Austronesian

The Austronesian family is the most widespread in the world, representing one of the most phenomenal records of colonization and dispersal in the history of mankind (Blurt 1995a; Bellwood 1991, 1997a; Pawley 2003). Austronesian languages are now spoken in Madagascar, Taiwan, parts of southern Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and all of Indonesia except for the Papuan-speaking regions in and around New Guinea (Figure 7.4). They are also spoken right across the Pacific, to as far east as Easter Island, encompassing about 210 degrees of longitude, or more than halfway around the earth's circumference at the equator. Because of the wealth of comparative research carried out on the Austronesian languages it is possible to draw some very sound conclusions, using purely linguistic evidence, concerning the region of origin of the family, the directions of its subsequent spread, and also the vocabularies of important early proto-languages, particularly Proto-Austronesian and its most significant daughter, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. The Malayo-Polynesian languages do not include those of Taiwan, but incorporate the vast remaining distribution of the family from Madagascar to Easter Island.

The reconstruction of overall Austronesian linguistic prehistory which is most acceptable today, and which fits best with all independent sources of evidence, is that favored by the linguist Robert Blust (1995a, 1999). Reduced to its essentials, this reconstruction favors a geographical expansion beginning in Taiwan, the location of Proto-Austronesian and of the majority of the primary subgroups of Austronesian (at least nine out of ten, according to Blust). Subsequent Malayo-Polynesian dispersal then encompassed the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi, finally spreading in two branches, one west to Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula (the Western MalayoPolynesian languages), the other east into Oceania (Figure 10.9 inset).

The Proto-Austronesian vocabulary, sourced to Taiwan, indicates an economy well suited to marginal tropical latitudes with cultivated rice, millet, and sugarcane, domesticated dogs, pigs, and possibly water buffalo, weaving, and the use of canoes (sails are less certain at this stage). The vocabulary of Proto,Malayo-Polynesian, perhaps of northern Philippine genesis, adds a

number of tropical economic indicators which are not well attested in the earlier Proto-Austronesian stage, since Taiwan lies partly outside the tropics. These include taro, breadfruit, banana, yam, sago, and coconut, and their presences reflect the shift away from rice toward a greater dependence on tubers and fruits in equatorial latitudes (Zorc 1994; Pawley and Pawley 1994; Dewar 2003).

Figure 10.9 This phylogenetic tree of 77 Austronesian languages is derived from a parsimony analysis by Russell Gray and Fiona Jordan (2000). The tree shows considerable agreement with the linguistic subgroups of Robert Blust (inset) and reflects historical relationships, not just geographical ones (e.g., Malagasy and Ngaju Dayak are subgrouped, in accord with the comparative linguistic evidence for their very close relationship, even through they are located 8,000 kilometers

apart). WMP = Western Malayo-Polynesian, SH-WNG = South HalmaheraWest New Guinea.

As indicated by Blust (1993) and Pawley (1999, 2003), the early MalayoPolynesian languages spread very far very quickly, before linguistic differentiation was able to develop. As an example, the oldest MalayoPolynesian language in western Oceania (Proto-Oceanic, probably located in the Bismarck Archipelago) shared almost 90 percent of its basic vocabulary with Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, located perhaps in the northern Philippines almost 5,000 kilometers away. Such rake-like relationships between subgroups are a very strong indicator of a rapid foundation spread, at least from the northern Philippines to the central Pacific. A fairly rapid "express train" model of Austronesian linguistic expansion from Taiwan is also supported by a maximum parsimony analysis of Austronesian vocabularies by Russell Gray and Fiona Jordan (2000). Their tree of subgrouping relationships is shown in Figure 10.9.

Of course, much Austronesian dispersal occurred long after the Neolithic - to southern Vietnam and Madagascar, for instance, both probably Iron Age movements. But the foundation spread into Remote Oceania was fundamentally based on agricultural subsistence and Neolithic voyaging technology. Other factors such as presences of naive faunas and desires for founder status were certainly significant too, but these are a little peripheral for the broad scale of this discussion. Essentially, in the hierarchy of "causes" of Austronesian dispersal, the development of agriculture in Neolithic China and Taiwan played the most significant foundation role.

Piecing it together for East Asia

The data reviewed so far for eastern Asia suggest the following inferences based on the comparative linguistic and archaeological data sets:

1. Linguistically, a series of language families founded with agricultural and domestic animal vocabularies evolved in central and southern China, with extensions into the northern fringes of Southeast Asia and Taiwan (Figure 10.8B). Three of these language families - Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and Austronesian - underwent major expansions long before history began, in the latter case with very firm phylogenetic reconstructions indicating spread southward from Taiwan into Indonesia and Oceania. Linguistic dating estimates for the foundation protolanguages in these families, albeit rather impressionistic, indicate ages generally between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago - post-hunter-gatherer and pre-Iron Age in cultural terms.

Numerous linguistic hypotheses suggest that these families share basal relationships, implying their derivations from regions quite close together in space.' However, I would not be so unwise as to claim that all relationships are ones of common descent; arguments for early borrowing also are numerous. The suggestion here is that early forms of the major families - Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Hmong-Mien, Austronesian, and Tai - were at one time located sufficiently close together for some degree of sharing of common heritage. Laurent Sagart's claims for links between Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan, via the intermediacy of the Dawenkou culture of the Shandong Neolithic (ca. 4000 Bc), are of particular interest here, in the light of recent discoveries of foxtail millet and the ritual

extraction of upper lateral incisor teeth in both Neolithic Shandong and Taiwan.' 2. Archaeologically, rice and millet cultivation in central China precede any evidence for agriculture in Southeast Asia by about 3,000 years. After 3000 Be there was a spread of Neolithic cultures through the mainland and islands of Southeast Asia, in radiocarbon terms decreasing in age southward toward Malaysia and into Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The northerly cultures grew rice, whereas those along the equator in Island

Southeast Asia depended on fruits and tubers. Related pottery and other artifact forms suggest ultimate origins for these complexes in the southern China-Taiwan region, with accretions of other native crops in Indonesia and the western Pacific. As far as Austronesian is concerned, a standstill of about 1,000 years in Taiwan, before Neolithic cultures spread further into the Philippines, is documented by both the archaeological and the linguistic records.

At this point, it would take a very determined skeptic indeed to suggest that these patterns are totally unrelated and coincidental. The suggestion that early agricultural economies, and foundation layers of language families, spread hand in hand is a very powerful one in the Asia-Pacific situations discussed (Bellwood 1991, 1996b, 2001a, 2001b, 2003).