As we finished making fieldwork plans, I thought of something else to ask. “Umbu, have you heard of the mili mongga?” I saw sensible Ibu Jen smile and roll her eyes. But Umbu didn’t laugh. “Yes, Pak Sam!” he frowned in thought. “I have heard people talk about it.” I had to ask more. “Do you know anyone who might be able to tell us about it?” Umbu promised that he’d ask around and see what he could find out. I was definitely not prepared for where that question would take us.
Samuel Turvey, Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Conservation Biology at the Zoological Society of London, was on a fossil expedition on the Indonesian island of Sumba when repeated reports of a legendary “wildman of the jungle”, the mili mongga, demanded his attention. It seems that everywhere his research group travelled, they encountered people who had stories about their village’s past encounters with these hairy giants, and repeatedly, his group would follow these leads into the unknown. The Tomb of the Mili Mongga is the account of several of Turvey’s expeditions to Sumba: part travelogue, part lab report, part social commentary, this book is as much about what a people’s mythology says about them as it is the story of what Turvey actually discovered, and I found the whole thing to be fascinating. Exactly my jam. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
This book is about my explorations of an island on the other side of the world, to try to understand what kinds of unique species used to inhabit its remote landscapes, and what happened to these now-vanished animals. But it isn’t just a story about biology or biologists, even though I thought it would be when I started out on my adventure. There’s plenty of science and natural history in the pages that follow, which can hopefully also serve to illustrate the steps through which knowledge accumulates and science progresses; how sources of inspiration might be unexpected, requiring new leads to be followed in unplanned directions when confronted with things that we can’t easily rationalise.
The isolation of island ecosystems can lead to the evolution of unique species: Indonesia has not only been home to pygmy elephants and giant rats, but the so-called “hobbit” fossils (Homo floresiensis) found on nearby Flores suggest that it’s not impossible that the little explored (by Westerners) island of Sumba was once home to a vanished hominid like the legendary mili mongga. And everywhere that Turvey inquired about them, locals had stories about how previous generations dealt with the dumb giants (often putting them to work digging gardens or building walls) and could vaguely gesture to where they had been buried outside their villages (with the warning that their remains were not to be dug up). I really enjoyed Turvey’s adventure writing (from his repeated encounters with chewing betel nut with his hosts — unable to master spitting the juices, the red liquid would dribble helplessly down his chin, staining clothes and notepads — to exploring a cave where locals reported once finding a cache of bones, and discovering it was filled with human excrement and medical waste); his experience was consistently interesting and the storytelling is engaging. As a scientist, Turvey also relates everything back to his research, and this was not always 100% engaging for me — but I did enjoy learning about ideas such as “euhemerism” (that mythology — even the warring gods in Ancient Greece — is often history in disguise), the “Romeo Error” (species thought extinct sometimes turn up alive), and Lord Raglan’s theory (from 1939) that nonliterate societies turn memory into myth after about 150 years (interesting because the inhabitants of Sumba all talk as though the last encounter with a living mili mongga had been about that long [about five generations] in the past). There was much that I found fascinating here.
We may see the universe as fundamentally rational and following immutable natural laws, but to others it remains an enchanted place. As Christopher Hadley wrote in his fascinating investigation of the mythical English dragon-slayer Piers Shonks, “Searching for a kernel of truth by trying to remove the legendary elements misses something, it gets rid of the best bits.” Even amongst researchers, there is increasing recognition that “anthropology should always be open to the possibility of wonder.” It is imperative to consider the mystery of the mili mongga not just from our perspective as outside observers (the so-called etic perspective in anthropology), but also from the perspective of the culture that holds this differing worldview (the emic perspective). This can be extremely difficult — we are all brought up within our own specific cultures, with their own explicit and implicit conventions, assumptions and prejudices about structuring experience and making sense of the world. But if we can gain a different perspective, we might receive some truly surprising insights into how other cultures think about reality.
I particularly engage with these ideas of being “open to the possibility of wonder” and making a real effort to understand each culture’s unique worldview: as Turvey’s ultimate realm of concern is the conservation of threatened species, he ably makes the case that the best way forward just might take a detour through the folklore from the past. Fascinating read.
