Chapter 18 Chapter 17 The Yacht to Polynesia

Once, in Jayapura, the capital of New Guinea, Indonesia, three Indonesian friends and I walked into a shop when something happened.To me, this event epitomizes the history of the Pacific islands.The names of my three friends are Ashmad, Vivor and Soakari.The shop was opened by a businessman named Pingwa.Ashmad, an Indonesian government official, served as our leader because he and I were organizing an ecological survey for the government, and we used Vivor and Soakari as local assistants.But Ashmad had never been to the mountainous forests of New Guinea, so he had no idea what to buy.The result is laughable.

Pingwa was reading a Chinese newspaper when my friends walked into the shop.When he saw Vervor and Soakari, he continued to read his paper, but as soon as he saw Ashmad he slid it under the counter.Ashmad picks up an axe, which makes Vivor and Soakari laugh as he brings it down.Vervor and Soakari taught him how to hold the ax properly for chopping.That's when Ashmad and Soakari noticed Vervor's bare feet, with the toes flared out because he had never worn shoes in his life.Soakari picked the largest pair of shoes and put them on Vervor's feet, but they were still too small, causing Ashmad, Soakari and Pingwa to laugh.Ashmade picked out a plastic comb to smooth his thick, straight, black hair.He took one look at Vervor's thick, curly hair, and handed Vervor the comb.Immediately the comb seized in the hair, and as soon as Vervor exerted force, the comb snapped.Everyone laughed, and Vervor himself laughed too.Then Vivor reminded Ashmad to buy a lot of rice, because in the mountain villages of New Guinea there was nothing to buy but sweet potatoes, and eating sweet potatoes would make Ashmad's stomach overwhelmed—they laughed again.

Laughter aside, I was still aware of the underlying tension.Ashmad is a Javanese, Pingwa is a Chinese, Wivor is a New Guinea highlander, and Soakari is a northern New Guinea coastal lowlander.Javanese monopoly in the Indonesian government, which annexed western New Guinea in the 1960s and crushed New Guinean resistance with bombs and machine guns.Ashmad later decided to stay in the city and let me take Vervor and Soakari alone to do forest survey work.He explained his decision to me, pointing to his thick straight hair which is completely different from the New Guineans and said that the New Guineans would kill anyone with his hair if they found him far from the support of the army if.

Pinwa had put away his newspaper, since the importation of Chinese print was nominally illegal in Indonesian New Guinea.In a large part of Indonesia, businessmen are Chinese immigrants.Dormant mutual fear between the economically dominant Chinese and the politically dominant Javanese erupted into a bloody revolution in 1966, when the Javanese massacred tens of thousands of Chinese.Vervor and Soakari were New Guineans who shared the resentment most New Guineans felt of the Javanese dictatorship, but they also looked down on each other's groups.Residents of the plateau think that the residents of the lowlands are incompetent people who only eat sago palms, and the residents of the lowlands don’t pay attention to the residents of the plateau, saying that they are uncivilized big-headed ghosts, which refers to their thick curly hair. , also referring to their famously arrogant attitude.It hadn't been a few days since I set up a lonely forest camp with Wevor and Soakari, and they almost started a fight with an axe.

Tensions between the groups represented by Ashmad, Vivor, Soakari and Pingwa dominate the politics of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country.The roots of this modern tension go back thousands of years.When we consider major overseas population movements, we often focus on those population movements since Columbus discovered America, and the resulting replacement of non-Europeans by Europeans in various historical periods.But there were also large-scale overseas population movements long before Columbus, and there have been replacements of non-Europeans by other non-Europeans in prehistoric times.Vivor, Ashmad, and Soakari represent three waves of overseas migration from the Asian continent into the Pacific in prehistoric times.The inhabitants of the highlands of Wevor may have descended from a large group of early Asian settlers who colonized New Guinea no later than 40,000 years ago.Ashmad's ancestors finally arrived from the coast of South China about 40,000 years ago, and completed the replacement of the people there who were related to the ancestors of Vivor.Soakari's ancestors arrived in New Guinea about 36,000 years ago as part of the same wave of immigrants from the South China coast, while Pingwa's ancestors still occupy China.

The population movement that brought Ashmad and Soakari ancestors to Java and New Guinea, respectively, is known as the Austronesian expansion, and it was one of the largest population movements to occur over the past 6,000 years.Among them have always been the Polynesians, who inhabited the most remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, and were the greatest navigators of all the Neolithic peoples.The language spoken by the Austronesians today is the most widely distributed language, covering more than half the globe from Madagascar to Easter Island.In this book, the expansion of the Austronesians takes center stage with regard to the movement of people since the end of the Ice Age, because it is one of the most important phenomena to be explained.Why were Austronesians from mainland China the last to colonize and replace the original inhabitants of Java and the rest of Indonesia, rather than Indonesians to colonize and replace the Chinese in China?After occupying the whole of Indonesia, why can't the Austronesians occupy the narrow coastal strip in the lowlands of New Guinea, and why can't they drive the Vivor tribe from the highlands of New Guinea at all?How did the descendants of Chinese immigrants become Polynesians?

