Solheim on Nusantao Voyages to the Americas

Archaeologist Wilhelm Solheim has proposed lately that Jomon-like Valdivia pottery of Ecuador and other pottery resembling the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay tradition has its ultimate origin in Southeast Asia.

Solheim quotes the seminal work of the late James Ford, A Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas: Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man:

At about 3000 BC after a long sea voyage from the southwestern Japanese Islands, a group of fisherman landed on the coast of Ecuador. Meggers, Evans, and Estrada (1965), who have presented the evidence in support of this happening, so novel in terms of currently accepted theory about New World cultural development, have modestly suggested that perhaps this was a single boatload of fishermen, lost at sea in a storm, who were unwillingly brought to the shores of America by the North Pacific ocean current.

There is reason to suspect, however, that this might have been more in the nature of an exploring and colonizing expedition involving a number of individuals of both sexes and varied skills. Subsequent events in the Americas suggest that these people had a seafaring, exploring and colonizing tradition, similar to that fo the later Polynesians and Vikings. Solheim (1964[a]:360, 376—84) has offered statistical evidence to show that one of three sources of Malayan and Polynesian ceramic traditions was influenced from the Japanese Islands at an estimated date of 1000 to 500 BC. The extensive spread of this 'Sa-Hunh-Kalanay' tradition in the southwestern Pacific certainly implies a seafaring tradition. Most of the ceramic shapes, decorative elements, and design motifs are similar to those postulated to have spread to the Americas between 3000 and 1000 B.C.

The remarkable variety of the Valdivia ceramics suggests that more than one or two individuals, or lineages, founded and maintained this tradition. The highly selective fashion in which certain elements of the complex were spread to other parts of the Americas, also argues that specialization in this craft had already developed. Furthermore, as varied as it is the Valdivia ceramic complex does not represent the entire range of pottery manufactured at 3000 B.C. in southwestern Japan. As with the early English settlement at Jamestown in Virgina, the products manufactured corresponded to the experience and training of the craftsmen brought from the mother country (Ford 1969: 183-184).

Solheim believes based on the similarities of the Valdivia and other assemblages in decoration and form with the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay complex that Nusantao voyagers from were making infrequent visits to the west coast of the Americas starting around 3000 BCE using the Kuroshio (Japan) Current.




Some examples given by Wilhelm Solheim of pottery decoration showing relationship with Sa-Huynh-Kalanay designs.

Top row: The third from the left is from Puerto Hormiga, Columbia with the rest from Valdivia, Ecuador.

Second row: The third from the left is from Barlovento, Columbia with the rest from Valdivia, Ecuador.

Third row: Valdivia; Machalilla, Ecuador; Veracruz, Mexico.

Bottom: Veracruz, Mexico.

Redrawn by Ric de Guzman in John N. Miksic, Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Ford, J. A. A Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas: Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology Vol. 11, Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969.

Miksic, John N. Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium, National University of Singapore Press, 2003, 20-21.

Solheim II, Wilhelm G. Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao, University of the Philippines Press, 2006.

Environmental factors in circum-Pacific migrations

A new study examines the environmental factors that impacted human migrations in the circum-Pacific region.

This study covers the period of Sundaland flooding that started during the present inter-glacial period known as the Holocene. Some of the migrations would coincide also with the Nusantao movements throughout much of the circum-Pacific and the earlier Austric dispersions in Southeast Asia.

Warming temperatures caused ice sheets to melt and sea levels to rise but these eventually leveled off. Recently, human-driven global warming has caused sea levels to be begin rising again.

