Timor island is the most southeastern part
of Indonesia and also one of the largest
island on the East Nusa Tenggara Region. The
island is 450 km long and 105 km wide. Area
30.820 sq. km, with a population of about
1.3 million on the Western part. Timor
island has now became two significant part
of the world as the eastern part has
previously form up a new country (Timor
Leste). The island has several mountain
chains, the highest mountains can be found
on the eastern part. Highest mountain is
Gunung Ramelau, also called Tata Mailau,
2.950 m on East Timor. Like the rest of
eastern Nusa Tenggara the soil here is quite
poor, with a dry season that lasts from
March to December. Still most of the
population are occupied with farming of some
kind, mainly growing rice, corn, coffee and
fruit. The island also has several valuable
tree species like eucalyptus, sandalwood,
teak and bamboo, in addition there has been
found gold and silver here. In the Timor Sea
that separates Timor and north Australia
large quantities of oil has been discovered,
the rights to these was shared between
Indonesia and Australia, this is being
renegotiated now that East Timor has become
an independent state.
The people on Timor comes from the different
ethnic background, a mix of Malay,
Polynesian and Papuan, but there is also a
small group of Chinese heritage too. About
90% of the inhabitants are Christian, some
are Muslim and some are still hanging on to
the old traditional religions from the
region.
Before
the arrival of the Europeans the island was
split in several small rival kingdoms, the
two largest groups were Tetum and Atoni,
which is the largest group on West Timor
today. Atoni was probably influenced by
Hinduism, but at the same time they kept
their animistic religion. The first
Europeans that arrived on Timor was the
Portuguese, probably as early as 1512.
Because of the large quantities of
sandalwood the island was considered to be
very valuable. This led to a conflict
between Portugal and the Netherlands
regarding control of the trade from Timor,
and in the middle of the 17th century the
Dutch occupied Kupang on West Timor, now the
provincial capital. In the middle of the
18th century the Portuguese withdraw to the
eastern part of the island
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