The inhabitants of today's Java, most of the other Indonesian islands (with the exception of some of the easternmost islands), and the Philippine archipelago are quite similar.In appearance and genetics, the inhabitants of these islands are similar to the Chinese in South China, even more similar to the people of tropical Southeast Asia, and especially similar to the residents of the Malay Peninsula.Their languages ​​are also similar: although there are 374 languages ​​spoken in the Philippine archipelago and western and central Indonesia, they are all closely related and belong to the same branch of the Austronesian language family (West Malayo-Polynesian branch).Austronesian languages ​​reached the Malay Peninsula of mainland Asia, small pockets of Vietnam and Cambodia, the westernmost Indonesian island of Sumatra and around Borneo, but no longer existed elsewhere on the mainland (due to 17.1).Austronesian words have been borrowed into English, including "taboo" (taboo) and "tattoo" (from Polynesian), "boondocks" (wilderness) (from Tagalog in the Philippines), "amok " (killer), "batik" () and "Orangutan" (orangutan) (from Malay).

The genetic and linguistic identity of Indonesia and the Philippines is at first astonishing, as is the general linguistic identity of China.The famous Javanese fossils prove that humans have lived in western Indonesia for at least 1 million years.This should have given humans ample time to develop genetic and linguistic differences and adaptations to the tropics, such as dark skin like many other tropic dwellers—but lighter-skinned Indonesians and Filipinos. It is also surprising that Indonesians and Filipinos are very similar to tropical Southeast Asians and South Chinese in other physical traits and genetics, except for lighter skin.One need only look at a map to make it clear that Indonesia provided the only possible route for humans to reach New Guinea and Australia 40,000 years ago, so one might naively think that modern Indonesians should be like modern New Guineans and Australian.In fact, there are only a few groups of New Guineans resembling New Guineans in the Philippines/Western Indonesia, especially the small blacks who live in the mountains of the Philippines.These little Negroes in the Philippines may be relics of groups that were the ancestors of Vivor's group before they reached New Guinea, and this also applies to what I have mentioned in my discussion of tropical Southeast Asia (Chapter 16). Those 3 borrowing groups are similar to New Guineans.Even the Austronesian language spoken by these little blacks is similar to that of their Filipino neighbors, which means that they too (like the Semang little blacks in Malaysia and the Pygmies in Africa) have lost their original language. language.

All this strongly suggests that either tropical Southeast Asians, or Austronesian-speaking South Chinese peoples, who had recently spread throughout the Philippines and Indonesia, replaced all original non-Philippine blacks on these islands. The inhabitants of the island also replaced all the languages ​​​​of the original island.This event obviously happened too recently for those immigrants to develop dark skin and a distinct language family, or to develop genetic characteristics or genetic differences.Their languages ​​are of course much more numerous than the 8 major languages ​​of mainland China, but they are no longer vastly different.The proliferation of many similar languages ​​in the Philippines and Indonesia simply reflects that these islands never experienced political and cultural unity like China.

The details of language distribution provide valuable clues about the route of this putative Austronesian expansion.The entire Austronesian language family includes four languages, which are divided into four language families.But one language family, called Malayo-Polynesian, includes 945 of these 959 languages, covering almost the entire geographic range of the Austronesian language family.Before the recent overseas expansion of Indo-European speakers, Austronesian was the most widespread language family in the world.This shows that the Malay-Polynesian language family has recently diverged from the Austronesian language family and spread far away from the hometown of Austronesian dialects, thus producing many local languages, but they are still close relatives, because the time is too short to form huge language difference.As for where is the hometown of Austronesian language, we should not turn our attention to the Malay-Polynesian language family, but should cast our eyes on the other three language families of the Austronesian language family. The differences between the Malayo-Polynesian groups are much greater than the differences between the various branches of the Malayo-Polynesian group.