Contact: Davina Quarterman
davina.quarterman@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
01-865-476-307
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Environmental setting of human migrations in the circum-Pacific Region

A new study by Kevin Pope of Geo Eco Arc Research and John Terrell of The Field Museum adds insight into the migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and into Asia less than 100,000 years before present (BP). The comprehensive review of human genetic, environmental, and archaeological data from the circum-Pacific region supports the hypothesis, originally based largely on genetic evidence, that modern humans migrated into eastern Asia via a southern coastal route. The expansion of modern human populations into the circum-Pacific region occurred in at least four pulses, in part controlled by climate and sea level changes in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. The initial “out of Africa” migration was thwarted by dramatic changes in both sea level and climate and extreme drought in the coastal zone. A period of stable climate and sea level 45,000-40,000 years BP gave rise to the first major pulse of migration, when modern humans spread from India, throughout much of coastal southeast Asia, Australia, and Melanesia, extending northward to eastern Russia and Japan by 37,000 years BP.

The northward push of modern humans along the eastern coast of Asia stalled north of 43° N latitude, probably due to the inability of the populations to adjust to cold waters and tundra/steppe vegetation. The ensuing cold and dry Last Glacial period, ~33,000-16,000 year BP, once again brought dramatic changes in sea level and climate, which caused abandonment of many coastal sites. After 16,000 years BP, climates began to warm, but sea level was still 100 m below modern levels, creating conditions amenable for a second pulse of human migration into North America across an ice-free coastal plain now covered by the Bering Sea.

The stabilization of climate and sea level in the early Holocene (8,000-6,000 years BP) supported the expansion of coastal wetlands, lagoons, and coral reefs, which in turn gave rise to a third pulse of coastal settlement, filling in most of the circum-Pacific region. A slight drop in sea level in the western Pacific in the mid-Holocene (~6,000-4,000 year BP), caused a reduction in productive coastal habitats, leading to a brief disruption in human subsistence along the then densely settled coast. This disruption may have helped initiate the last major pulse of human migration in the circum-Pacific region, that of the migration to Oceania, which began about 3,500 years BP and culminated in the settlement of Hawaii and Easter Island by 2000-1000 years BP.

###

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

The Marine Folk

In Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery, the author explores widespread testimony of ancient water beings that were usually part human or humanoid and part fish, serpent, dragon. Often the human part was replaced by a bull or horned goat.

These creatures were nearly invariably linked with the sea. While there are theories that these marine fish folk might even have come from other star systems, the most logical terrestrial explanation cannot avoid the Austronesian hypothesis.

The shell mound culture belonged to the marine people par excellence. At the end of the last Ice Age, the shell mound folk in Asia were mostly harvesting around shallow intertidal areas or in freshwater rivers and streams near the seacoast. With the coming of rising sea levels, the shellfishing gathering activities moved more into mangrove estuaries and the coral reefs.

The archaeological evidence suggests they became skilled at fishing and sea mammal hunting producing a wide range of gear -- net sinkers, spindle whorls, fish-hooks, harpoon heads, etc.

I mentioned previously that there is early Paleolithic evidence of beyond-the-horizon navigation. Toward the beginning of the Nusantao period, the evidence appears again in apparent voyages from mainland Southeast Asia to the Philippines and Taiwan. The latter was, at the time, a much smaller target than today as most of the island was still underwater.

Unfortunately it is difficult to reconstruct the earliest ships of the Austronesians, although some good basic clues exist. We do have fairly good knowledge of their vessels by about the 3rd century thanks to archaeological finds, Chinese texts and the famed Borobodur relief.

According to historian Pierre-Yves Manguin the largest ships could carry up to 1,000 people and 250-1,000 tons. The ancient Chinese writer Wan Chen wrote that the ships stood from 15 to 23 feet above the water and resembled 'flying galleries,' possibly a reference to the appearance of outriggers as "wings." The author describes ships with four obliquely set sails that allowed sailing in strong winds and high waves.

The boats used to this day by the Badjau, Samal and other "sea gypsies" of Southeast Asia are both lashed-lug and bifid. The lashed-lug construction gives tensile strength to boats as the frames are flexibly tied to cleats on the hull's planks. Instead of nails, wooden pegs or bindings are used again to decrease rigidity in the structure.

The bifid construction involves the use of a dugout as the base of the ship upon which the lashed-lug plank-built boat is added. This design results in "split" or bifid ends.


