The large island off the west coast of northern Sumatra, with the Batu islands to its south, lived on by a people of their own language and megalithic custom (stone seats, carved stones, villages on hilltops).
No text of the age names the island, and nothing is known of chiefs, villages or quarrels for 1200. The slave trade and the great villages of the sources are later. It is drawn because it is a populated island on the coast route to Barus and the open ocean, and the campaign board should show where the known world thins out. Everything about its customs is later ethnography read back.
Who holds it
- Title
- Village chiefs of Nias, not named
- Since
- not known
- Born
- not known
- Family
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No source names a holder for any date near 1 January 1200.
Overlord
None named.
What it holds
- The island's villages and fields
How things stand that morning
Not recorded. Hilltop villages under their own chiefs; no state, no port of the age is attested.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Thin: later ethnography, the campaign board and geography; nothing dated near 1 January 1200 describes the people.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: Drawn on the modern regencies (kabupaten) that match the people's later homeland; the boundaries of 1200 are not known.
Sources and studies
- Island histories and archaeology of Nias, Simeulue, the Mentawai islands and Enggano, as the OMNIA board states them; no medieval text names them, and we found none to cite
- Nineteenth and twentieth century ethnography of the Batak, Minangkabau, Rejang and Lampung peoples (Dutch and later writers), read back to 1200 as a caution only, from memory, not rechecked
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.