It turns out that the other three language groups all have overlapping distributions, all of which are small compared to the distribution of the Malayo-Polynesian group.These languages ​​are spoken only by the aborigines of the island of Taiwan, 90 miles from the South China mainland.Indigenous peoples of Taiwan occupy most of the island, and it was not until the last few thousand years that mainland Chinese began to settle in large numbers on the island. After 1945, especially after the Chinese Communist Party defeated the Chinese Kuomintang in 1949, another group of mainlanders came to Taiwan, so Taiwanese aborigines now only account for 2% of Taiwan's population.Three of the four families of the Austronesian language family are concentrated in Taiwan, which indicates that Taiwan is the homeland of the Austronesian languages ​​in various parts of the world today. These languages ​​have been spoken in Taiwan for most of the past few thousand years, so they have the longest time to differentiate.It would appear that all other Austronesian languages, from Madagascar to Easter Island, may have originated in Taiwan's outward population expansion. We can now turn to the archaeological evidence.Although no language fossils have been unearthed along with bones and pottery in ancient village sites, they still show human activities and cultural products that can be linked to language.Like the rest of the world, much of today's Austronesian range—Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and many Pacific islands—was originally occupied by hunter-gatherers who had no pottery, no polished stone tools , no livestock and no crops. (The only exceptions to this inference are the remote islands of Madagascar, eastern Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia, which were never visited by hunter-gatherers and remained inaccessible until the Austronesian expansion .) Within the distribution range of Austronesian languages, the earliest evidence of different cultures found in archeology is Taiwan.Polished stone tools from around the fourth millennium BC and a different style of pottery with pattern decoration derived from earlier pottery in South China (so-called Dachakeng pottery) arose in Taiwan and the opposite coastal area of ​​South China.Remains of rice and millet unearthed at later sites in Taiwan provide evidence of agriculture. In the Chakeng site in Dalian, Taiwan, and the coast of South China, there are not only a large number of stone net sinkers and flat axes suitable for cutting wood into boats, but also a large number of fish bones and mollusk shells.Clearly, these earliest Neolithic inhabitants of Taiwan already had watercraft sufficient for deep-sea fishing and for regular sea traffic across the Taiwan Strait between the island and the mainland.therefore.The Taiwan Strait may have been used as a nautical training ground, where the mainland Chinese honed their seamanship so they could expand across the Pacific. A particular artifact linking the Dachakeng culture of Taiwan to later Pacific island cultures is the bark pounder, a stone tool used to pound the fibrous bark of certain trees, For making ropes, nets and clothing.Once the Pacific peoples had no wool-producing livestock, no fiber crops, and no woven cloth, they had to rely on pounded bark "cloth" for their clothing.Renal Island is a traditional Polynesian island that was not Westernized until the 1930s.Residents of the island told me that Westernization has had the side benefit of quieting the island.No more the sound of bark pounders everywhere, no more pounding every day from dawn-true till after dusk. There is archaeological evidence that in the millennium or so after the arrival of the Dachakeng culture in Taiwan, some cultures apparently derived from this culture spread farther and farther from Taiwan, and finally occupied the entire distribution range of modern Austronesian languages (Figure 17.2).Evidence for this includes polished stone tools, pottery, domestic pig bones and crop remains.For example, Dachakeng pottery with patterns on Taiwan Island was replaced by plain or red pottery without patterns. This kind of pottery was also found in some sites in the Philippines, Celebes Island and Timor Island in Indonesia.This "holistic" culture, including pottery, stone tools, and domesticated plants and animals, emerged in the Philippines around 3000 BC, in Indonesia, North Borneo, and Timor around 2000 BC Occurs in