Linked by language: A traditional Maori carving from Rotorua, New Zealand. New Zealand is thought to have been the last part of Polynesia to be colonised with the arrival of the Maori 700 to 800 years ago.
Credit: iStockphoto
WELLINGTON: 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 new study of the region's languages.
Scientists at Auckland University in New Zealand used computers to analyse vocabulary from 400 Austronesian languages from South-East Asia and the Pacific to study how the Pacific was settled.
Austronesian language family
The Austronesian language family is one of the largest in the world, including 1,200 languages spread across the Pacific region, said study author Russell Gray.
"By studying the basic vocabulary from these languages, such as words for animals, simple verbs, colours and numbers, we can trace how these languages evolved," he said. "The relationships between these languages give us a detailed history of Pacific settlement."
The results, published in the latest issue of the U.S. 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 7,000 kilometres from the Philippines to Polynesia in less than a thousand years.
After settling 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.
Improved technology
New Zealand was believed to have been settled by the Maori about 700 to 800 years ago.
Research fellow Simon Greenhill said 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 archaeological and DNA research has supported the theory that Polynesians are linked to the indigenous people of Taiwan.
Origin of the Polynesians
This article makes a lot of assumptions that have been disproven through other avenues of research. Sure Polynesians left Taiwan between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago - geneticists believe their time of departure from Taiwan was closer to 6,000 years ago (Melanesian origin of Polynesian Y chromosomes Manfred Kayser, Silke Brauer, Gunter Weiss, Peter A. Underhill, Lutz Roewer, Wulf Schiefenhövel and Mark Stoneking:) They assert that the time of arrival in the Pacific was 2,200 years ago. They also say that there is no evidence of transit through S.E. Asia nor Melanesia. Their studies also clearly showed that Polynesians separated from Melanesians 11,500 years ago, but then re-established contact merely 1,000 years ago.
Lisa Matissoo Smith found that DNA from skeletons of the Lapita people at Teouma were unrelated to Polynesians - Lapita archaeology is often assumed to be evidence of Polynesians passing through Melanesia, despite their toolkit being entirely different. S.W. Serjeantson in “The Colonization of the Pacific – A Genetic Trail 1989 pp 135,162-163,166-7 asserts that there is no HLA evidence of a Polynesian transit through S.E. Asia, the Phillippines, Melanesia or Micronesia.
Archaeological evidence of the colonization of Hawaii has been pushed back to the first millenium BC (Terry L. Hunt and Robert M. Holsen in "An Early Radiocarbon Chronology for the Hawaiian Islands) adding credence to Hawaiian history which asserts that first Hawaiians - the Royal lineage of Hawaii - arrived from Haida Gwai'i (Queen Charlotte Islands, Canada) 2,200 years ago ("The ancient history of Hookumu Ka Lani & Hookumu Ka Honua" by Solomon L.K.Peleioholani). Therefore Polynesians did leave Taiwan between 5,200 and 6,000 years ago at a time of a great flooding of their land (according to legend) and travelled East via the Kuroshio Current to the islands off Canada and Alaska. There they stayed for ~4,000 years (the HLA antigen - HLA Bw48 common to both the Tlingit/Kwakuitl people and Polynesians proves a strong genetic connection between these people. The HLA genetic information also shows the direction of dispersal was FROM Canada and not TO Canada as some might argue. This gene tree was named by Bryan Sykes as the lineage of the moon goddess Ina/Inana/Sina which came from the Middle East 16,000 years ago. This 16,000 year old ancestral figure in Polynesian legend is called Lailai (or Lilly in Sumerian legend).
Polynesians have always asserted that their Pacific homeland was Hawai'i. Maybe the scientists would not have got themselves so confused if they had listened to Polynesian history in the first place.
Have a read of www.polynesian-prehistory.com for more detailed information regarding evidence of this alternative route by which Polynesians entered the Pacific via Canada - which clearly shows that Polynesians DID use America as their stepping stone into the Pacific and not the islands to the West as is commonly believed.
Sure, Taiwan Origin
I have a friend from Indonesia who visited Taiwan's Mt. Ali-shan many years ago. She said she could understand the dialect of the Taiwan Aborigines, as it was similar to that of the native people back in Indonesia.
That explains things.