1/3 World Population is Taiwanese

(photo, courtesty of sailblogs) Mother's Day is held the first Sunday in June in French Polynesia. Rose Corser, an ex-pat who firsts sailed to these islands in the early 1970's to work on her dissertation on Marquisan art and who subsequently permanently settled here in 1979, hosted a pig roast at her restaurant and provided entertainment in the form of traditional dancing and music by a local group.

The magestic beauty of these mysetrious people may just be closer to home than we thought.  This ethnic race is mostly populated along the South Pacific, the Hawaiian islands, Australia, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.

The Man Behind the Ancestry:

Jonathan S. Friedlaender, professor emeritus of anthropology at Temple University, conducted a study, “Genetic Structure of Pacific Islanders,” is published in the January issue of PLoS Genetics came to a finding thanks to a diverse range of great help, including: the researchers from Temple, University of Maryland, Yale, Binghamton University, the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, Victoria University in New Zealand, Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taiwan, and the Institute for Medical Research in Papua New Guinea.  The research analyzed more than 800 genetic markers (highly informative microsatellites) in nearly 1,000 individuals from 41 Pacific populations, as opposed to prior small-scale mitochondrial DNA or Y chromosome studies, raised many eyebrows.

This mysterious race populated in the New World, estimating “50,000 and 30,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were still conquering Europe,” says Friedlaender,  the study’s lead author.

He goes on to add, “Over the last 20 years there have been many hypotheses concerning where the ancestors of the Polynesians came from in Asia, how long it took them to develop their special seafaring abilities in Island Melanesia, and how much they interacted with the native Melanesian peoples there before they commenced their remarkable Diaspora across the unexplored islands in the Pacific.”

“Our genetic analysis establishes that the Polynesians’ and Micronesians’ closest relationships are to Taiwan Aborigines and East Asians,” says the author,  “… Some groups in Island Melanesia who speak languages related to Polynesian, called Austronesian or Oceanic languages, do show a small Polynesian genetic contribution, but it is very minor – never more than 20%.

“There clearly was a lot of cultural and language influence that occurred, but the amount of genetic exchange between the groups was remarkably low,” he says.  “From the genetic perspective, if the ancestral train from the Taiwan vicinity to Polynesia wasn’t an express, very few passengers climbed aboard or got off along the way.”

Jonathan Friedlaender, Ph.D. (Emeritus) of Temple University

Diverting from folklore (Polynesians originated from a mythical homeland called Hawaiki), there are in total, three theories (or hypothesis): First is, ‘fast train hypothesis,’ supported by the mitochondrial evidence that ancestors originated from Taiwan, having migrated through Indonesia to Island Melanesia, before their last recorded inhabitance in the unknown islands of the Pacific, without significant contact with the Island Melanesians; second is reffered to as the ‘slow boat hypothesis,’ stating that the Y chromosome evidence suggesting that the [Polynesian] ancestors derived from early Melanesians, with limited to very little Asian or Taiwanese influence; and the third and final, called the “entangled bank hypothesis,” reports the ancient migrations, not accurately reconstructed in the method of visualizing through the genetics of today’s populations, in context of the available archaeological evidences.

(Please refer to, “genetic signspots.”  )

(The project was possible and due in thanks in part by the National Geographic Society‘s Committee for Research and Exploration generous funding.)

To contact Friedlaender…

To visit Friedlaender’s website…

The Linguistic Evidence:

The Polynesian languages are part of a larger group of languages called the Austronesian family.  The indigenous languages of Taiwan are also members of this family.  The bulk of them however form a group called the Formosan languages which have very little in common with languages spoken anywhere outside of Taiwan.

Throughout Polynesia there was a belief in a mythical homeland called Hawaiki.  This name crops up in various forms, Hawai’i, Savai’i, Tahiti.  It is still possible that Taiwan is yet influence on this place name.

As yet we have been unable to track down very much about the languages.  But we have come across the Yami phrase for “the heavens” – “mata-no-angit” which translates as “eyes of the firmament“.  The Samoan word for eyes is ‘mata‘ and for sky ‘lagi‘.

Paul J. K. Li of Academia Sinica and author of “Formosan vs. non-Formosan features in some Austronesian languages in Taiwan,” provides numbers of the Yami and Atayal languages:

Yami (Imorod dialect) : 1 asa, 2 dowa, 3 a-tlo, 4 apat, 5 lima, 6 anem, 7 pito, 8 wawo, 9 siam, 10 poho

Atayal (Mayrinax dialect): 1 qutux, 2 rusa’, 3 tuu’, 4 sepat, 5 ima-gal, 6 ma-tuu’, 7 pitu’, 8 ma-spat, 9 ma-qisu’, 10 ma-galpug

1 asa, 2 rowa/dowa, 3 atlo, 4 apat, 5 lima, 8 wawo, 9 siyam, 10 amnateng

The problem in looking at the languages is that they have changed significantly, and may at certain distant future, disappear.  In a region with no record of written languages until the arrival of the Europeans makes it difficult to determine a specified time period which particular language it wass derived from.