Java and Sumatra, and in New Guinea around 1600 BC.As we shall see, the expansion in those places took place at the speed of a speedboat, and people carried whole cultures at full speed eastward, into the previously uninhabited Pacific islands east of the Solomon Islands.The final phase of this expansion, which occurred during the first millennium AD, resulted in the colonization of every inhabited island in Polynesia and Micronesia.Astonishingly, this expansion also moved rapidly west across the Pacific to the east coast of Africa, leading to the colonization of Madagascar. At least until this expansion reached the coast of New Guinea, travel between the islands probably depended on canoes with double outriggers and sails, which are still common throughout Indonesia today.This boat design represented a major advance over the simple, off-the-shelf canoe that was popular among traditional peoples living on inland waterways around the world.A hewn canoe is, as the name suggests, a sturdy tree trunk hollowed out with a hatchet and shaped at both ends.Since the trunks used for digging are round, the bottom of the canoe is also round, so that any slight imbalance in the distribution of weight will cause the canoe to tip over to the overweight side.Whenever I go up a New Guinea river in a canoe paddled by New Guineans, I spend most of the time in fear that if I move a little the canoe will capsize, throwing me and My binoculars fell into the water and joined the crocodiles.Canoeing in calm rivers and lakes, New Guineans can do nothing, but if it is at sea, even if the wind and waves are not too strong, even New Guineans will not drive canoes.Therefore, devising some kind of stabilizing device was essential not only for Austronesian expansion throughout Indonesia, but even for the earliest colonization of Taiwan. The solution was to tie two smaller logs ("floats") to the outside of the boat's sides, one on each side, a few feet away from the hull, connected by struts tied vertically to the hull and floats.Whenever the hull starts to list to one side, the buoyancy of the buoyant material on that side keeps the buoyant material from being pushed under the water, making it virtually impossible to capsize the boat.The invention of this double outboard buoyant sail canoe may have been the technological breakthrough that enabled the Austronesian expansion from mainland China. Two striking concordances between archaeological and linguistic evidence support the inference that the peoples who brought a Neolithic culture to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia thousands of years ago spoke Austronesian and Ancestors of the Austronesian speakers who still inhabit the islands today.First, these two lines of evidence clearly show that immigration to Taiwan was the first stage of expansion from the South China coast, while immigration from Taiwan to the Philippines and Indonesia was the second stage of this expansion.If this expansion started from the Malay Peninsula in tropical Southeast Asia, first to the nearest Indonesian island, Sumatra, then to the other Indonesian islands, and finally to the Philippines and Taiwan, then we would find Indochina, the modern language of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra The most profound changes (reflecting the greatest temporal depth) of language families, whereas the languages ​​of Taiwan and the Philippines may have only recently diverged within a language family.Instead, the most profound changes have taken place in Taiwan, where the languages ​​of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra all belong to the same sublingual branch: a recent branch of the West Malayo-Polynesian branch, which in turn is the A fairly recent branch of the Polynesian language family.These details of language relationships are fully consistent with the archaeological evidence showing that the migration to the Malay Peninsula was recent, after rather than before the migration to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Another point of agreement between archaeological and linguistic evidence is the overall cultural content used by ancient Austronesians.Archeology provides us with direct cultural evidence in the form of pottery, pig and fish bones, and more.One might wonder at first how a linguist who studies only modern languages ​​(the non-written ancestral forms of which are still unknown) could conclude that people who lived in Taiwan 