Lost world of Malaysia

Little-known Unesco site in Perak hopes its archaeological past will spark tourism boom

- Ram Anand

A little-known town in Malaysia’s northern Perak state is ready for its share of tourists, a good decade after it was listed as the country’s fourth Unesco World Heritage site.

Lenggong, located some 80km north of Perak’s capital Ipoh, is hardly a mainstream tourist attraction, unlike Penang or Melaka, the two other Unesco sites in Peninsular Malaysia.

Nestled in a valley between the Bintang and Titiwangsa mountain ranges, Lenggong is straddled by the Perak River and the man-made Chenderoh Lake.

A sleepy hamlet filled with greenery, bodies of water and only 15,000 mostly-agrarian inhabitants, Lenggong does not have any major hotels and experiences the occasional power outage.

However, its historical significance surpasses these drawbacks. The Lenggong Valley was gazetted as a Unesco site for archaeology in 2012 – the only such site in Malaysia under that category.

The town and its surrounding villages are home to sites that contain evidence of prehistoric settlements dating back nearly two million years.

It is famous among historians for being the discovery site of the Perak Man, South-east Asia’s oldest most complete human skeleton to date.

Perak Man – found in 1991 in a cave in Lenggong’s limestone hill complex – is estimated to be 11,000 years old. The museum housing the skeleton is currently closed for upgrading works, but a replica can be found at Universiti Sains Malaysia’s field centre, while the cave is open to those who visit with knowledgeable local guides and trekking equipment.