(Please refer to Li’s writing of “Formosan languages” and “Most Endangered Formosan Languages.”)

(Photo, courtesy of Science Daily and Public Library of Science / PLoS Biology) Ancient mitochondrial DNA from these nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes provided clues about the movement of these people throughout Polynesia.

**Quoting from physorg.com is a strong recommendation which I emplore all to take a moment to read,

Jean Treajut of the Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA from indigenous Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, Polynesians and other southeast Asian peoples.  He found the Taiwanese, Melanesians and Polynesians share three mutations, indicating a close relationship, that are absent from mainland populations.

Polynesian legends say that the people came from a mythical place called Hawaiki. The Polynesians spread across the Pacific, ranging from New Zealand to Easter Island and Hawaii, and their origin has been debated for centuries.

Genetic analysis showed the Taiwanese appear to have been isolated from mainland Chinese for 10,000 to 20,000 years, confirming archaeological evidence Taiwan has been inhabited for a long time.

The study was published in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.

Findings in Archaeology:

(Photo, courtesy of Prof. Jonathan S. Friedlaender) A Lau blonde girl from Malaita, the largest island in the Solomons, which is part of Melanesia.

Archaeologist Patrick Kirch, of the University of California, Berkely, commented in a National Geographic review, “It’s what you’d expect over a long time period like that.

“You see the same complexity in languages. New Guinea alone has something like 900 languages in its interior. That’s probably the highest density of language differential per square mile in the world.”

Previous studies of genetics, pottery styles, and the shared family of Austronesian languages suggested that the Lapita’s most likely origin was Taiwan and East Asia.

Dr. Spencer Wells leads the Five Year Epic Genographic Project sponsored by National Geographic and IBM.

Geneticist, scientist, author, and documentary filmmaker, Spencer Wells is a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence and director of the society’s Genographic Project.  Wells thinks that the genetic data may show that Polynesians and Micronesians are a mix of Taiwanese aborigines, East Asians, and Melanesians, “I certainly don’t think the data refute a slow-boat model.”

He pointed out that the mitochondrial DNA evidence—which is passed down from females (X-chromosome)—tends to support the express-train theory.  But the Y-chromosome, or male, evidence supports a slow-boat process…  This “suggests something interesting is going on, perhaps with different male and female migration patterns, which we see in other regions of the world,” he said.

(Spencer Wells has dedicated much of his career to studying our family tree and origin, in closing the gaps in our knowledge of human migration.  Wells is Project Director of the multi-year Genographic Project, a project consisting of the use of DNA samples in tracing human migration from Africa over 60,000 years ago, a discovery that has broken grounds all over the world.)

(Please refer to “Future Migration Matterns” by Spencer Wells, documented May 2008.)

(Photo, courtesy of The Scribe, April 2007) In 2003, archaeologists working in the Pacific islands of Vanuatu located the region’s oldest cemetery, which contained a rather surprising sight: although the bodies had been carefully placed in their graves 3,000 years ago… The skulls of 70 people were missing!

In Schock and Awe:

Archaeologists, in research on the island of Vanuatu, discovered the region’s oldest cemetery…  And it’s filled with mounds of headless bodies.

The Vanuatu burials of mismatching bodies and mis-arranged heads are discovered to have been originated from different corners of the Pacific Islands, said dig leader Matthew Spriggs, archaeologist with the Australian National University.

Heads removed after death: A grand total of 70 bodies with only 7 skulls along with a range of rare pots, were discovered from the site over several, tiring digging seasons.  The work was led by Spriggs, Stuart Bedford of the Australian National University and Ralph Regenvanu of the Vanuatu National Museum.

Thirty-five bodies, buried in various manners, were discovered recently, but not in a manner of ritual sacrifice as one would conclude to explain the disemembered bodies.  The deceased were all laid in formal burial, initially with their skulls firmly attached, Spriggs said.

“The head was believed to be the seat of the soul and so was often dug up after burial when the flesh had rotted away and kept either in skull shrines or in the house as a treasured memento of the person,” he told LiveScience (by Imaginova – Constantly Curious, a leading digital media and commerce company with award-winning, original content in all things Science and Discovery).