6,000 years ago already raised pigs.The approach is to reconstruct the vocabulary of an ancient language by comparing it with the vocabulary of a modern language derived from an ancient language that has disappeared (the so-called original mother tongue). For example, words meaning "sheep" are very similar in many Indo-European languages ​​that range from Ireland to India: in Lithuanian, Sanskrit, Latin, Spanish, Russian, Greek, and Irish, respectively for "avis", "avis", "ovis", "oveja", "ovtsa", "owis", and "oi". (The English "sheep" obviously has a different origin, but English retains the original root in the word "ewe".) A comparison of the linguistic evolution that various modern Indo-European languages ​​have undergone over the course of history shows that the original form of the word was "owis" in ancestral Indo-European languages ​​some 6,000 years ago.This ancestral language without writing is called Proto-Indo-European. Apparently, Proto-Indo-Europeans 6,000 years ago were already raising sheep, which is consistent with archaeological evidence.Nearly 2,000 other words in their vocabulary could also be reconstructed, including words for "goat," "horse," "wheel," "brother," and "eye."But the word for "gun" (gun) cannot be reconstructed from any Proto-Indo-European word, which has different roots in different modern Indo-European languages: "gun" in English, In French it is "fusil", in Russian it is "ruzhyo", etc.This should not surprise us: man 6,000 years ago could not have had a word for guns, because guns were only weapons invented within the past 1,000 years.Since there was no inherited common root for "guns," when guns were finally invented, each Indo-European language had to create its own words or borrow them from elsewhere. We can use the same method to reconstruct a primitive Austronesian language used in ancient times by comparing modern Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian and Polynesian languages.It will come as no surprise to no one that this reconstructed Proto-Austronesian has words such as "two", "bird", "ear" and "head louse"; of course, the original Austronesian People can count to 2, know birds, have ears and lice.Even more interesting, this reconstructed language has words for "pig", "dog" and "rice", so these things must have been part of the original Austronesian culture.This reconstructed language is rich in words denoting the marine economy, such as "canoe with outriggers," "sail," "big clam," "octopus," "fish trap," and "sea turtle."Regardless of where and when the original Austronesians lived, the linguistic evidence for their culture fits well with the archaeological evidence for a pottery, sea-facing, food-producing people who lived in Taiwan some 6,000 years ago . The same approach can also be used to reconstruct the original Malayo-Polynesian language, the ancestral language spoken by Austronesians after their emigration from Taiwan.Proto-Malayo-Polynesian has words for tropical crops such as taro, breadfruit, banana, yam, and coconut, for which no words can be reconstructed in Proto-Austronesian.Thus, this linguistic evidence suggests that Austronesian names for many tropical crops emerged after the emigration of Austronesians from Taiwan.This conclusion is consistent with archaeological evidence: as farmers migrated south from Taiwan (nearly 23 degrees north of the equator) and spread to the equatorial tropics, they began to rely more and more on tropical root crops and tree growth. crops, which they then brought into the tropical Pacific. How did Austronesian-speaking farmers from South China via Taiwan replace the hunter-gatherer populations of the Philippines and western Indonesia so comprehensively that the original populations left little genetic evidence and none at all? Linguistic evidence?The reasons for this are the same as those that replaced or exterminated Australian aborigines in Europe in less than two centuries, and for the same reasons that South Chinese replaced tropical Southeast Asians before that: a much denser population of peasants, a better Tools and weapons, better watercraft and navigation, and endemic diseases to which only farmers, not hunter-gatherers, had some resistance.On mainland Asia, Austronesian-speaking farmers were also able to replace former hunter-gatherers on the Malay Peninsula, as they immigrated to the peninsula from the south and east (from the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo), unlike