Pre-Taliban Afghanistan

The following show an Afghanistan that was happier, friendlier, and immensely attractive. To view 28 more photographs of Afghanistan, please go to http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/victorenglebert, click on Galleries, and then on the Afghanistan picture.

Time is flying so fast that I sometimes forget that I was living before the rise of television and computers. A few days ago I came across my nearly forgotten photographs of stone-age people. Stone-aged people in my life time? Just look at the following photographs.

In 1968, having spent four months among the former head-hunting Dyak of Borneo, some of whom still had skulls hanging in their longhouses, I traveled briefly to Irian Jaya, Indonesia'western half of New Guinea, where I watched real men sharpening and using stone axes.

But then, on Indonesia's more than 17,000 islands, over 900 of which are inhabited, and of which I visited eight over a period of seven months, you can experience the most amazing variety of civilizations, races, cultures, and religions there may be anywhere else over a similar area.

Brief sojourn at the stone age