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.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
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:
The Yangtze and Shandong regions are important. They will become vital nodes in the Nusantao trade network.
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
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.
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.
The Long Search
If you have perused the articles in the link I provided in my last post, you many be either ready for more or a bit confused. If the latter, do not worry as I will try to explain things as I go.
I've also provided some links on the sidebar of this blog for those interested in further research.
The search for answers to the questions that we will explore in this blog began many years ago in the land of my birth -- the province of Pampanga in the Philippines. I was born in the former Clark Air Force Base hospital at the foot of the Zambales Mountains. This was well before the hospital and base were buried under ash from Mt. Pinatubo, the second highest peak in the Zambales range and readily visible from the old hospital.
Mountains were considered sacred by the local people and Pinatubo, or Pinatubu as it is known by the locals, is one of the most sacred. It was also considered forbidden to an extent. People living on the this mountain and nearby Mt. Arayat acted as unofficial guardians discouraging people from desecrating the area. This practice continued even after this region (Arayat) had been Christianized.
There had always been a core of people who had held unto indigenous beliefs to some extent or another in this area. This was especially the case among the native healers who till this day continue to provide a large percentage of health care to the poor and also to the "superstitious" among the rich. When I was a teen, my peers who decided to cling to the old ways were looked at rather cautiously but with respect by the more Westernized ones.
The name Pinatubu itself indicates a volcano although prior to the eruption in 1991 it had been 600 years since an earlier eruption. The mountain was thought of by local people to have never been colonized although from an international legal standpoint it was part of an American territory for a period. Locals would retreat to Pinatubu during colonial times to be in a sanctuary free from foreigners.
My paternal great-grandmother and maternal great-grandfather knew much of the local lore. My maternal great-grandfather would go on retreat regularly to Mt. Arayat walking from his home in Angeles City. He would pick sweet potatoes and yams to eat along the way. He was very skilled in the indigenous healing arts.
Even my paternal grandfather had some native knowledge. When my grandmother suffered a foot infection, the local doctors wanted to perform amputation. My grandfather thought this was ludicrous and promptly began to heal the infection using indigenous methods.
The Aeta people of Pinatubu would come down during harvest time to make extra money harvesting crops. They were known as very hard workers. They also had an intricate knowledge of nature and old-time Philippine spiritual beliefs. When I was a teen I had Aeta and part-Aeta friends who loved to talk about these traditions.
This was the start of my own quest for knowledge about the ancient history of this area and the surrounding regions.
For some 26 years I have learned and researched, traveling to various parts of the world in my search.
That brings us to the beginning of the subject to be discussed here -- the ancient Sundaland floods. Stephen Oppenheimer's book Eden in the East discusses these floods in detail. I first encountered Stephen over the internet when he was writing this book. He was interested in my research on Austric languages. We have been corresponding off and on ever since.
Sundaland is the name for a large sub-continent in Southeast Asia that is now mostly underwater.
Image from Dr. Sunil Prasannan
The Austric languages are a proposed language family that is thought by people like Oppenheimer, Wilhelm Solheim and myself to have occupied Sundaland before the three great rapid rise floods. The Austric languages eventually split into two families -- the Austro-Asiatic and the Austronesian.
We will be mainly concerned with the Austronesian. Wilhelm Solheim uses the term Nusantao to describe a particular group of people mostly Austronesian speakers who established a vast maritime trading network during the Neolithic. The Nusantao will become more prominent as the discussion goes on.
I've also provided some links on the sidebar of this blog for those interested in further research.
The search for answers to the questions that we will explore in this blog began many years ago in the land of my birth -- the province of Pampanga in the Philippines. I was born in the former Clark Air Force Base hospital at the foot of the Zambales Mountains. This was well before the hospital and base were buried under ash from Mt. Pinatubo, the second highest peak in the Zambales range and readily visible from the old hospital.
