The Power of Plants: Nourishment, Healing, and Craft in the Rainforests of Sunda

India Ella Dilkes-Hall1*, Tim Ryan Maloney1†, Andika Arief Drajat Priyatno2, Etha Sriputri2, Adhi Agus Oktaviana3, Pindi Setiawan4†, and Maxime Aubert1

Despite its considerable geographical significance—as the southeastern margin of Sunda, the Pleistocene megacontinent formed during lower sea levels, and key launching platform to Wallacea and Sahul—Borneo has received limited archaeobotanical attention. Large parts of the island, including the entirety of East Kalimantan (an area comparable in size to the UK), remain entirely without systematic archaeobotanical investigation. Archaeological excavation at Liang Tebo, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, recovered the skeletal remains of a young human individual. This individual (TB1) survived transtibial amputation in childhood and lived for another 6–9 years before their careful interment 31,000 years ago. TB1 is the oldest and most complete human primary burial currently known from Island Southeast Asia and provides unprecedented evidence for the earliest complex medical intervention in the world—long predating comparable Eurasian and American examples associated with the emergence of agricultural lifeways. While remarkable, the amputation itself is not the papers focus. Instead, TB1 highlights the potential for culturally and ecologically informed plant use—inclusive of analgesics, antimicrobials, wound care etc.—to have formed part of the broader behavioural repertoire of mobile rainforest-foraging groups. This paper presents ongoing research integrating archaeological, ethnobotanical, and archaeobotanical datasets from Borneo to explore the hypothesis that tropical rainforest environments uniquely shape knowledge systems and provide prompting ecological conditions for the emergence of complex medico–socio–cultural practices in early human history.