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Borneo

Island in Southeast Asia

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  • 7 chapters
Administrative map of Borneo in Indonesian language.
M. Adiputra · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Through Java, Asia and Ecoregion

The geology of Borneo was formed beginning in the Mesozoic. It formed part of Sundaland, a region connected to mainland Asia, until it became isolated by sea level rise at the end of the Last Glacial Period. With seven unique ecoregions, including large expanses of some of the oldest tropical rainforests in the world, Borneo is rich in biodiversity and endemic species.

Archaeological evidence indicates that Borneo has been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years. The island is home to hundreds of Indigenous communities, cultures and languages, many of which have traditionally been grouped under the broad term "Dayak". Trading settlements on Borneo were connected to regional maritime networks by the first millennium CE.

Several empires, kingdoms and sultanates subsequently emerged around the island's coasts. This includes the Javanese Majapahit, the Sultanate of Brunei, which held influence over much of coastal Borneo and parts of the southern Philippines at its peak in the 15th century, and the Sultanate of Sulu, which became an important maritime power in the Sulu Sea and northeastern Borneo. The island's interior, however, remained politically diverse and was largely governed by numerous Indigenous communities and local systems of authority rather than by a single state. Parts of the island were later colonised by Britain, Netherlands and Japan.

Since decolonisation, Borneo has been politically divided among three sovereign states. Approximately 73% of the island forms part of Indonesia, comprising the five provinces collectively known as Kalimantan. About 26% consists of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, while the sovereign state of Brunei occupies a small area on the island's northwestern coast. Brunei is the only sovereign state whose principal territory lies wholly on Borneo; Indonesia and Malaysia both extend far beyond the island. The Malaysian federal territory of Labuan is situated on a small island just off the coast of Borneo.

The majority of Borneo's inhabitants reside in coastal cities. It is the site of Indonesia's planned future capital, Nusantara. Major economic sectors include oil and gas, agriculture, timber and tourism. Industrial deforestation in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo for timber and agricultural conversion has taken place during the past century.

Etymology

Borneo

The name Borneo is closely associated with Brunei Darussalam, the historic sultanate and trading polity on the island. Early European travellers and cartographers recorded variants such as Bornei, Burnei, Burneo and Borneo when referring to Brunei, and the name was subsequently applied more broadly to the island. The name may derive from the Sanskrit word váruṇa (वरुण), meaning either "water" or Varuna, the Hindu god of rain and oceans.

The term has been used as early as the late 9th century by Fan Chuo in his book on Nanzhao in the 860s. The term Bóní (勃泥) was used to describe trading colonies in the south. In 977, Chinese records use the term Bo-ni to refer to Borneo. In 1225, it was also mentioned by the Chinese official Chau Ju-Kua. In modern Chinese, the island is called 婆羅洲 (simplified Chinese: 婆罗洲; pinyin: Póluó Zhōu), the first two characters being phonetic and the third referring to a large landmass.

Kalimantan

The Javanese manuscript Nagarakretagama, written by Majapahit court poet Mpu Prapanca in 1365, mentions the island as Nusa Tanjungnagara, which means the "island of the Tanjungpura Kingdom".

When the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Jorge de Menezes made contact with the indigenous people of Borneo, they referred to their island as Pulu K'lemantang, and this second word became Kalimantan, the name for modern-day Borneo in the Indonesian language. The term kelamantan is used in Sarawak to refer to a group of people who consume sago in the northern part of the island.

John Crawfurd noted in his 1865 Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands that "(...) Borneo has sometimes been called by the Malays Kalamantan.", which he traces back to the name of a type of mango (Mangifera), though he added that the name, meaning Isle of Mangoes, was little-known and not popular. A mango variety locally called klemantan is still widely found in rural Ketapang and surrounding areas of West Kalimantan.

Another source states that it derives from the Sanskrit word kalamanthana, meaning "burning weather", possibly to describe the island's hot and humid tropical weather. In the Indianized Malay era the name Kalamanthana was derived from the Sanskrit terms kala (time or season) and manthana (churning, kindling, or creating fire by friction), which possibly describes the hot weather.

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