Indonesia Peoples of Sumatra
Ceremonial cotton cloth of the Lampung ethnic group of
southern Sumatra
Courtesy Museum Nasional Indonesia and Festival of Indonesia
The vast, heavily forested island of Sumatra forms the
southern
perimeter of the Strait of Malacca. The strait is one of
the most
important lanes of shipping and commerce in the world, and
historically a crossroads of cultural influences from the
Middle
East, India, China, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia and
East Asia.
Although nearly all of the approximately twenty
ethnolinguistic
groups of Sumatra are devout practitioners of Islam, they
nonetheless differ strikingly from one another,
particularly in
their family structures.
Data as of November 1992
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