replacing theoretical quantum physics as the most incomprehensible of sciences, but scientists now  believe that based on mitochondrial sequence found in this denisovan tooth, and certain neanderthal remains, the Denisova population along with

Neanderthal shared a common branch from the lineage leading towards modern African humans, but that the denisovans and the neanderthals began to diverge approximately 640,000 years ago.  The denisova therefore would have lived from 640,000 years ago until at least 40,000 years ago.  Thus, both homo erectus and homo denisova survived the Toba explosion (at least to some extent) and interbred with homo sapiens.  Scientists believe there is genetic evidence that Melanesians’ prehistoric ancestors interbred with the Denisova hominin, sharing 4%–6% of their genome with this ancient human species.  This would indicate that the denisova ranged widely over the area of southeast asia.

According to the Out of Africa model modern H. sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens then began migrating from Africa sometime after the Toba event and eventually replaced existing hominid species in Europe and Asia.   After analyzing genealogy trees constructed using 133 types of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), researchers concluded that all lines of people examined were descended from a woman from Africa, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. The Out of Africa theory is also supported by the fact that mitochondrial genetic diversity is highest among African populations.  This would make sense if a smaller percentage of people (i.e. a small genetic diversity) left Africa than those who stayed put.

There are differing theories on whether there was a single exodus or several over time.  A multiple dispersal model involves the Southern Dispersal theory, which has gained support in recent years from genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence. In this theory, there was a coastal dispersal of modern humans from the Horn of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This group helped to populate Southeast Asia and Oceania, explaining the discovery of early human sites in these areas much earlier than those in the middle east, Europe or Asia.  A second wave of humans then dispersed across the Sinai peninsula into Asia, resulting in the bulk of human population for Eurasia. This second group possessed a more sophisticated tool technology and was less dependent on coastal food sources than the original group.  However, the multiple dispersal model is contradicted by studies indicating that the populations of Eurasia and the populations of Southeast Asia and Oceania are all descended from the same mitochondrial DNA lineages, which support a single migration out of Africa that gave rise to all non-African populations.  However, everything is still open to interpretation and new discovery, for scientists believe that Melanesians  who ranged from the Papua Islands to the Solomon Islands  have little genetic relationship to  Polynesians.  However, as previously noted, modern Papuans, who are descendents of Melanesians also share a small percentage of the denisovan genome.  Melanesians then probably travelled across Asia to the Pacific Islands.  If it was all one people and one migration, one would expect to see some of the denovian gene in the Polynesian people also.

            Thus Toba can be thought of as the destroyer and the creator.  It was essentially a super huge cauldron which cooked up a magical brew embodying both good and evil whose smoke and fumes cast a smell over the entire earth transforming the fate and nature of all mankind. (You might note that Miles and I have been reading a lot of fantasy literature lately- you know, wizards, giants, ancient gods.) This idea plays so well into our archetypal myths of birth, death and re-birth through fire and water, which are re-told so many times in so many different variations by so many different people over so many different ages.  Concomitant with the theme of birth, death and re-birth through fire and water (Venus rising from the water, Noah surviving the flood, Jay Gatsby emerging from the waters of Long Island Sound) are the stories, told all over the world, of man encountering giants, dwarfs, and other manlike creatures with power and/or knowledge either greater or lesser than man’s. 

Carl Jung wrote of a collective unconscious of man which dealt with certain universal archetypes.  Joseph Campbell further developed the theory based on archeological and anthropolical evidence in his Masks of God series.  What I find fascinating with all of this is the idea that this single event, the cataclysmic Toba event, may have caused this clash of peoples, and that early modern man came into contact with other pre-historic man of a different character and nature:  i.e. a clash of man and giants, man and hobbits, man and dwarfs.  Did Toba destroy the old ways and blast man into the modern era, thereby creating the seed of our collective imagination and set forth the events which would be the basis for all stories thereafter told?  Is the Odyssey (which Miles and I just finished reading), the Ramayana (which we view in bits and pieces through wayan puppet shows), the Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of Beowulf, and of course Harry Potter just a retelling of our ancient primordial memories of our clashes with other hominids?  Did Toba brew the coffee that kick started the morning of modern mankind?

