GEORGE TOWN: The Penang government is expecting the repatriation of several dozen skeletons, currently stored at the National Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden, Holland, to Malaysia, in the first quarter of 2024.
DutchNews.nl recently reported that the skeletons, thought to be around 5,000 years old, were dug up by British archeologists in Penang between 1851 and 1934.
In total, they found 41, of which 37 are now in Leiden. The whereabouts of the others are unknown.
Malaysia has requested for their return.
State Tourism and Creative Economy Committee chairman Yeoh Soon Hin said the state government had conducted several meetings with the Embassy of the Netherlands in Malaysia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs-Europe Division, Customs Malaysia, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry and the National Heritage Department.
"I have also personally met up with the Ambassador-Designate at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Malaysia, His Excellency Jaap Werner to discuss the procedure for the repatriation of the skeletons.
"We are now in the process of preparing the necessary documentations for the pre-repatriation and lining up more discussions to iron up the details such as exchange note from both the Penang and the Netherlands governments, obtaining Naturalis Biodiversity Centre's permission for the documentation of the whole process of repatriation," he told the New Straits Times today.
Yeoh said, according to the state government's timeline, they were expecting that repatriation would be done in the first quarter of 2024.
In August this year, the NST reported that researchers from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) scored another major breakthrough five years after they found a prehistoric human skeleton, dubbed the "Penang Woman", believed to be at least 5,000 years old.
This time around, the same researchers had put a face to the Penang Woman using the Forensic Facial Approximation method.
The skeleton was found during the construction of a gallery for the Guar Kepah neolithic site in Kepala Batas in 2017.
With the help of Cicero Moraes, a 3D graphics expert from Brazil, they used the 3D virtual reconstruction method to create the Penang Woman's facial features based on a scientific date obtained from a CT scan performed on the skeleton.
The same team was also instrumental in reconstructing the facial features for the more than 10,000-year-old "Perak Man" using the same method last year.
Researchers had said then that a more detailed study could be conducted if Malaysia brought back the 41 skeletons from three shell middens in Guar Kepah, which were excavated by British archaeologists between 1851 and 1934 and currently at the National Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden, Holland.
When the Penang Woman skeleton was found in April 2017, researchers came across a skull, a femur bone and a rib cage beneath the floor of a house, which had been demolished to make way for the gallery.
Shell middens refer to mounds of kitchen debris consisting mostly of shells and other food remnants and indicate ancient human settlement and sometimes used as burial sites.
The remains were discovered in shell midden B with her arms folded and surrounded by pottery, stone tools and several type of shells, a sign of her important position in her society.
In total, 41 skeletons from three shell middens, identified as A, B and C in Guar Kepah, were excavated by British archaeologists between 1851 and 1934 and those skeletons are now at the National Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden, Holland.
The original Penang Woman is being carefully conserved in USM as it had to be in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, which meant the skeleton currently showcased at the gallery is a replica of the original.