Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste holds the eastern half of Timor, the largest of the Lesser Sunda Islands, plus Oecusse, an enclave on the north-west coast, and the island of Atauro offshore. A mountain spine climbs to Mount Ramelau, where walkers set out before dawn to watch the sunrise beside a statue of the Virgin Mary. The north coast, facing the Wetar Strait, is dry and scrubby; the south, open to the Timor Sea, has longer rains and wider plains.

Tuna bones in the Jerimalai rock shelter show people fishing the open sea over forty thousand years ago. Sandalwood later drew Chinese and Javanese traders, then the Portuguese, who arrived in the sixteenth century and first governed from Lifau, in Oecusse. Japan held the territory from 1942 to 1945. When Portugal withdrew in 1975, Indonesian rule followed and lasted until 1999; after a spell of United Nations administration, independence came in May 2002.

Nearly all Timorese are Roman Catholic, yet each clan also keeps an uma lulik, a sacred house guarding ancestral heirlooms. Women weave tais, cloth whose patterns and dyes tell which district it comes from. Highland farms around Ermera and Maubisse grow arabica coffee, and the Timor Hybrid, a natural cross with robusta found on the island, gave breeders worldwide a defence against leaf rust. Gas and oil beneath the Timor Sea have funded much of the state through a petroleum fund.