Mountains were considered sacred by the local people and Pinatubo, or Pinatubu as it is known by the locals, is one of the most sacred. It was also considered forbidden to an extent. People living on the this mountain and nearby Mt. Arayat acted as unofficial guardians discouraging people from desecrating the area. This practice continued even after this region (Arayat) had been Christianized.
There had always been a core of people who had held unto indigenous beliefs to some extent or another in this area. This was especially the case among the native healers who till this day continue to provide a large percentage of health care to the poor and also to the "superstitious" among the rich. When I was a teen, my peers who decided to cling to the old ways were looked at rather cautiously but with respect by the more Westernized ones.
The name Pinatubu itself indicates a volcano although prior to the eruption in 1991 it had been 600 years since an earlier eruption. The mountain was thought of by local people to have never been colonized although from an international legal standpoint it was part of an American territory for a period. Locals would retreat to Pinatubu during colonial times to be in a sanctuary free from foreigners.
My paternal great-grandmother and maternal great-grandfather knew much of the local lore. My maternal great-grandfather would go on retreat regularly to Mt. Arayat walking from his home in Angeles City. He would pick sweet potatoes and yams to eat along the way. He was very skilled in the indigenous healing arts.
Even my paternal grandfather had some native knowledge. When my grandmother suffered a foot infection, the local doctors wanted to perform amputation. My grandfather thought this was ludicrous and promptly began to heal the infection using indigenous methods.
The Aeta people of Pinatubu would come down during harvest time to make extra money harvesting crops. They were known as very hard workers. They also had an intricate knowledge of nature and old-time Philippine spiritual beliefs. When I was a teen I had Aeta and part-Aeta friends who loved to talk about these traditions.
This was the start of my own quest for knowledge about the ancient history of this area and the surrounding regions.
For some 26 years I have learned and researched, traveling to various parts of the world in my search.
That brings us to the beginning of the subject to be discussed here -- the ancient Sundaland floods. Stephen Oppenheimer's book Eden in the East discusses these floods in detail. I first encountered Stephen over the internet when he was writing this book. He was interested in my research on Austric languages. We have been corresponding off and on ever since.
Sundaland is the name for a large sub-continent in Southeast Asia that is now mostly underwater.
Image from Dr. Sunil Prasannan
The Austric languages are a proposed language family that is thought by people like Oppenheimer, Wilhelm Solheim and myself to have occupied Sundaland before the three great rapid rise floods. The Austric languages eventually split into two families -- the Austro-Asiatic and the Austronesian.
We will be mainly concerned with the Austronesian. Wilhelm Solheim uses the term Nusantao to describe a particular group of people mostly Austronesian speakers who established a vast maritime trading network during the Neolithic. The Nusantao will become more prominent as the discussion goes on.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Prologue
An ancient seafaring people driven both by a desire for wealth and power, and deep spiritual beliefs circled the globe throughout much of history helping to shape today’s world. As fanciful as that might sound, countless historians, archaeologists, antiquarians and others have interpreted existing evidence in just this way. The trail of this mysterious culture to them was simply too obvious and could not be explained by mere coincidence.
The purpose of this blog is to show that just such a culture did exist and to explain it in ways not done before. I would like to offer the evidence that my own ancestors, who spoke Austronesian languages, were these seafaring people who greatly impacted the world we live in today. My purpose is to provide a first-hand view from one whose worldview is partially shaped by the old Austronesian speakers, and one who has learned much from the elders.
The tale is one that starts during the transition from the latter part of the Middle Stone Age to medieval times and from Southeast Asia and the Pacific to Europe and the Americas.
The historical events covered range from the great spice trade to the legends of Shambhala and Prester John.
For millennia, mystery cults found within these seafaring people battled on spiritual and mundane planes based on their contrasting beliefs in a society charged with dualism. I will give my own interpretations of the symbols they left and their meanings.