Lepa-lepa boat, Sabah, with bifid and lashed-lug construction

Many of the sea gypsies like the Badjau continue to live on their boats or on houses suspended over the water on stilts along the coast. They depend on fish and other marine life for sustenance moving from place to place according to tide and season.

Strongly linked with the tales of marine folk are the Fisher Kings. These watery monarchs figure largely in various Grail bloodline scenarios of the "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" type.

What we clearly see though in the various cultures that possess this motif is that the Fisher Kings are ultimately traced to sea peoples. The kings themselves often arise out of the sea dressed in fish costumes or portrayed as part fish. And they tend to have a fish diet and/or to teach fishing.

What is indicated is the extreme maritime adaptation mentioned by Oppenheimer.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

The Nusantao Trade Network

Solheim writes about the northern expansions: "I hypothesize that any time that maritime people in their explorations would come across the mouth of a large river, they would have moved up the river making contact with the local inhabitants and not have stayed totally along the coast." (Solheim 2000)

All indications point to the maritime Nusantao as expert seafarers. Often their sites had bones of sea mammals that could only be obtained after lengthy blue-water voyages. Their semi-permanent dwellings indicated that they moved seasonally over water as part of their lifestyle. Naturally they would settle on the coast, along river banks and lake shores.

In addition to the archaeological evidence, Solheim believes the Nusantao migrations help account for three sets of linguistics relationships that exist between Austronesian and other East Asian languages.

Others have suggested that these relationships are genetic links: Paul Benedict has postulated a family called Austro-Tai creating a link with Daic languages such as Thai and Laotian. He latter expanded Austro-Tai to include Japanese and Hmong-Mien. Schichiro Murayama had suggested Malayo-Polynesian influence but not genetic relationship with Japanese.

More recently, Laurent Sagart has proposed that Sino-Tibetan languages and Austronesian descend from a shared proto-language.

Solheim, however, believes that the first two links are the result of massive early borrowing with Nusantao traders. Firstly, contacts with Daic speakers near the Yangtze, and then with Korean and Japanese speakers during the transfer of Yayoi culture from Shandong and Korea to Japan.

We might add also this as a possible explanation for the Sino-Tibetan similarities. Certainly it does not seem that all these languages were related.

Proto-Sino-Tibetan, for example, was likely tonal and monosyllabic as this appears as a family trait of Sino-Tibetan languages. Most languages that have been in contact with Sino-Tibetan languages for some time tend to pick up some of these traits as in the example of Mon-Khmer languages.

Neither Austronesian, Korean or Japanese show anything roughly similar to this type of influence on their sound systems.

The Nusantao may have obtained their penchant for seafaring and trading from the earliest people in the region, many of whom doubtless were their ancestors. From very early dates in the Paleolithic, there are indications of settlement and trade that involved long sea voyages in the region of Australia and Melanesia (New Britain).

Some of the earliest evidence of long-range sea trade in the world is the regional exchange of the volcanic glass known as obsidian.

In mainland Southeast Asia, we first see evidence of trade in the presence of shell tools in highland areas far from the coast, and stone tools in coastal regions without stones. Solheim also believes at least two important agricultural products were traded -- rice and sugarcane -- and thus the common words for these products over much of this region.

The widest evidence for trade though comes from the presence of jade and nephrite in large quantities that seems quite likely to come in all cases from the Yangtze region. They occur in the Middle Neolithic culture of Shandong known as the Dawenkou and a bit north in the latter Hongshan culture.

Jade and nephrite have been found at neolithic sites in Batangas and Palawan in the Philippines. The presence of nephrite adzes indicates large quantities of this material in a location not known to have any natural sources.

Later, possibly by about 5500 years ago, particular types of jade/nephrite ornaments of the lingling-o and bicephalous (double-headed) type appear. Solheim sees these as strong evidence of the Nusantao trade.

The nature of these ornaments, as we will explore later, are clan-related.

