A 16-day festival focusing on Austronesian navigational culture will be held from Aug. 13 to Aug. 28 in the Taitung Forest Park, to be accompanied by a special Austronesian exhibition at the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung, festival organizers said yesterday.
"Because of the close relationship between Austronesian people and the ocean -- where they find their food, go adventuring and trade in goods or crafts with other islands -- we chose Austronesian navigational culture as the theme for the festival this year, and we have invited more than 40 groups from Hawaii, the Philippines, Fiji, Okinawa, Palau, South Korea and China to give authentic Austronesian performances," Taitung County Commissioner Hsu Ching-yuan (
Diversification
PHOTO: CNA
Linguist Robert Blust and archeologist Peter Bellwood have argued that before the great Oceanic migrations took place, Taiwan was long a center for Austronesian linguistic and cultural diversification.
Developments in navigation and agriculture allowed the Austronesians to spread across enormous areas of Southeast Asia and Oceania -- ranging from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south, and Easter Island to the east and Madagascar to the west.
Languages
There is a total of more than 200 million speakers of Austronesian languages around the region.
Tourism Bureau official Chiu Chang-kuang (
The festival will end with a concert on Aug. 28 at the National Museum of Prehistory, where the Puyuma pop star A-mei (
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