ABSTRACT
Batak history over the past century can be read as a case study of rapid modernisation—from cannibalism to computer science’. The huge honeycomb tomb of Manihuruk marga was somewhat different, combining the functions of monument to the ancestors and collective tomb for the bones of the whole marga. This tugu was erected in 1993, on the initiative of a retired Police General in Jakarta, unusual in that he moved physically back to his native village on Samosir, built a palace by the lakeside there for himself, and had the tugu erected with his own funds. The Christianisation of the Batak was a relatively rapid process, beginning with Nommensen’s conversion of the influential Raja Pontas Lumbantobing in 1865, but becoming rapid only after the viability of the old religious order was dramatically undermined by the defeat of Singamangaraja XII in 1883. The turbulence of the 1940s and 1950s brought great change to Batak society.
