Orang Asli

Orang Asli, meaning original people, is the collective name for the indigenous tribes of the Malay Peninsula: the nomadic Semang, the slash-and-burn Senoi and the settled Proto-Malay farmers. The first two speak Aslian languages, carried into the peninsula roughly 3,800 years ago. The cave art of their Hoabinhian predecessors at Tambun in Perak may be twelve thousand years old.

They traded jungle produce with Indian and Mon merchants at Kedah. As early as 724 Srivijayan raiders carried off Negrito slaves, and the Malay word sakai came to mean both these people and bondslaves.

After Melaka became a slave emporium in the early 1500s, Acehnese expeditions and, through the 1700s and early 1800s, Minangkabau and Batak raiders sacked inland villages. Many coastal communities were Malayised and converted, while those keeping their Aslian speech and spirit cults withdrew into the Perak and Pahang rainforest.