The 2004 Austronesian Cultural Festival kicked off yesterday in Taitung, focusing on the mythologies, worship and ritual practices in Austronesian civilization.
A total of 14 groups from 10 Austronesian-language countries and areas are taking part in the festival, which will run through Aug. 15.
The annual festival, organized by the Taitung County government and the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung City, is the fifth of its kind since the first was held in 2000.
In addition to visiting an exhibition of artifacts, handicrafts and historical relics, festival-goers will also be able to get a better understanding of the migrations of the Austronesian people and of their cultures.
Demonstrations will also include swing riding by the Rukai people; net fishing by the Amis people; pottery-making by the Paiwan people; and canoe making by the Dawu people, according to the sponsors.
Taiwan's Aboriginal people are believed to belong to the Austronesian-language group, which probably underwent the widest physical dispersion of a single language family prior to the European colonial expansion following Columbus. The Aborigines dispersed from the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa all the way to the tiny, isolated Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and extending to Taiwan, Vietnam, northern Australia, New Zealand and most of the Melanesian and Polynesian islands.
This country's Aboriginal people -- the native groups that predate all other ethnic groups in the country -- could have originated either from the southern part of China or from the vast Austronesian-language region.
Taiwan's Aborigines were considered the northernmost Austronesian people. The government currently divides them into 10 major mountain tribes and 10 Pingpu, or lowland, groups. While elements of the languages and culture of the 10 mountainous races have been maintained, most of the native languages of the Pingpu peoples have died out and no traces remain.
Among the mountainous Aborigines, the Saisiat and the Atayal are believed to have migrated to Taiwan some 3,000 years ago.
Anthropologists do not know what happened, or when, to cause some of the country's earliest natives to die out or disappear, but efforts to seek traces of the original natives' existence via anthropological, linguistic and historical studies have been continuing.
One thing is certain, according to an anthropologist with the Cabinet-level Council of Aboriginal Affairs: the legendary "black pygmies" existed at the same time as the Aboriginal peoples, because Saisiat men still hold an annual rite to worship the souls of the "little tribal men." The Saisiat people even traveled to the Philippines several years ago to seek the roots of these "black pygmies."
Meanwhile, the nation's Pingpu peoples -- Aborigines who lived in low-lying areas around the island, many of whom intermarried with the Han Chinese -- can be roughly divided into 10 different groups, including the Ketagalan in the Taipei area and the Kavalan in the eastern Ilan area.
The few descendants of these peoples are now working to establish their own identities and refuse to be considered extinct races.
In a new theory developed in Australia and New Zealand in recent years, anthropologists believe that Austronesian-language people originated in this country.
Professor Geoffrey Chambers of Victoria University in Wellington believes that Maori and other Polynesian peoples of the Pacific "island-hopped" from Taiwan through the Philippines and Indonesia to West Polynesia. From there, he says, they traveled to the islands of East Polynesia and then southwest, eventually settling in New Zealand.
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