            With that in mind, I felt that I could not pass up the opportunity of diving down into the waters of Lake Toba.  When I emerged would I be the same person, or would I be reborn as something new?  Would the universe I encountered after breaking through the surface of these primeval waters be different from the one I had dove from?  I was ready and anxious to meet the challenge.  And so early the following morning after our afternoon arrival on Lake Samosir, I got up from the our hotel room, went down to the rocky pier extending into the Lake and dove into the dark cool waters.  I swam for about a half a mile towards the middle of the lake and the mouth of an inlet.  I dove down into the depths for as long as my ears would permit.  It was cool, refreshing, and but for a small entanglement with a storm tossed fishing net, completely uneventful.   When I emerged nothing had changed.  I could still see the hotel, the small fishing boats, the dock where the ferries were tied up.  When I checked, I was still the same old (figuratively speaking of course) me.  But, hey, who knows?  The Toba event did not happen over night.  Its direct effects lasted for a decade and its indirect effects (the migration of modern man from Africa) lasted tens of thousands of years.  Maybe it will grow on me (I did notice some new ear hair- a sure sign of my primordial ancestry- but thank god for the gift of fire which lead to the bronze age, the iron age, the steel age, and last but not least- tweezers).  In any event, although I detected no instantaneous results, I figured that I had to give Miles the opportunity for such re-birth and transformation, so later the two of us again went swimming in this magnificent Lake.  We had a blast.



The Way to Lake Toba

 We left the Sinabung Hotel Thursday morning for our drive to Lake Toba and Samosir Island.  As our driver and guide told us, we would be passing through many miles of palm tree plantations and rubber tree plantations.  They were right.  Mile after mile we passed by various private and semi private (government and private collaborative) of palm oil and rubber tree plantations.  The natural forests had been clear cut years ago and planted with these imported species.  The palm oil tree plantations are much more prevalent due to a big push by the Indonesian government more than ten years ago to increase palm oil production and become the world’s largest producer of palm oil.  They hope to produce biofuels with palm oil.  But in the meantime they are urging increased human consumption of palm oils and the use of palm oils in more and more prepared foods and food products.  Which of course puts them at odds with WHO and NIH and other health organizations which urge the reduction of palm oil consumption.  Besides it just tastes bad compared to other oils.  But Indonesians and many other people through out the world use it because it is cheap.

            While on our way to Samosir Island, we made a couple of short side trips to visit some traditional Batak homes and villages.  This whole area seeks supplemental capital through tourism.  As a result, you can go to some of these villages and see the tourist attractions they maintain:  some traditional Batak homes which you can visit, some ancient (300 years old or less) execution tables, ancient grave sites, traditional dance shows, etc.  Nothing is spectacular, all are interesting.  But they also all suffer from a lack of tourism to sustain them.  The problem is that the Indonesian government simply does not promote these areas adequately nor does the government supply the necessary infrastructure or economic incentives to make tourism a thriving business.  Infrastructural maintenance is non existent.  The roads are horrible getting in and out of anywhere.    It can take four or five hours to travel one hundred miles.  Signage is non existent.  Water of course is always undrinkable.  Toilets do not function.  Schools teach people to be guides, but the guides learn by rote and cannot deal well with unscripted questions and answers.  Indonesians are extremely friendly and hospitable, but they know nothing about the business of hospitality.  Nevertheless, despite all of the problems.  We had a great time and were constantly fascinated.

            We stopped in a small traditional (poor) Batak village where we had the opportunity to go into an old (100 years or more) Batak house.

  Four different families lived in this single house, which basically consists of a single large open area with four separate cooking fires, and areas separated by hanging blankets.  There are no chimneys in this house and so the smoke simply rises to the roof which is peaked about 25 feet above the floor, and escapes through holes in the roof. 


