The ancestors of today's Polynesians originated in Taiwan around 5,200 years ago, spreading into the Philippines and eastward into the Pacific, according to a study of the region's languages that backs up the findings of other similar studies.
Scientists at Auckland University used computers to analyze the vocabulary of 400 Austronesian languages from Southeast Asia and the Pacific as part of their research into how the Pacific was settled.
The Austronesian language family is one of the largest in the world, including 1,200 languages spread across the Pacific region, professor Russell Gray said yesterday.
“By studying the basic vocabulary from these languages, such as words for animals, simple verbs, colors and numbers, we can trace how these languages evolved,” Gray said.
“The relationships between these languages give us a detailed history of Pacific settlement,” Gray said.
The results, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, show how migration from Taiwan paused for long periods.
Before entering the Philippines, the Austronesians paused in Southeast Asia for around a thousand years and then spread across the region from the Philippines to Polynesia in less than a thousand years.
After settling in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, the Austronesians stopped for another thousand years before spreading further into Polynesia and eventually reaching New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island.
New Zealand was believed to have been settled by the Maori about 700 to 800 years ago.
Research fellow Simon Greenhill said that the stages of the expansion could be linked with new technology, such as better voyaging canoes.
“Using these new technologies, the Austronesians and Polynesians were able to rapidly spread through the Pacific in one of the greatest human migrations ever,” he said.
Other archeological and DNA research has supported the theory that Polynesians are linked to Taiwan's Aborigines.
A bilateral relations fact sheet on Taiwan-US relations published on the US Department of State Web site was recently updated to remove statements saying that it acknowledged Beijing’s “one China” position, and that the US does not support Taiwanese independence. The fact sheet is produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. A previous version of the document opened with the statement: “The United States and Taiwan enjoy a robust unofficial relationship.” It said the US acknowledged “the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China,” and said that the US “does
INDIRECT MESSAGE? Chinese planes might have entered Taiwan’s ADIZ to take part in drills with a carrier group that was about 500km off the east coast, an analyst said The Chinese military yesterday said it had conducted live-fire drills in waters and airspace off Taiwan’s eastern and southwestern coasts from Friday to Sunday to test and upgrade its joint combat capabilities. The Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) posted the news on Chinese messaging platform WeChat. Over the past few days, authorities in Taiwan and Japan have observed deployments of Chinese planes and ships near Taiwan from a PLA carrier group of five destroyers, a frigate and a resupply ship led by the Liaoning aircraft carrier. The Japanese Ministry of Defense first announced on Monday last week that
China appears to have built mockups of a port in northeastern Taiwan and a military vessel docked there, with the aim of using them as targets to test its ballistic missiles, a retired naval officer said yesterday. Lu Li-shih (呂禮詩), a former lieutenant commander in Taiwan’s navy, wrote on Facebook that satellite images appeared to show simulated targets in a desert in China’s Xinjiang region that resemble the Suao naval base in Yilan County and a Kidd-class destroyer that usually docks there. Lu said he compared the mockup port to US naval bases in Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan, and in Subic Bay
Police are investigating the death of a Formosan black bear discovered on Tuesday buried near an industrial road in Nantou County, with initial evidence indicating that it was shot accidentally by a hunter. The bear had been caught in wildlife traps at least five times before, three times since 2020. Codenamed No. 711, the bear received extensive media coverage last year after it was discovered trapped twice in less than two months in the Taichung mountains. After its most recent ensnarement last month, the bear was released in the Dandashan (丹大山) area in Nantou County’s Sinyi Township (信義). However, officials became concerned after the
RSS