THE MIGRATING PIG

So it turns out that Hawaiian and Maori originated somewhere in central southern China. That is to say that the ancestors of Austronesian language speakers migrated from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, then eventually spread from there to maritime South East Asia and Oceania. Some elements of "protoprotoproto" Austronesian culture have been found in neolithic digs, including adzes and black pottery with a high charcoal content, as well as some tools such as bark beaters.

There is also evidence that considerably later, but still in the stone age, some minor spread back into the Chinese mainland occured. Linguistic traces remain in Southern Chinese languages. But the record is slim. By the time of the first Cham inscriptions that area was becoming Sinicised, and far further inland the Tai peoples were already trekking south through Yunnan. The Cham, of course, were in what is now Vietnam.

As an interesting item, here is the the Đông Yên Châu inscription from Simhapura (Trà Kiệu):

Siddham! Ni yang naga punya putauw.
Ya urang sepui di ko, kurun ko jema labuh nari swarggah.
Ya urang paribhu di ko, kurun saribu t'hun dawam di naraka, dengan tijuh kulo ko.

[Translation: "Blessing! This is the sacred serpent of the king. The person that respects it, jewels will fall from heaven. The person who insults it, will remain one thousand years in hell with seven generations of descendants."]

This isn't too very far from modern Malay, sort of intelligible, though a number of words are a stretch. One of the reasons why there is almost nothing like this traceable to their point of presumed origin (coastal central southern China) is the span of time (over four millenia), enormous cultural developments since then, and the erasure of the landbridge to Taiwan by rising seas. One suspects that much evidence has been obscured by the water. Add to that the absorption of other cultural elements, plus ethnic mixing with resident populations along the path of spread, and everything fades to mist. Stone records require social organization and stable rule, leaf and bark manuscrifts turn to dust within a few generations.

Taiwan is where linguistically there are more linguistic strains of the entire language family than anywhere else. Early settlement existed there in neolithic time per the archeologic evidence, indicating ten millenia of prehistory. By the time of the Dapengkeng culture (大坌坑文化 4000 - 3000 BCE) they were cultivating rice and millet, and creating fine pottery. The outward migrations in subsequent centuries from here eventually spread cultural elements and languages over a vast area. It makes for some fascinating reading.


Tentatively influences and commonalities have been noted with cultures in the lower Yangtze region, as well as coastal Guangdong. But it's all still very unclear.



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