Austronesian-speaking Farmers emigrated to the peninsula from the north (from Thailand) at about the same time.Other Austronesian speakers finally established themselves in parts of southern Vietnam and Cambodia, progenitors of the modern Cham-speaking minorities in both countries. However, Austronesian-speaking farmers failed to make further inroads into mainland Southeast Asia because Austronesian and Cadai-speaking farmers had displaced hunter-gatherer groups there, and because Austronesian-speaking farmers did not own Any advantage over Austronesian and Tai-Cadai-speaking farmers.Although we infer that Austronesian speakers came from the coastal regions of South China, there are no Austronesian speakers in mainland China today, probably because they were separated from other Chinese and Tibetan languages ​​as Sino-Tibetan speakers expanded southward. Hundreds of original Chinese languages ​​were wiped out together.However, the closest family of words to Austronesian is considered to be Dai-Cadai, Austronesian and Miao-Yao languages.So while China's Austronesian languages ​​may not have escaped attack by Chinese dynasties, some of their relative languages ​​did. So far we have followed the Austronesian speakers through their initial stages of expansion from the South China coast through Taiwan and the Philippines to western and central Indonesia, a journey of 2,500 miles.In the course of this expansion, these Austronesian speakers gradually occupied all habitable areas of the islands, from the coast to the interior, and from the lowlands to the mountains.Their well-known archaeological signs dating to no later than 1500 B.C.—including pig bones and plain-faced red-patterned pottery—show that they had reached the island of Halmahera in eastern Indonesia, just a few miles from the mountainous island of New Guinea. The eastern tip of the Big Island is less than 200 miles away.Are they going to take New Guinea as they have already taken the big mountainous islands of Sribos, Borneo, Java and Sumatra? They didn't, as is clear from a look at the faces of most modern New Guineans, and is confirmed by detailed studies of their genetics.The dark skin, thick mane, and face shape of my friend Vivor and all other New Guinea highlanders are distinctly different from those of Indonesians, Filipinos, and South Chinese.The lowlanders of the interior and southern coast of New Guinea are similar to the highlanders, except that they are generally taller.Geneticists have failed to detect Austronesian-specific genetic markers in blood samples from New Guinea highlanders. But the situation was more complicated for the peoples of the northern and eastern coastal New Guinea and the Bismarck and Solomon Islands to the north and east of New Guinea.In appearance, they are more or less between a highlander like Vivor and an Indonesian like Ashmad, though generally much closer to Vivor.For example, my friend Soakari is from the northern coast, and his wavy hair is somewhere between Ashmad's straight and Vivor's mane, and his complexion is somewhat lighter than that of Vevor Some, but much darker than Ashmad's.From a genetic point of view, the inhabitants of the Bismarck Islands and the Solomon Islands have about 15% Austronesian-speaking group composition, and 85% like people in the New Guinea highlands.Thus, Austronesians apparently traveled to the New Guinea region, but did not penetrate fully into the island's interior, and so were genetically weakened by the original inhabitants of New Guinea's northern coast and islands. Modern languages ​​basically tell the same story, but in more detail.As I said in Chapter 15, most of the New Guinean languages ​​are called Papuan languages, and they are not related to any language families anywhere else in the world.Every language spoken in the mountains of New Guinea, the entire lowland region of southwestern and south-central New Guinea (including coastal New Guinea and the northern interior) is without exception a Papuan language of some kind.But some Austronesian languages ​​are only spoken in a narrow swath around the north and southeast.Most languages ​​spoken on the Bismarck and Solomon Islands are Austronesian, with some Papuan languages ​​spoken only in small isolated areas on a few islands. The Austronesian languages ​​spoken in the Bismarck Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the northern coast of New Guinea are a subclade called Oceanic