Iban History
The oral history of the Iban has traditionally been committed to memory, and recorded in a system of writing on boards (papan turai) by the initiated shamans, or lemambang. This includes elaborate genealogical records, which usually go back about fifteen generations, although some purport to go back up to twenty-five. These genealogies (tusuts) are essentially records of who married and begat whom. Sometimes a name is accompanied by a short description.
Some of the songs of the Iban people's oral history (such as the ritual pengap chant, sung during festivals) are mythological or historical accounts.
Read more about Iban History: Pre-colonisation, Rule By Brooke, World War II
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“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)