By: Deddy Christianto Todongi
Albert Christian Kruyt (1906), a Dutch missionary and ethnographer who studied the life and culture of the Poso people and introduced the megaliths of the Bada Valley to the academic world.
More than a century ago, the name Albert Christian Kruyt became an important part of Poso’s history. This Dutch missionary was known not only as an evangelist but also as the first ethnographer to document the life of the Pamona people and the megalithic sites of the Bada Valley in Poso Regency, Central Sulawesi.
Kruyt arrived in Poso at the end of the 19th century with his colleague Nicolaus Adriani, under a missionary mission from the Nederlandsche Zendingsvereeniging. However, beyond his spiritual duties, Kruyt played a major role in opening the world’s eyes to the richness of local culture. He recorded the language, customs, beliefs, and the megalithic stones scattered across the Lore and Bada regions — areas that today form part of Lore Lindu National Park.
In his writings, Kruyt described how the local communities possessed a deeply rich social and spiritual system. He wrote about burial ceremonies, ancestral spirit rituals, and the symbolic meanings of the large stones erected in the middle of the valley.
Funeral documentation in the Poso region (1918) taken directly by A.C. Kruyt. Such photographs serve as valuable records of the Pamona people's traditions and social systems in the early 20th century.
One of his most famous photographs, Funeral feast in the Poso area (1918), depicts a traditional burial festival with animal offerings — an anthropological documentation now preserved in Dutch archives.
Over time, Kruyt’s reports and writings became key references for global megalith researchers. His explorations in Bada brought international recognition to Central Sulawesi in the field of archaeology. Through his research, he introduced the idea that the massive stones in the Bada Valley were not mere relics of ancestors, but symbols of a complex spiritual civilization.
Megaliths in the Bada Valley, Poso. This site is part of the cultural heritage first documented by A.C. Kruyt and Adriani in the early 20th century.
Now, more than a hundred years later, the legacy that Kruyt once recorded still stands tall. The Bada megaliths have become an internationally recognized archaeological destination, while Kruyt’s name remains immortalized as the first bridge between the Western world and the culture of Poso.
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