languages, and they are related to the subclade of languages ​​spoken on Halmahera and the western tip of New Guinea.Looking at the map, one might think that this linguistic relationship confirms that Austronesian speakers in the New Guinea region arrived in New Guinea via Halmasera Island.Details of Austronesian and Papuan languages ​​and their distribution in northern New Guinea suggest that Austronesian-speaking invaders had long-term contacts with native Papuan-speaking populations.Austronesian and Papuan languages ​​in this region show a great influence on each other's vocabulary and grammar, making it difficult to determine whether some languages ​​are essentially Austronesian languages ​​influenced by Papuan languages ​​or Papuan languages ​​influenced by Austronesian languages.If you travel the islands off the coast or off the coast of northern New Guinea, and walk through village after village, you will find that Austronesian is spoken in one village, Papuan in the next, Papuan in the next. is Austronesian again, but without any genetic break at the language divide. All this suggests that descendants of the Austronesian-speaking invaders and the original New Guineans have been trading, intermarrying, and acquiring each other's genes and languages ​​for thousands of years on the northern coast of New Guinea and its islands.This long-term contact had a greater effect on the transfer of Austronesian language and less on the transfer of Austronesian genes, with the result that the Bismarck and Solomon islanders now spoke Austronesian and their physical appearance And most of the genes are still Papuan.But neither the genes nor the language of the Austronesian people penetrated into the hinterland of New Guinea.Thus, the results of their invasion of New Guinea were very different from those of their invasions of Borneo, Celebes, and the other large Indonesian islands, where they had inexorably mixed the genes and Language is wiped out.To make sense of what happened in New Guinea, let us now turn to the archaeological evidence. Around 1600 BC, the familiar archaeological signs of Austronesian expansion—pigs, chickens, dogs, red-patterned pottery, polished stone axes, and large clam shells—appeared on Halmahera, almost at the same time as this At the same time, these things also appeared in the New Guinea area.But the arrival of the Austronesians to New Guinea differs from their earlier arrivals in the Philippines and Indonesia in two ways. The first feature is the ornamentation of pottery.The ornamentation on the pottery is aesthetic rather than economically significant, but allows archaeologists to immediately recognize an early Austronesian site.While most early pottery from the Austronesians in the Philippines and Indonesia is undecorated, pottery from the New Guinea region has elaborate ornamentation in geometric horizontal bands.Among other things, the pottery retains the red slip and vessel shape characteristic of the early pottery of the Austronesians in Indonesia.Austronesian settlers in the New Guinea region apparently thought of "tattooing" their jugs, perhaps inspired by the geometric patterns they had already used on bark cloth and tattoo patterns.This style of pottery is called Lapita pottery, named after the archaeological site called Lapita where it was painted. A much more important and distinctive feature of early Austronesian sites in New Guinea is their distribution.In the Philippines and Indonesia, even the earliest known Austronesian sites are on large islands such as Luzon, Borneo, and Celebes, but the Lapita pottery sites in New Guinea are different, they are almost all On some small islands around the remote Big Island.Lapita pottery has so far been found at only one site on the northern coast of New Guinea (Aitaipu) and two or three sites in the Solomon Islands.Most of the sites in New Guinea where Lapita pottery has been found are in the Bismarck archipelago, on small islands off the coast of the larger islands in the Bismarck archipelago, and occasionally on the shores of the larger islands themselves.Since (as we shall see) these Lapita pottery men were able to sail thousands of miles, they failed to move their villages to the big island in the Bismarck archipelago a few miles away, nor to To New Guinea, dozens of miles away, certainly not because they were incapable of getting there. The foundations on which the Lapita people lived can be reconstructed from the rubbish unearthed by archaeologists at the Lapita site.The Lapita people rely primarily on seafood, including fish, dolphins, turtles, sharks and shellfish.They raise pigs, chickens, and dogs, and eat many tree nuts (including coconuts).While they may also eat common Austronesian root crops such as taro and yam, evidence for these crops is difficult to find, as the hard nutshells are less likely to survive thousands of years in garbage than the soft roots Much bigger. 