Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in the South East Asian country of Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. Java is the world's most populous island, home to an estimated 159.2 million people; about 56% of the Indonesian population, while constituting only 7% of the country's land area. Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, is located on Java's northwestern coast.
Many of the best known events in Indonesian history took place on Java. It was the centre of powerful Hindu-Buddhist empires, the Islamic sultanates, and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies. Java was also the center of the Indonesian struggle for independence during the 1930s and 1940s. Java dominates Indonesia politically, economically, and culturally. Five of Indonesia's ten UNESCO world heritage sites are located in Java: Ujung Kulon National Park, Borobudur Temple, Prambanan Temple, Yogyakarta, and Sangiran Early Man Site.
Java was formed by volcanic eruptions due to geologic subduction of the Australian Plate under the Sunda Plate. It is the 13th largest island in the world and the fifth largest in Indonesia by landmass, at about (including Madura's and smaller offshore islands). A chain of volcanic mountains is the east–west spine of the island.
Four main languages are spoken on the island: Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Betawi. Javanese and Sundanese are the most spoken. The ethnic groups native to the island are the Javanese in the central and eastern parts and Sundanese in the western parts. The Madurese in the Eastern salient of Java are migrants from Madura Island (which is part of East Java Province in administrative terms), while the Betawi in the capital city of Jakarta are hybrids from various ethnic groups in Indonesia.
Most residents are bilingual, speaking Indonesian (the official language of Indonesia) as their first or second language. While the majority of the people of Java are Muslim, Java's population comprises people of diverse religious beliefs, ethnicities, and cultures.
Java is divided into four administrative provinces: Banten, West Java, Central Java, and East Java, and two special regions, Jakarta and Yogyakarta.
Etymology
The origins of the name "Java" are not clear. Java may have been named after the jawa (foxtail millet) plant, derived from the Proto-Austronesian root *zawa. The historian Michael Laffan argued that the vernacular form jawa is more likely to have derived from an older form *yaba, based on the directionality of sound changes.
In the early nineteenth century, the British scholar Stamford Raffles suggested that another possible source for Java's name is the word jauh (which he spelled jaú), a Malay word meaning "beyond" or "distant". It has been suggested that another possible root is *awa or *yawa, meaning "home", related to the Polynesian words awaʻi (awaiki) or hawaʻi (hawaiki), but these roots are not universally accepted as Proto-Austronesian.Hatley, R., Schiller, J., Lucas, A., Martin-Schiller, B., (1984). "Mapping cultural regions of Java" in: Other Javas away from the kraton. pp. 1–32. None of these alternative hypotheses has found broad support among scholars, so the jawa (millet) theory remains the generally accepted one.
The toponym Java first appears in foreign literary works around the turn of the Common Era. In Sanskrit texts like the Ramayana, Java is referred to as Yavadvīpa, with meaning "island" and meaning "barley". Java is mentioned in the ancient Tamil epic Maṇimēkalai (spelled ) and also in the Pāli scripture Mahāniddesa (likely pre-1st century BCE) as a place to be reached by boats.De la Vallee Poussin, L., Thomas, E.J., ed. (1916), "Niddesa I, Mahaniddesa", Vol. 1, The Pali Text Society, London, Oxford University Press. (Pali edition)
The Greek term mentioned in Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia (150 CE), composed during the height of the Roman Empire, possibly derives from a Middle Indo-Aryan language and seems to be a synonym of the Sanskrit .
Chinese sources render the toponym Java, as () and () in the early first millennium CE. Subsequently, there emerged a new Chinese toponym (), as found in the court chronicles Book of Song (late 5th century) and Book of Liang (7th century). From the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) onwards, Java began to be called (), the present-day name in Mandarin Chinese.Lombard, Denys (2005). Nusa Jawa: Silang Budaya, Bagian 2: Jaringan Asia. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama. An Indonesian translation of Lombard, Denys (1990). Le carrefour javanais. Essai d'histoire globale (The Javanese Crossroads: Towards a Global History) vol. 2. Paris: Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. p. 12.
In the later Middle Ages, Muslim writers began to refer to the islands of Indonesia by the term al-Zabaj (). The Arabic usage of the word Zabaj was very broad, often incorporating either Sumatra or Java or both. It is the Arabic term Zabaj, rather than the ancient Greek term Iabadiu, that had the greater influence on late medieval Europeans.Yule, Sir Henry (1913). Cathay and the way thither: being a collection of medieval notices of China vol. III. London: The Hakluyt Society.Braginsky, Vladimir. 1998. Two Eastern Christian sources on medieval Nusantara . Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 154(3): 367–396.
Geography
Java lies between Sumatra to the west and Bali to the east. Borneo lies to the north, and Christmas Island is to the south. It is the world's 13th largest island. Java is surrounded by the Java Sea to the north, the Sunda Strait to the west, the Indian Ocean to the south and Bali Strait and Madura Strait in the east.
Java is almost entirely of volcanic origin; it contains 38 mountains forming an east–west spine that have at one time or another been active volcanoes. There are 112 volcanoes in all, 35 of which are active. The highest volcano in Java is Mount Semeru, . The most active volcano in Java and also in Indonesia is Mount Merapi, .