Smoke rises to the black roof



Although it does have electricity, it is quite dark inside because of all the smoke and the use of only a few lights.  This home was not simply a tourist attraction, but a real home, like many others in the village.  But the people would open their home to tourists like ourselves for a small (voluntary) donation by the visitors.  I have no problem in spreading the wealth around a village like this, so we would go through.  I found that the kids were just as interested in us as we were in them, and so we would exchange many photos of one another. 



As you can see from the pictures the village is interspersed with newer and older homes, but almost everywhere you can find the ubiquitous satellite dish.  Equally ubiquitous now are the cell phone tower and cell phone users. 

The Boy of Next

In addition to the village, we visited a long house and compound built by a local king a couple of hundred years ago and last inhabited by a local king in the 1920’s.  The King would live in the long house with his concubine while the queen had her own house.  Again, the cooking would have been done in an open fire within the house.  No chimney.  I imagine there was a lot of lung disease back in those times.



Queen's House



King's House

     

      We then also stopped at a small park which gave us a nice panoramic view of Lake Toba and Pistou waterfall.  Again, I got to trade photos with the Indonesian kids.  One thing Indonesians love is to have their photo taken by their friends as they stand next to a foreigner.  The taller and younger the foreigner the better.  It used to be that I could not walk anywhere without being stopped every couple of minutes by Indonesians (more often than not girls) who would want to take my picture standing next to them.  I ams ure my face is splattered across facebook.  Now that I am older and more like their grandfathers, they want to be photographed with Miles more than me.  But on this particular trip Ralph got the most requests.  He stands about 6’2” and is younger and not nearly as grey as me.  I cannot say I was jealous of his popularity.

   

   These kids look like they step out of the pages of an ad for the United Colors of Bennington.

            While on the way to Lake Toba, our guide told us the story of the Princess and the Lake.  It was a somewhat long story and difficult for me to follow because of his English skills and my poor Bahasa skills.  And at one point, I fell asleep for a few minutes during the story.  But I thought I would recount it to you.  It is a creation story that has been handed down for I have no idea how many years by the Batak people.  But like many such stories, it really was lacking something in supporting the reasons and motivations behind the people for their actions and decisions.  And so in recounting this story, I felt it necessary to make a few changes and flesh out the characters a bit more than as it was recounted to me, and thus give it the old Disney spin.  I am now just waiting for the music committee to get back to me with some trite and hackneyed songs to punctuate the story.   I also changed the end of the story a bit to reflect and accomodate the fact that almost all of the Lake Toba T shirts have pictures of two goldfish on them rather than simply one goldfish.  The real story of the creation of Lake Toba is much more astounding, but that will have to wait for another day

Wildlife Update

Just a quick update on my previous post.

    The mystery of the stalking lizard has been solved.  It is a monitor lizard.  It is about 3
1/2 feet in length.  It made another appearance the following day by popping out of a storm drain in front of our garage.  The storm drain, which has a heavy iron grating and iron pipe cover runs under the house, under the backyard, and under the backyard wall to a drainage ditch behind the house.  Evidently, the lizard entered the pipe in the back, walked through the pipe under the house and popped open the top of the drain.  It was spied by someone in the compound as it popped open the top of the drain.  She screamed and the lizard ran into a small utility closet in our basement.  I did not have a key to the closet door, nor did the management office, so all I could do was get a photo of the lizard through the barred opening of the closet, which houses an airconditioner chiller.

The security guys from our compound came and someone from maintenance came.  Maintenance wanted to poke the lizard with a stick, hoping to chase it out of the closet, but I would not allow them to do that.  Instead I let everyone get a good look and then sent them away.  I then uncovered the drain again and left it open until the lizard could escape under the cover of night.  By 9:30 pm it was gone.

    Our housekeeper wanted to know why all the animals seemed to gravitate to our home.  I said I could not speak to the civet cat, or some of the other animals that have come to visit, but that I am originally from New York and New York City has a long history of rather large reptiles living in their sewers and drains.  Maybe its just wants us to feel at home.  Now if I can just find a good jazz club.