Nias

The Nias, who call themselves Ono Niha, are the Austronesian people of Nias and the neighboring island chains off the west coast of North Sumatra, a region they know as Tanö Niha, the land of humans. Their Austronesian forebears arrived by sea through the Philippines perhaps four to five thousand years ago. The Nias kept a striking megalithic tradition, erecting carved columns and sarcophagi and leaping over stone towers as a rite of manhood.

In 1337 island life was organized into a ranked society of twelve grades, whose highest title of Balugu could only be won by hosting ruinously generous Owasa feasts at which hundreds of pigs were slaughtered and stone monuments raised.

Inter-village feuding and headhunting made warriors and swordsmiths honored figures, and families built fortified ironwood longhouses raised on tall pillars. The islands had traded forest and sea produce with Sumatran ports since prehistory.