Java's mountains and highlands split the interior into a series of relatively isolated regions suitable for wet-rice cultivation; the rice lands of Java are among the richest in the world. Java was the first place where Indonesian coffee was grown, beginning in 1699. Today, coffea arabica is grown on the Ijen Plateau by small-holders and larger plantations.
The area of Java is about (including Madura's and minor offshore islands). It is about long and up to wide. The island's longest river is the 600 km long Solo River. The river rises from its source in central Java at the Lawu volcano, then flows north and eastward to its mouth in the Java Sea near the city of Surabaya. Other major rivers are Brantas, Citarum, Cimanuk and Serayu.
The average temperature ranges from to ; average humidity is 75%. The northern coastal plains are normally hotter, averaging during the day in the dry season. The south coast is generally cooler than the north, and highland areas inland are even cooler. The wet season begins in November and ends in April. During that time, rain falls mostly in the afternoons and intermittently during other parts of the year. The wettest months are January and February.
West Java is wetter than East Java, and mountainous regions receive much higher rainfall. The Parahyangan highlands of West Java receive over annually, while the north coast of East Java receives annually.
Natural environment
Java is an island with a large amount of biodiversity. The natural environment of Java is tropical rainforest, with ecosystems ranging from coastal mangrove forest on the north coast, rocky coastal cliffs on the southern coast, and low-lying tropical forest to high altitude rainforest on the slopes of mountainous volcanic regions in the interior. The Javan environment and climate gradually alters from west to east; from wet and humid dense rainforest in western parts, to a dry savanna environment in the east, corresponding to the climate and rainfall in these regions. Javan wildlife originally supported a rich biodiversity, where numbers of endemic species of flora and fauna flourished; such as the Javan rhinoceros, Javan banteng, Javan warty pig, Javan silvery gibbon, Javan lutung, Java mouse-deer, Javan rusa, and Javan leopard. With over 450 bird species and 37 endemic species including the Javan green magpie, Java sparrow, Javan hawk-eagle, Javan peafowl, and Javan blue-banded kingfisher, Java is a birdwatcher's paradise. There are about 130 freshwater fish species in Java.Nguyen, T. T. T., and S. S. De Silva (2006). Freshwater finfish biodiversity and conservation: an Asian perspective. Biodiversity & Conservation 15(11): 3543–3568. There are also several endemic amphibian species in Java, including 5 species of tree frogs.
Since ancient times, people have opened the rainforest, altered the ecosystem, shaped the landscapes and created rice paddy and terraces to support the growing population. Javan rice terraces have existed for more than a millennium and had supported ancient agricultural kingdoms. The growing human population has put severe pressure on Java's wildlife, as rainforests were diminished and confined to highland slopes or isolated peninsulas. Some of Java's endemic species are now critically endangered, with some already extinct; Java used to have Javan tigers and Javan elephants, but both have been rendered extinct. Today, several national parks exist in Java that protect the remnants of its fragile wildlife, such as Ujung Kulon, Mount Halimun-Salak, Gede Pangrango, Baluran, Meru Betiri, Bromo Tengger Semeru and Alas Purwo.
Surveys conducted by a team led by EcoVerde Global Consulting on the live bats trade in Java showed an ongoing long-term trade of large fruit bats for traditional medicine in all the major cities including Jakarta, Surabaya, Bekasi, Bandung and Yogyakarta. Hundreds of animals are being offered for sale with higher numbers per capita in economically less affluent areas and more bats in cities with larger Christian populations
History Homo erectus presence
Fossilised remains of Homo erectus, popularly known as the "Java Man", dating back 1.3 million years were found along the banks of the Bengawan Solo River.cited in ; cited in ;
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H. erectus arrived in Eurasia approximately 1.8 million years ago, in an event considered to be the first African exodus. There is evidence that the Java population of H. erectus lived in an ever-wet forest habitat. More specifically the environment resembled a savannah, but was likely regularly inundated ("hydromorphic savanna"). The plants found at the Trinil excavation site included grass (Poaceae), ferns, Ficus, and Indigofera, which are typical of lowland rainforest.
H. e. soloensis was the last population of a long occupation history of the island of Java by H. erectus, beginning 1.51 to 0.93 million years ago at the Sangiran site, continuing 540 to 430 thousand years ago at the Trinil site, and finally 117 to 108 thousand years ago at Ngandong. If the date is correct for Solo Man, then they would represent a terminal population of H. erectus which sheltered in the last open-habitat refuges of East Asia before the rainforest takeover. Before the immigration of modern humans, Late Pleistocene Southeast Asia was also home to H. floresiensis endemic to the island of Flores, Indonesia, and H. luzonensis endemic to the island of Luzon, the Philippines. Genetic analysis of present-day Southeast Asian populations indicates the widespread dispersal of the Denisovans (a species currently recognisable only by their genetic signature) across Southeast Asia, whereupon they interbred with immigrating modern humans 45.7 and 29.8 thousand years ago. A 2021 genomic study indicates that, aside from the Denisovans, modern humans never interbred with any of these endemic human species, unless the offspring were unviable or the hybrid lineages have since died out.