Now at about this same time (pre-5000 BC), we see shell mounds popping up at Ubaid sites in the Persian Gulf. Oppenheimer has noted that the Ubaid sites contain pretty much the same inventory as those in the SE Asian Neolithic -- quadrangular stone adzes, stone hoes, clay sinkers and spindle whorls, beads, discs and painted pottery.

The Ubaid culture is thought to have given risen to the culture of the Sumerians some 5500 years ago.

The Nusantao, continued

The Nusantao lived around shell mounds and sand dunes. Often they lived right on top of them. Later as they moved into colder regions in the north they began to build their homes partly within the mounds. This was an excellent adaptation to cold weather and was one of a number of factors that allowed the Nusantao to easily explore colder regions.

Another thing that helped was their habit of hunting sea mammals. The shell mounds show abundant evidence of this type of hunting including sea mammal bones. They used harpoon heads including some probably of the toggling type, which have survived until modern times in the Philippines and New Zealand. A toggling harpoon has a detachable head attached to a line or cord.

The people also supplemented their diet by hunting and by raising domestic animals. They had chickens, pigs and dogs.

Many of them practiced horticulture -- evidence of which goes back to at least 15,000 BC in this region. And there is also evidence of sugarcane and rice agriculture.

The dates on the start of rice agriculture are rather controversial. Oppenheimer has a good discussion on this in Eden in the East. The earliest dates go back to 12,000 years ago at Spirit Cave and 9260 years ago at Sakai Cave on the Malay Peninsula. It is difficult though to tell wild rice from domestic rice just by looking at it.

The domestication argument is strengthened by the fact that other plants found at Spirit and Sakai caves were among those later domesticated in Southeast Asia.

Whatever the earliest dates for rice, the Nusantao that had reached South China definitely were planting this crop.

These shell mound people used ground-edge tools of both shell and stone. And a new discovery at Balobok Cave in the southern Philippines dated to 5340 BC suggests they also used fully-polished neolithic tools.

One thing we should remember in studying Southeast Asia is that a Neolithic or Metal Age "revolution" does not mean the same thing here as in other places. There are cases of "Stone Age" people surviving in this region to the present-day. The controversial Tasaday are one well-known example, but there are many other less controversial ones. "Mesolithic" Hoabinhian sites have been discovered surviving in regions that appear to had already moved into the Metal Age. Keep this fact in mind.

Here's a good summary of the Nusantao:

During the third and last rapid rise flood a Hoabinhian-like people that built shell mounds began migrating southward into insular Southeast Asia. These people certainly practiced horticulture and possibly agriculture.

These people eventually settle in eastern Indonesia and the Philippines where they begin using shell tools. They also learn (or relearn) the art of edge grinding. They manufacture edge-ground shell and stone tools, and also make fully polished neolithic blades.

One of the important tools made by these people was the celt, a groove-less axe. The blade industry is distinguished by the rectangular cross-section of the tools.

The shell mound people appear on the South China coast with their shell tools, edge-grinding and roughly polished tools sometime before 5000 BC. They form a culture along the Yangtze River. And they quickly move northward into present-day Shandong.

The cultural kit of these people came to include by 5000 BC: clay spindle whorls to make nets, clay net sinkers, disc-shaped earplug ornaments, stepped stone (socketed) adzes, stone hoes, stone knives and long-stemmed polished stone arrow/harpoon heads. They also made Hoabinhian-descended pottery.

The Yangtze and Shandong regions are important. They will become vital nodes in the Nusantao trade network.

The Nusantao

Think of a people living on boats or on houses built on piles in bays and estuaries. The type of people that still exist today all over Southeast Asia. Some of them like the Badjau, Samal and "Sea Gypsies" are semi-nomadic in lifestyle.

The Nusantao that began migrating north through the Philippines to China sometime before 5000 BC were just such a people. Sometime before the Nusantao, waves of long-range migrations may already have been occuring as per Oppenheimer. What makes the Nusantao important is that with them we see signs of the establishment of a long-distance trade network.