One would not be surprised that Austronesian speakers should have already been considered for any theories of this kind. The Austronesian language family, comprised of two great branches, the Malayo-Polynesian and Formosan, expanded rapidly by sea millennia ago. In fact, you will find many established scholars who would agree that by about 200 AD, the Austronesian-speaking people's geographic range was not much different than it is today.
Since at least the time of the Lapita expansion into the Pacific, usually dated between 1800 and 1500 BC to the "Age of Exploration" about 500 years ago, the Austronesian languages had been the most widely dispersed of any widely recognized language family. Yet, only a few have thought to consider these people beyond the range of their present languages.
Although a few researchers had explored this subject starting a few centuries ago, it was Bunkminster Fuller, an architect, futurist and sometime historian of science and engineering, who first suggested that Austronesian speakers had not received the credit they were due. Although not well equipped to analyze the linguistic aspects of his argument, Fuller had an extraordinary insight into the development of building and engineering concepts. His study of hydraulic and maritime technology and of "tensile" systems brought him to the conclusion that Austronesian people had developed and diffused many important things.
Sumet Jumsai, a Thai researcher augmented greatly the research of Fuller in Naga : cultural origins in Siam and the West Pacific , and more recently, Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, in his book Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia has explored this subject in great detail.
But don't worry this blog will a great deal of stuff found nowhere else.
For those who need a little background on this subject, I will recommend some web reading:
Please review my own history page with some relevant background
articles:
http://asiapacificuniverse.com/pkm/historypage.htm
Don't worry if you get lost in some of the details and terminology. I will try to clear this all up as we go along.
The purpose of this blog is to show that just such a culture did exist and to explain it in ways not done before. I would like to offer the evidence that my own ancestors, who spoke Austronesian languages, were these seafaring people who greatly impacted the world we live in today. My purpose is to provide a first-hand view from one whose worldview is partially shaped by the old Austronesian speakers, and one who has learned much from the elders.
The tale is one that starts during the transition from the latter part of the Middle Stone Age to medieval times and from Southeast Asia and the Pacific to Europe and the Americas.
The historical events covered range from the great spice trade to the legends of Shambhala and Prester John.
For millennia, mystery cults found within these seafaring people battled on spiritual and mundane planes based on their contrasting beliefs in a society charged with dualism. I will give my own interpretations of the symbols they left and their meanings.
One would not be surprised that Austronesian speakers should have already been considered for any theories of this kind. The Austronesian language family, comprised of two great branches, the Malayo-Polynesian and Formosan, expanded rapidly by sea millennia ago. In fact, you will find many established scholars who would agree that by about 200 AD, the Austronesian-speaking people's geographic range was not much different than it is today.
Since at least the time of the Lapita expansion into the Pacific, usually dated between 1800 and 1500 BC to the "Age of Exploration" about 500 years ago, the Austronesian languages had been the most widely dispersed of any widely recognized language family. Yet, only a few have thought to consider these people beyond the range of their present languages.
Although a few researchers had explored this subject starting a few centuries ago, it was Bunkminster Fuller, an architect, futurist and sometime historian of science and engineering, who first suggested that Austronesian speakers had not received the credit they were due. Although not well equipped to analyze the linguistic aspects of his argument, Fuller had an extraordinary insight into the development of building and engineering concepts. His study of hydraulic and maritime technology and of "tensile" systems brought him to the conclusion that Austronesian people had developed and diffused many important things.
Sumet Jumsai, a Thai researcher augmented greatly the research of Fuller in Naga : cultural origins in Siam and the West Pacific , and more recently, Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, in his book Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia has explored this subject in great detail.
But don't worry this blog will a great deal of stuff found nowhere else.
For those who need a little background on this subject, I will recommend some web reading:
Please review my own history page with some relevant background
articles:
http://asiapacificuniverse.com/pkm/historypage.htm
Don't worry if you get lost in some of the details and terminology. I will try to clear this all up as we go along.
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