My Story About Waruga

As Indonesian youth, I guess we are supposed to know about our country's uniqueness. Now, I want to write a few about our country's wonderful histotical remains.

Indonesia ia one of few countries who have the remains of ancient culture. Yup, Indonesia is also famous with the fossil of ancient men, like Pithecantropus Erectus and Megantropus Paleojavanicus. Indonesia also has Sangiran, the biggest site of Ancient men remaining. But, do you know that Indonesia also has remains of Megalitikum culture? Yup, those remains are Waruga. So, what is Waruga?

Those waruga are located in Sawangan, Sulawesi Utara (North Celebes). Warugas are holey big stones. But, what is waruga for? Well, the Minahasa's ancestors used it as grave, stone grave. Waruga name comes from two words, waru and ruga. In Minahasa langguage waru means house and ruga means body. So, waruga means house for body who will go to heaven.

The ancient Minahasa use waruga to bury the dead. They started to use waruga in the 19th century. They put the dead body inside a square holey stone. They also put important things who belonged to dead person, like jewel and tools. After that, they closed the hole with a stone who look like the house roof. They also craft waruga with the relief of the dead person's job. For example, in a hunter's waruga there is animal relief. But, there are some warugas who have no relief. We still have no idea why there is no relief on their warugas.

Just like we know, waruga is the remain of Megalitikum age. The tools in the age still so simple. It makes us think, "How can they dig a hole and craft those very big stones?" Well, the scientist still have no idea. But, these amazing work really make us impressed, don't they?