Pieter van Stein Callenfels and House of the Hobbits
In the dense jungles of Sumatra, a Dutch archaeologist unearthed the enigmatic remnants of a forgotten prehistoric civilisation, uncovering secrets that stretch across Southeast Asia — and beyond.
The sun was setting over the dense forests when Dr. Pieter Vincent van Stein Callenfels, the distinguished Dutch archaeologist, arrived at the enigmatic “House of the Gnomes” near Sibolangit in 1920. Local legends spoke in hushed tones of this eerie site — a massive tuff block balanced precariously over a deep ravine, its rocky face carved with a small chamber. They called it the Roemah Koemang, or the House of the Gnomes, believing it to be the home of supernatural beings who once roamed these lands. For generations, villagers had whispered of its hidden secrets, hinting at underground chambers and relics of an ancient civilisation long forgotten.
But van Stein Callenfels, the Director of the Archaeological Department of the Netherlands Indies, wasn’t interested in folklore — he sought facts. Towering at 1.9 meters and weighing over 125 kilograms, Callenfels was a formidable presence, instantly recognisable by his bushy beard and commanding voice. Known for his irreverent humour and wit with a remarkable tolerance for whisky, his unconventional personality was matched by his academic prowess.
The story began with a wealthy Dutch planter (Kok from Timbang Deli), mourning the loss of his beloved wife, who turned to a clairvoyant medium in hopes of communicating with her spirit. As doubt crept into his mind, he sought to test the medium’s powers. When an elderly local mentioned the House of the Gnomes, the planter’s interest was piqued. After some persuasion, the medium claimed to see, through her visions, a vast network of underground chambers filled with ancient figures dressed in white robes. Enthralled, the planter funded an excavation.
The dig began with great anticipation, but what they uncovered fell short of the medium’s grandiose claims. Just as hopes dwindled, a laborer discovered a curious stone — small, unusually heavy, and seemingly ordinary. However, once cleaned, it revealed a pattern of blue lines etched across its surface, resembling an inscription in a script unknown to them. The discovery was so perplexing that the excavation was halted. Whatever this stone was, it clearly didn’t belong to the unassuming tomb.
Years later, in 1924, the stone caught the eye of van Stein Callenfels in Batavia. He immediately recognised it as a hand axe, a relic of Paleolithic humans. Realising its significance, he organised a fresh expedition to Sibolangit, convinced there was more to uncover. The hand axe hadn’t originated from the chamber but had likely rolled down from a higher ridge ages ago. Despite finding no other Paleolithic artifacts to support continuous human presence, the expedition ended not in defeat but with a tantalising clue pointing to deeper historical mysteries hidden within Sumatra’s rugged terrain.
Dr. van Stein Callenfels was now on a mission. Sibolangit was merely the start of his quest to piece together the prehistory of the region. He journeyed across Java, Malaya, and Siam, searching for evidence of a prehistoric civilisation that had once flourished across Southeast Asia. Reports of peculiar shell mounds along Sumatra’s East Coast intrigued him — ancient heaps of mollusk shells interspersed with animal bones and stone tools. These “kitchen middens,” as archaeologists termed them, were refuse heaps from prehistoric communities, offering glimpses into ancient peoples’ diets and daily lives. Heusser, a Swiss biologist, and Mjöberg, a Swedish entomologist, had documented several of these mounds, but the findings remained inconclusive.
Intrigued, van Stein Callenfels ventured deeper, drawn by stories of ancient mounds rising three meters high, containing not just shells but also the skeletal remains of tigers, rhinoceroses, monkeys, and even dolphins. The shells of Meretrix meretrix, a clam locally called kepah, had been meticulously opened in a manner still practised by coastal fishermen today, suggesting a continuous link between past and present.
Determined to uncover answers, van Stein Callenfels led a systematic excavation at Saentis Plantation, near Medan. This time, his approach was meticulous, his records precise. What he unearthed astonished the archaeological community: a rich collection of stone tools, mortars, pestles, and artifacts that painted a picture of a sophisticated society thriving in the region’s swamps. The hallmark of this culture was a distinctive tool — a waterworn stone chipped on one side but left smooth on the other. He called it the Sumatra-type, later called “Sumatralith” in the archaeological lexicon. It was also found in Boekit Krang.
As news of his findings spread, enthusiasm grew, and soon, fifty more sites were identified, each yielding similar stone tools. A pattern began to emerge, revealing a prehistoric culture that spanned Sumatra’s lowlands and highlands. But the inland location of many of these shell mounds, some 10 to 15 kilometers from the present coastline. Sumatra’s coastline had been reshaped by time and tectonic forces. Van Stein Callenfels theorised that these ancient peoples had lived along a shoreline that had since receded, their coastal settlements left stranded inland as the land rose or the sea fell, concealing the truth of their existence beneath layers of sediment and dense vegetation.
The discoveries didn’t stop there. Similar stone tools began to appear in far-flung locales — Borneo, and across the sea in Indochina. In the limestone caves of the Bacson Massif, north of Hanoi, archaeologists unearthed axes almost identical to the Sumatraliths. Van Stein Callenfels, never one to leave a question unanswered, proposed a joint expedition with Ivor Hugh Norman Evans, the British government ethnographer in Malaya. Together, they scoured the Malay Peninsula, piecing together the puzzle of a culture that had traversed hundreds of miles, carrying their distinct tools and traditions with them.
Their expedition was a resounding success. The stone axes they discovered matched the Sumatraliths, proving that this prehistoric culture was not confined to Sumatra but extended across Southeast Asia, connecting distant regions through a shared Paleolithic heritage.
Van Stein Callenfels’ larger-than-life persona had inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character, Professor Challenger, in The Lost World. Conan Doyle had reportedly met the towering archaeologist in Singapore in 1913 and immortalised him as the brilliant but eccentric scientist. Later Callenfels said “When Conan Doyle knew me I was only a young chap of 20 stone and hardly corresponded to Dr. Challenger”.
Known as “Ivan the Terrible”, Callenfels often required a sedan chair carried by local workers to traverse field sites. His larger-than-life presence even extended to his accommodations — when he attended the Congress of Far East Prehistorians in Singapore, his ship’s bunk had to be specially widened and reinforced to support his frame. A London newspaper once dubbed him “Twenty-four Stone of Solid Science.” Asked about
He passed away due to a heart failure in Colombo in 1938, leaving a lasting legacy in Southeast Asian archaeology.
Meanwhile, time took its toll on the archaeological treasures he had uncovered. By the 1980s, the shell mounds became quarries, grinding the ancient refuse heaps into lime powder. Only a single mound in Tamiang, now known as bukit kerang, remained intact. Similarly, the hobbit houses of the Karo and Toba regions, once scattered across the landscape, have all but vanished, with only a few surviving as silent witnesses to a lost world that van Stein Callenfels dedicated his life to uncovering.