I will show evidence that competition arose in this network, largely clan-based, and this competition also had a spiritual component based on the Austronesian dual system. This resulted in types of global trade wars and global spiritual competition. The latter would not classify as "religious wars" as the "fighting" was mostly on a submerged level, and the belief systems probably were not what we think of as religions today.

In terms of material culture, the Nusantao feasted commonly on fish and shellfish. They discarded the latter into massive heaps known alternatively as shell mounds, shell middens and kitchen middens.

Shell mounds were quite common during the early Paleolithic period around 40,000 to 35,000 years ago when they could be found from Europe to Australia. However it was in Vietnam that these artifices continued into the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age) of around 11,000 years ago.

Eventually, the Nusantao began burying their dead in the shell mounds usually in a seated position with the knees flexed. They also used the mounds as platforms on which to build houses or as religious platforms.

We will continue discussion on the Nusantao in the next post.

Sundaland

If you're having trouble with any of the terminology here, try the free encyclopedia Wikipedia. If that doesn't work, send me a personal email.

The weather here today in Sacramento is quite stormy which leads well into the topic of this post. Storms, volcanoes, floods and the like were often seen in the Southeast Asian/Pacific Islander worldview as conflicts between dual forces. Duality is integral to the Austronesian psyche. The linguist Robert Blust reconstructed the word *hipaR which can mean either "sibling-in-law" or "across the river" in Proto-Austronesian.

Proto-Austronesian is a proposed reconstruction of a proto-language that gave birth to the present-day Austronesian languages. Other linguists have reconstruced words similar to Blust's *hipaR.

Blust and others have also found this as evidence that Proto-Austronesians had a dual phratry or kinship system based upon residence on either side of a river. Indeed, those familiar with Austronesian studies know that these people had dual classification systems engrained in their ethnos.

Such classification based on dualities such as Sun-Moon, right bank-left bank, upstream-downstream, Heaven-Earth, left hand-right hand, etc., etc. are found throughout the Austronesian regions.

Where I am from the term kaladua refers to one's dual self. Everyone has two "souls" -- one that occupies the body and is active on the conscious level, and the other that exists mostly on the unconcious level. A spiritual master though could control their kaladua and use their other self even while awake. This might give a bit of an idea as to the pervasiveness of dual thought in Austronesian society.

The duality was recursive i.e. it recurred in cycles. Like the cycles of the lunar month -- the waxing and waning Moon.

It was also both oppositional and complimentary. Dual forces like fire and water seemed to oppose each other, but they also complimented each other as in 'opposites attract.'

Now back to the flooding of Sundaland. There were three major rapid rise floods -- the first one about 14,000 years ago, the second 11,500 years ago and the third about 8,500 years ago. Sea levels continued to rise gradually to peak levels about 5,500 years ago. Note that these floods were caused by rising sea levels and were not river or flash flooding caused by rain.

Depending on when one dates the split of the Austronesian language family either the Austronesians or their ancestors would have likely experienced all these floods. The events would have had quite an impact on societies that lived along the coastline -- the prevailing practice in Southeast Asia to this day.

The ancient Austronesians and their ancestors may have seen the rising levels as a struggle between the sea and land with the sea obviously winning.

The first and second of the floods probably had more of an impact on Austric rather than Austronesian speakers. The culture at this time was known as Hoabinhian from the site of Hoa Binh in Vietnam. These people used edge-ground blades which technically are Neolithic although usually classified as either Mesolithic or even Paleolithic.

The term "Neolithic" refers to stone tools that were ground or polished rather than simply crafted through the process called flaking.

The earliest edge-ground tools in the world are from Australia dated to about 20,000 BC and Solheim classifies them as Hoabinhian.

The dispersal of the Austric peoples led to one group, the Austro-Asiatics taking off to the north and to the west at least as far as India. In fact, they may have gone much further than India, but that's a whole different subject.

Now personally I believe that Wilhelm Solheim, the retired anthropology professor from the University of Hawai`i, has a very good chronology for the splitting and dispersal of the Austronesian languages.

