Niah National Park
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How it came to be
Niah National Park protects a complex of caves in the limestone massif of Gunung Subis in Sarawak, Malaysia. Traces of people living in this rainforest go back at least 50,000 years, the longest known record of human interaction with rainforest.
In October 1954 Tom Harrisson, curator of the Sarawak Museum, spent two weeks in the Great Cave with two companions and found evidence of long-term habitation and burial. In February 1958 a team led by his wife Barbara Harrisson dug up a human skull, the Deep Skull, in a trench nicknamed Hell Trench for its heat. Dating in 2000 put the skull at about 37,000 years old.
The caves also hold rock paintings and boat-shaped wooden coffins, and their deposits trace a shift from foraging to rice farming. The area became a national historic monument in 1958 and a national park on 23 November 1974. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2024.
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