当然，要想直接证明制造拉皮塔陶器的人说的是某种南岛语，这是不可能的。然而，有两个事实使得这一推断几乎确定无疑。首先，除了这些陶器上的纹饰外，这些陶器本身以及与其相联系的文化器材，同印度尼西亚和菲律宾现代的说南岛语社会的古代遗址中发现的文化遗存有类似之处。其次，拉皮塔陶器还出现在以前人迹不到的遥远的太平详岛屿上，但没有任何证据表明，在那次带来拉皮塔陶器的移民浪潮后接着又出现过第二次重大的移民浪潮，而这些岛上的现代居民说的又是一种南岛语言（详见下文）。因此，可以有把握地假定，拉皮塔陶器是南岛人到达新几内亚的标志。 那些说南岛语的制造闻器的人在大岛附近的小岛上干些什么呢？他们可能和直到最近还生活在新几内亚地区的一些小岛上的制陶人过着同样的生活。1972年，我访问了锡亚西岛群中的马莱岛上的一个这样的村庄。锡亚西岛群在中等大小的翁博伊岛的外面，而翁博伊岛又在新不列颠群岛中较大的俾斯麦岛的外面。当我在马菜岛上岸找鸟时，我对那里的人一无所知，所以我看到的情景使我大吃一惊。在这类地方人们通常看到的是有低矮简陋的小屋的村庄，四周围着足以供应全村的园圃，沙滩上系着几条独木舟。但马莱岛的情况却不是这样，那里的大部分地区都建有一排排木屋，没有留下任何可以用作园圃的隙地——简直就是新几内亚版的曼哈顿闹市区。沙滩上有成排的大独木舟。原来马菜岛的居民除了会捕鱼外，还是专业的陶工、雕刻工和商人。他们的生计靠制造精美的有纹饰的陶器和木碗，用独木舟把它们运往一些大的岛屿，用他们的物品换来猪、狗、蔬菜和其他生活必需品。甚至马莱岛的居民用来造独木舟的木材也是从附近的翁博伊岛上的村民那里交换来的，因为马莱岛没有可以用来做成独木舟的大树。 在欧洲航运业出现以前的日子里，新几内亚各岛屿之间的贸易是由这些制造独木舟的陶工集团垄断的，他们没有航海仪器但却精于航行，他们生活在近海的小岛上，有时也生活在大陆沿海的村庄里。到1972年我到达马莱岛的时候，当地的这些贸易网或者已经瓦解，或者已经萎缩，这一部分是由于欧洲内燃机船和铝制壶罐的竞争，一部分是由于澳大利亚殖民政府在几次淹死商人的事故后禁止独木舟长途航行。我可以推测，在公元前1600年后的许多世纪中，拉皮塔的陶工就是新几内亚地区进行岛际贸易的商人。 南岛语向新几内亚北部海岸传播，甚至在最大的俾斯麦群岛和所罗门群岛上传播，必定多半是在拉皮塔时代以后发生的，因为拉皮塔遗址本身就是集中在俾斯麦群岛中的一些小岛上的。直到公元元年左右，具有拉皮塔风格的陶器才出现在新几内亚东南半岛的南侧。当欧洲人在19世纪晚些时候开始对新几内亚进行实地考察时，新几内亚南部沿海的所有其余地区仍然只生活着说巴布亚语的人，虽然说南岛语的人不但在东南部的半岛而且也在阿鲁岛和凯岛（距新几内亚南海岸西部70-80英里处）立定了脚根。因此，说南岛语的人可以有几千年的时间从附近的基地向新几内亚内陆和南部海岸地区移民，但他们没有这样做。甚至他们对新几内亚北部海岸边缘地区的移民，与其说是遗传上的，不如说是语言上的；所有北部海岸地区的人从遗传来看绝大多数仍然是新几内亚人。他们中的一些人最多只是采用了南岛语音，而这可能是为了与那些实现社会与社会沟通的长途贩运的商人进行交际的目的。 因此，南岛人在新几内亚地区扩张的结果与在印度尼西亚和菲律宾扩张的结果全然不同。在印度尼西亚和菲律宾，当地的人口消失了——大概是被这些人侵者赶走、杀死、用传染病害死或甚至同化了。而在新几内亚，当地的人口多半把这些入侵者挡在外面。在这两种情况下，入侵者（南岛人）都是一样的，而当地的居民从遗传来看也可能彼此相似，如果就像我前面提到的那样，被南岛人所取代的原有的印度尼西亚居民与新几内亚人真的有亲戚关系的话。那么，为什么还会有这种全然不同的结果呢？ 如果考虑一下印度尼西亚和新几内亚本地人的不同的文化环境，答案就变得显而易见了。在南岛人到来之前，印度尼西亚的大部分地区只有稀少的甚至连打磨石器都没有的狩猎采集族群。相比之下，在新几内亚高原地区，可能还有新几内亚低地地区以及俾斯麦群岛和所罗门群岛，粮食生产的确立已有几千年之久。新几内亚高原地区养活了在现代世界上任何地方都算得上最稠密的石器时代的人口。 南岛人在与那些已经扎下根来的新几内亚人的竞争中几乎没有任何优势。南岛人赖以生存的一些作物，如芋艿、薯蓣和香蕉，可能是在南岛人到来之前就已在新几内亚独立驯化出来了。新几内亚人很快就把南岛人的鸡、狗、尤其是猪吸收进他们的粮食生产经济中来。新几内亚人已经有了打磨的石器。他们对一些热带疾病的抵抗力至少不比南岛人差，因为他们同南岛人一样，也有同样的5种预防疟疾的基因，而这些基因有些或全部都是在新几内亚独立演化出来的。新几内亚人早已是熟练的航海者，虽然就造诣来说还赶不上制造拉皮塔陶器。在南岛人到来之前的几万年中，新几内亚人便已向俾斯麦群岛和所罗门群岛移民，而至少在南岛人到来之前的1800年中，黑曜石（一种适于制作锋锐工具的火山石）贸易便已兴旺发达起来。新几内亚人甚至好像在不久前逆南岛人的移民浪潮而向西扩张，进人印度尼西亚东部，那里的哈尔马赫拉岛北部和帝汶岛上所说的语言是典型的巴布亚语，与新几内亚西部的某些语言有着亲属关系。 总之，南岛人扩张的不同结果引人注目地证明了粮食生产在人口流动中的作用。说南岛话的粮食生产者迁入了两个由可能有亲属关系的原住民占有的地区（新几内亚和印度尼西亚）。印度尼西亚的居民仍然是狩猎采集族群，而新几内亚的居民早已是粮食生产者，并发展出粮食生产的许多伴随物（稠密的人口、对疾病的抵抗力、更先进的技术，等等）。结果，虽然南岛人的扩张消灭了原先的印度尼西亚人，但在新几内亚地区却未能取得多大进展，就像它在热带东南亚与说南亚语和傣—加岱语的粮食生产者的对垒中也未能取得进展一样。 至此，我们已经考查了南岛人通过印度尼西亚直到新几内亚海岸和热带东南亚的扩张。在第十九章我们还将考查一下他们渡过印度洋向马达加斯加扩张的情形，而在第十五章我们已经看到不利的生态环境使南岛人未能在澳大利亚的北部和西部扎下根来。这种扩张重振余势之日，就是拉皮塔陶工扬帆远航之时：他们进入了所罗门群岛以东的太平洋海域，来到了一个以前没有人到过的岛屿世界。公元前1200年左右的拉皮塔陶器碎片、人们熟知的三位一体的猪鸡狗，以及其他一些常见的关于南岛人的考古标志，出现在所罗门群岛以东一千多英里处的斐济、萨摩亚和汤加这些太平洋群岛上。基督纪元的早期，大多数这样的考古标志（引人注目的例外是陶器）出现在波利尼西亚群岛东部的那些岛屿上，包括社会群岛和马克萨斯群岛。更远的独木舟长途水上航行把一些移民往北带到了夏威夷，往东带到了皮特凯思岛和复活节岛，往西南带到了新西兰。今天在这些岛屿中，大部分岛屿上的土著都是波利尼西亚人，他们因而都是拉皮塔陶工的直系后裔。他们说的南岛语和新几内亚地区的语言有着近亲关系，他们的主要作物是南岛人的全套作物，包括芋艿、薯蓣、香蕉、椰子和面包果。 公元1400年左右，也就是在欧洲“探险者”进入太平洋之前仅仅一个世纪，亚洲人占领了新几内亚海岸外的查特姆群岛，从而最后完成了对太平洋的探险任务。他们的持续了几万年之久的探险传统，是在维沃尔的祖先通过印度尼西亚向新几内亚和澳大利亚扩张的时候开始的，而只是在目标已尽、几乎每一座适于住人的太平洋岛屿都已被占领的时候，它才宣告结束。 对于任何一个对世界史感兴趣的人来说，东亚和太平洋人类社会是颇有教益的，因为它们提供了如此众多的关于环境塑造历史的例子。东亚和太平洋族群凭借他们地理上的家园，无论在利用可驯化的动植物方面，或是在与其他族群的联系方面，都显得与众不同。一次又一次地，是具有发展粮食生产的先决条件并处在有利于传播来自别处的技术的地理位置上的族群，取代了缺乏这些优势的族群。一次又一次地，当一次移民浪潮在不同的环境中展开时，环境的不同决定了移民们的后代以各自的不同方式发展。 例如，我们已经看到，中国的华南人发展了本地的粮食生产和技术，接受了华北的文字、更多的技术和政治组织，又进而向热带东南亚和台湾移民，大规模地取代了这些地区的原有居民。在东南亚，在那些从事粮食生产的华南移民的后代或亲戚中，在泰国东北部和老挝山区雨林中的永布里人重新回到狩猎采集生活，而永布里人的近亲越南人（所说的语言和永布里语言同属南亚语的一个语支）始终是肥沃的红河三角洲的粮食生产者，并建立了一个广大的以金属为基础的帝国。同样，在说南岛语的来自台湾和印度尼西亚的农民移民中，婆罗洲雨林中的普南人被迫回到了狩猎采集的生活方式，而他们的生活在肥沃的爪哇火山土上的亲戚们仍然是粮食生产者，在印度的影响下建立了一个王国，采用文字，并在婆罗浮屠建有巨大的佛教纪念性建筑物。这些进而向波利尼西亚移民的南岛人同东亚的冶金术和文字隔绝了，因此始终没有文字，也没有金属。然而，我们在第二章里看到，波利尼西亚的政治和社会组织以及经济结构在不同的环境中经历了巨大的分化。在一千年内，波利尼西亚东部的移民在查特姆群岛回复到狩猎采集生活，面在夏威夷则建立了一个从事集约型粮食生产的原始国家。 当欧洲人终于来到时，他们的技术优势和其他优势使他们能够对热带东南亚的大部分地区和各个太平洋岛屿建立短暂的殖民统治。然而，当地的病菌和粮食生产者妨碍了欧洲人大批地在这个地区的大多数地方定居。在这一地区内，只有新西兰、新喀里多尼亚和夏威夷——这几个面积最大、距离赤道最远、最偏僻的、因而处于几乎最温和的（像欧洲一样的）气候之中的岛屿——现在生活着大量的欧洲人。因此，与澳大利亚和美洲不同，东亚和大多数太平洋岛屿仍然为东亚民族和太平洋民族所占有。

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Notes: