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He distinguishes two main races, a dolichocephalic and a brachycephalic, terming the former Indonesian, the latter Proto-Malay. Doctor A.W. Nieuwenhuis, who about the end of the last century made important researches in the upper parts of the Kapuas and Mahakam Rivers and at Apo Kayan, found the Ot-Danum, Bahau-Kenyah, and Punan to be three distinct groups of that region.
The identification of the Iban with a Proto-Malay stock is justified by their language and physical characteristics. The former seems to be the language from which Malay has been formed under Arab influence and culture. It employs many words which are no longer current in Malay, but which, as is shown by Marsden's MALAY DICTIONARY, were in use among Sumatran Malays in the eighteenth century.
But there is reason to think that some of them had settled at an earlier date in this part of Borneo and rather farther southward on the Kapuas River. The BUGAUS, KANTUS, and DAUS, who dwell along the southern border of Sarawak, and some other Iban tribes in the northern basin of the Kapuas River, are probably descendants of these earlier immigrants of Proto-Malay stock.
Volz confirms Hagen's observations of the existence among the Battak of North Sumatra of two types, a dolichocephalic Indonesian and a brachycephalic type. The next point to discuss is the presence of these two races in Borneo. The first of these may be classed as predominantly Indonesian and the others as mainly Proto-Malay in origin.
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