“Some curated heads, shiny through handling, had been placed on the chest of one individual some time after his burial–they may have been his descendants,” said Spriggs.  “Needless to say, he had no head either.”

(Test revealed: none of the skulls belonged to the bodies with which they were buried.)

MAP and Discovery:

The controversial Chinese map argued, by some, to be from 1418. (Photo creditited: 1421.tv)

The Chinese voyage to America theory was popularized by British amateur historian, Gavin Menzies in his 2002 published book, “1421: The Year China Discovered America.”  The controversial theory claims that Chinese admiral, Zheng He (Cheng Ho) reached the shores of the Americas over 70 years prior to Christopher Columbus’ maiden “discovery.”

Upon reading “1421,” Chinese lawyer, *Liu Ganng, foresaw potential significance in the map purchased, intentionally as a private collection.  Dated 1418, depicting outlines of North and South America, the map was used to support Menzies’ theory, if proved legitimate.

Geoff Wade, Senior Researcher of the University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute, echoed her thoughts.  In an exerpt to a group of maritime scholars, he wrote “The map is an 18th-century copy of a European map, as evidenced by the two hemispheres depicted, the continents shown and the non-maritime detailed [sic] depicted.”

In the other camp, Menzies wass strongly leaning in the support of Liu and the 1418 map.  His reason being, through a forwarded email, “every continent, ocean, land, island, river shown on the 1418 map also appears on other Chinese maps of the same date or earlier.  There is nothing new on the 1418 map—it simply combines everything on one sheet of paper.”

Menzies debates, “In 1419, European voyages of exploration had not started.  If the 1418 map is a forgery, then the 1419 map must be as well.  How do you forge something yet to be discovered.”

(Please refer to: 1412 bunkum.)

(Please see related, The Map That Changed The World: “Thinkers in the early 1800s disagreed over the age of the Earth, with some standing by Bible-based estimates of 6,000 years old.”)

As Captain James Cook was conducting his voyages of exploration and discovery, Polynesian navigators had already successfully explored and settled the islands from New Zealand to Hawaii. Remarkably, the Polynesians had developed a sophisticated and reliable means of wayfinding based not on science and mathematics, but rather on their innate knowledge of the seas and sky.

Discovery: In an exploration and a quest for discovery, a picture is emerging of the development of a seafaring culture oriented toward oceanic migration.  In 1500 B.C.E., voyagers moved east, first along the Solomon Island chain, followed by the Banks and Vanuatu Archipelagos.  Oceanic colonizers created double-hulled vessels and as the voyages lengthened, the colonists developed a navigation system (astronomical observations, the ocean swells, flight patterns of local birds) to help navigate the ocean waters.  Sailing out of South-East Asia and having developed a portable agricultural system, they were able to obtain and transfer domesticated plants and animals onto the discovered lands.

Archaeological evidence indicates that they sailed Eastward and colonized the Northern islands of Hawai’i, the Easter Island (South-East), and New Zealand (South-West), and finally concluded their settlement around 1000 A.D.E., in what we recognize today as the Polynesian Triangle.

(An average sized canoe 50 to 60 feet long could easily accomodate two dozen migrants, their food supplies, livestock, and planting materials.)

No Bones About It:

Recently discovered bones, not of humans, but CHICKENS!  The findings, along the coast of Chile have been dated prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of America, the chickens’ DNA matched fowls breeds of Polynesia. This finding dates the Polynesian contact with the Americas, over a century before the arrival of the Spainairds.

(Photo, courtesy of LiveScience, credited to Daniel Quiroz) El Arenal artifacts.

Anthropologist, Lisa Matisoo-Smith, University of Auckland, New Zealand explains, “Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own-they had to be taken by humans.

“The chicken DNA suggests at least one group did make the harrowing journey across the remaining stretch of Pacific.  We cannot say exactly which island the voyage came from.  The DNA sequence is found in chickens from Tonga, Samoa, Niue, Easter Island and Hawaii.”

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl, the famous Norwegian anthropologist, proved that a voyage designating from Peru to Polynesia, with only a raft (Kon-Tiki), was possible. The discovery explains the possibilites of the Easter Island like similarities of its statues with Andean sculptures.

How did the ancient Polynesians manage to settle islands of the Pacific – which makes-up to 1/3 of our earth’s surface…  Within only 1,000 years?

60 years ago Thor Heyerdahl tried to show with his Kon-Tiki expedition that the ancient Polynesians could have sailed from South America on Balsa rafts. His book and film about the expedition were sensational, but it was later found, that the Polynesians did not come from South America.

Today we know that these skilled seafarers came from Asia, from Taiwan.

~ by Lan on 2008 Sat+00:002009-01-24T16:15:10+00:00. 15.