Austronesian Migration Crossroads Civilization

Some 5,000 years ago, the ancestors of

today's Southeast Asians began a journey

that would become one of the greatest

series of human migrations of the world.

They came from what is now southern

China, traveled south toward Taiwan, and

then entered the Philippines through its

northernmost edge, Batanis.

They populated the archipelago for more

than a thousand years and then from here

traveled west toward Madagascar in

Africa and east toward Easter Island

near South America.

Linguists call them the Austronesian

speaking peoples.

speakers of a family of languages heard

in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia,

and many other islands of Southeast Asia

and the Pacific.

The first Aronesian speakaking Filipinos

who arrived here about 4,000 years ago

from Taiwan uh through the Batanes and

Northern Luzon

uh almost certainly came here by boat.

The Philippines represented the entry of

these populations into the tropical part

of the world. And when they arrived

here, they also had to develop their

methods of crossing sea, building

canoes. The Austronesian speaking

peoples were also expert seafarers and

boat builders.

The Aronesians developed the technology

to navigate and cross the open seas to

distant islands.

They invented the outrigger canoe as

well as the precursor of today's

catamaran,

the doublehauled sailing canoe. It is

very likely that in the Philippines, the

early Aranesians began to use outriggers

and also sails for sailing their canoes

over very large distances because of

course once you go through the

Philippines into the Western Pacific,

the distances between the islands become

larger and larger and the technology has

to improve, particularly for getting to

places such as Polynesia where islands

can very often be many thousands of

kilometers apart.

Textbooks used to say that the ancestors

of today's Filipinos crossed land

bridges to reach the Philippines, but

evidence shows that they actually came

by boat from southern China through

Taiwan.

Linguists say the sophisticated

seafaring culture was instrumental in

the spread of Austronesian languages.

During the Neolithic era,

Austronesians colonized the islands of

Southeast Asia and the Pacific and

imposed the language on their subjects.

Today, there are about 1,200

languages considered part of the

Austronesian family. Spoken by 350

million people,

boats and the sea played a central role

in the beliefs of Austronesian speaking

people.

A burial jar from the Neolithic era

found in the Manungul cave in Palawa has

for a cover the figure of a boatman

transporting the dead to the afterlife.

It shows how the sea dominated life and

death.

Arustronicianspeaking peoples had their

own belief system long before they

learned about Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic

or Western thought. This common belief

system showed even in their

architecture.

Traditional homes of Aronesianspeaking

peoples reflect Southeast Asian concepts

of the upper world, underworld, and the

earthly realm.

Filipino, Indonesian, and Malaysian

houses had spaces below for animals,

rooms in the middle for humans, and

shrines for ancestor worship in lofts

above.

Speakers of Aronesian languages also

share other cultural traits

that indicate a common origin and

history evident despite the geographical

distances.

One of these is the weaving of cloth

using the backstrap loom where one end

is tied to a tree or post and the other

is strapped to the weaver's back.

Weaving in this manner is believed to

have been practiced by Aronesian

ancestors. Colorful backstrap woven

material are a common sight among

indigenous communities in parts of the

world populated by Aronespeaking

peoples. Also a common cultural trait is

the chewing of beetle not quibs still

practiced in parts of Southeast Asia.

Among Ustronicianspeaking

peoples, there are common words for

beetle knot quids which are chewed with

lime and result in the reening of teeth.

And we have been um researching the

ancestry of these people uh partly

through the linguistic evidence also

through the archaeological evidence in

the form of many of these objects here.

stone adses, bark cloth beers, shell

ornaments. Um, also of course genetic

evidence about uh the ancestry of the

people themselves.

So this is like a gigantic river running

through time and space and the

Philippine population is a part of it.

Uh, Filipinos belong with their

neighbors as part of this Aranesian

speakaking population with a shared

prehistory.

during the last 5,000 years because they

had boats and could travel. Of course,

they also carried out trade. They

carried their ornaments and objects from

one island to another. And we know that

the early Austronesian speaking

Filipinos were bringing uh Nefright jade

artifacts from Taiwan and they were

spreading them through the islands.

These are things like Nefright bracelets

and earrings.

Peter Bellwood led a team of

archaeologists who found in Batanes what

is believed to be a jade workshop that

existed at least 3,000 years ago. The

team unearthed fragments of what were

believed to be parts of tools and

materials used in making jade on a

limestone mesa called Anaro inpayat

island.

There was a major expansion of trade in

the period when Indian and Chinese

contact was beginning to be made with

the islands of Southeast Asia. And at

this time, people were making the little

jade earrings with the pointed

projections that archaeologists call

lingo.

Lining o are circular ornaments common

among various peoples in Southeast Asia

such as the igots of the cordillier

region.

A type of lingling o that protrudes on

three sides was found in Palawan and is

similar to those found on Sarawak in

Malaysia as well as Vietnam and even

Taiwan. The Lingling Oe is concrete

proof of the common culture of

Aronesianspeaking peoples that

flourished in Southeast Asia some 5,000

years ago.

Aranesian languages were believed to be

the most widespread family of languages

during the 1500s

when Ferdinand Mellin came to the

Philippines.

Today, hundreds of millions across the

vast part of the globe speak a variation

of an Aronesian language. Historians and

archaeologists say that the Philippines

played an important role in the spread

of Aronesian languages.

It also showed that culture and commerce

prospered between the Philippines and

its neighbors at least 5 millennia ago.

I think the most important thing for

Filipinos to understand is that they are

part of a shared cultural heritage,

which is not just the Philippines, but

the peoples of Indonesia,

of central Vietnam, Madagascar, which is

off the east coast of Africa,

uh the native peoples of Taiwan to the

north, and virtually all of the Pacific

Islands. This heritage is very important

because it means that many of the

peoples of Southeast Asia share a common

cultural and linguistic ancestry. And I

hope that that knowledge will enable

them all to understand each other much

better in the years to come.

[Music]