Solheim believes that the Proto-Austronesians began to leave the coasts of Vietnam or possibly peninsular Malaysia somewhere between about 9000 and 8000 years ago. These people built shell mounds and we will call them the shell mound culture. They migrated southward through the Philippines into eastern Indonesia.

Possibly somewhere in the northern Philippines or along coastal Vietnam according to this model, Proto-Austronesian split into two branches with one moving northward toward Taiwan and the other southward. Oppenheimer thinks that around 8000-7000 years ago that major dispersions were taking place in insular SE Asia that could have resulted in very long-range migrations extending to Mesopotamia and Europe.

Indeed, around 6,600 BC there is evidence of a new cultural element at Spirit Cave on the Thailand-Burma border, and numerous coastal settlements spring up along mainland Southeast Asia. These would have been probably Proto-Malayo-Polynesian or Proto-Formosan peoples.

In the southern Philippines and eastern Indonesia, the Malayo-Polynesian branch began its own split sometime well before 5000 BC. These people began to make shell tools and used edge-grinding for both shell and stone tools. They began to move northward toward South China. Solheim calls them the Nusantao "the people of the islands."

---

Some useful abstracts:

TAIWAN, COASTAL SOUTH CHINA AND NORTHERN VIET NAM AND THE NUSANTAO MARITIME TRADING NETWORK
Author: Solheim II W.G.1
Source: Journal of East Asian Archaeology, 1 January 2000, vol. 2, no. 1-2, pp. 273-284(12)
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers

The primary concern of this essay is to present details of the development of the Nusantao Maritime Trading Network between Taiwan, coastal South China and Northern Viet Nam from a bit before 7,000 B.P. until about 2,000 B.P. The Nusantao Maritime Trading Network is seen as a very widespread trading and communication network which came to cover all of the Pacific Ocean, the coastal areas of the China Sea and Japan, the coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as far as Madagascar, and Island Southeast Asia and the coastal area of Mainland Southeast Asia. Having begun in eastern Island Southeast Asia a few hundred years before 5000 B.C., it expanded from there to the north through the Philippines to Taiwan and coastal South China and then north along the coast of China to western and southern Korea and finally to Kyushu in Japan, starting here just before 3000 B.C., but becoming best developed in Korea and Japan during the first millennium B.C.


Island Networks
Communication, Kinship, and Classification Structures in Oceania
Per Hage, Frank Harary
Published February 1997

Contrary to common perception and belief, most island societies of the Pacific were not isolated, but were connected to other island societies by relations of kinship and marriage, trade and tribute, language and history. Using network models from graph theory, the authors analyse the formation of island empires, the social basis of dialect groups, the emergence of economic and political centers, the evolution and devolution of social stratification and the evolution of kinship terminologies, marriage systems and descent groups from common historical prototypes. The book is at once a unique and important contribution to Oceania studies, anthropology and social network analysis.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Island networks and graphs - graph theoretical models - geographical, linguistic and anthropological terms
2. Trees: Basic definitions - a Micronesian prestige good system - ‘Recursive dualism’ in Austronesian classification systems - cognatic kinship networks - cycle rank and network connectedness
3. The minimum spanning tree problem - dialect groups and marriage isolates in the Tuamotus - the evolution of the Lakemban Matanitu - the Renfrew-Sterud method of close proximity analysis - on deconstructing a network
4. Search trees I: Independent discoveries of the conical clan - social stratification in Polynesia - a structural model of the conical clan - Prestige good systems: 5. Search trees II: the Marshallese conical clan - the devolution of social organisation in nuclear Micronesia;6. Centrality: Southern Lau, Fiji: a natural trade area - power centers in the greater Lauan trade network - political and mythological centers in Ralik and Ratak - expeditions in Torres Strait - on the position of Delos in the archaic Aegean network
7. Dominating sets: local domination in the Caroline Islands - alliance structures in the Western Tuamotus - pottery monopolies in Melanesian trade networks
8. Digraphs: Murdock’s maze: the bilateral hypothesis of Austronesian origins - sibling classification and culture history in Island Oceania
9. Conclusion.