BEIJING, Dec. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A report from China Each day
Guests to the continuing exhibition Origin and Expansions: The Austronesians and Maritime Civilization on the Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum watch artifacts on show.
Within the seventeenth and 18th centuries, navigators exploring the Pacific and Indian oceans found that the languages spoken on many islands, spanning from Madagascar within the west to Polynesia within the east, had been remarkably related. This discovery launched research of Austronesians, those that converse Austronesian languages and had sailed throughout the Pacific a number of thousand years in the past.
Lengthy earlier than the Age of Exploration, these individuals had launched into heroic voyages throughout the ocean. The main points of their encounters stay largely unknown. Over time, their descendants regularly forgot the place they originated from. Migration started 6,000 years in the past and lasted till round 1,000 years in the past. At present, greater than 400 million individuals converse Austronesian languages, spanning a large space that covers greater than one-third of the Pacific and Indian oceans.
For greater than a century, the origins and migrations of Austronesian peoples have been a major topic of worldwide educational examine. Linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists have regularly revealed their voyages throughout oceans over the previous millennia.
Their journeys are featured within the ongoing exhibition Origin and Expansions: The Austronesians and Maritime Civilization on the Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum. This exhibition is a cooperation between the Chongqing museum and the Fujian Museum, which shows cultural relics associated to the Austronesian peoples.
Ding Qinghua, one of many exhibition’s curators on the Fujian Museum, says the exhibition attracts on prehistoric archaeological discoveries from southeastern China and traces the historic hyperlinks between Chinese language maritime civilization and Austronesian tradition by way of greater than 200 artifacts.
Initially, linguists had been the primary to analysis the Austronesian peoples, however archaeologists quickly joined the research, specializing in stone stepped adzes.
One of many stone stepped adzes unearthed from the Huangguashan web site in Xiapu county, Fujian province, is on show, indicating the migration of the Austronesian peoples.
Qin Zonglin, a curator on the Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum, says that though stone adzes have been broadly discovered to be an vital software to acquire meals and course of wood instruments utilized by Neolithic individuals, stone stepped adzes had been largely found in coastal areas. Based mostly on multidisciplinary research, Austronesian peoples had been a serious group that used the stone stepped adzes.
“By checking its improvement and enlargement, consultants can achieve clues to the origins and migrations of the peoples,” says Ding, including that such instruments had been particularly useful in slicing timber and making boats, which had been vital for individuals residing in coastal areas who tried emigrate.
By evaluating the event of stone stepped adzes discovered in numerous areas, together with China’s southeast coast, Southeast Asian islands, and Pacific islands, students usually consider China’s southeast coast was the birthplace of such instruments, a conclusion reached as early because the Nineteen Thirties, Ding says.
Some might doubt this conclusion — from China to the South Pacific islands takes greater than a dozen hours to fly in trendy instances. Might Austronesian individuals sail to date so way back?
The show exhibits an experiment performed by Hiria Ottino, president of the Pacific China Friendship Affiliation, who navigated from French Polynesia throughout the South Pacific with 5 different descendants of the Austronesian individuals in 2010.They made this journey in a self-built canoe, with out utilizing any trendy gadgets or supplies.
After 116 days out at sea and the quite a few challenges of a hurricane and a shark assault alike, they reached a harbor in Fujian, proving a long-distance sea journey was potential with out trendy instruments.
In keeping with Ding, “Historical individuals had excellent talents in navigating nature. With an understanding of currents, wind, stars, and hen migration, they may navigate the Pacific. Utilizing these strategies, they arrived at increasingly more islands, and regularly created the Austronesian cultural circle.”
The exhibition additionally shows a reproduction of a human cranium unearthed from the Qihedong web site in Xianghu city, Fujian, estimated to be from 10,000 to eight,400 years in the past. It is rather valuable as a result of it is without doubt one of the earliest and most full historical human skulls ever found within the Fujian space. Extra importantly, by extracting its DNA, students have supplied scientific proof for the origins of the Austronesian peoples.
In 2020, an essay within the journal Science, titled Historical DNA signifies human inhabitants shifts and admixture in northern and southern China, was written by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences.
By means of the genome-wide information of 26 historical human stays from northern and southern East Asia, spanning 9,500 to 300 years in the past, together with some extracted from the Qihedong cranium, they carried out a collection of scientific analyses that “supported a southern China origin for proto-Austronesians”.
The analysis exhibits the Austronesian peoples, now broadly distributed throughout the Taiwan Strait, Southeast Asia, and the southwestern Pacific islands, have very shut genetic ties to the Neolithic coastal populations of southern China. This means that the earliest Austronesian peoples originated in Fujian and its neighboring areas in southern China, with their origins traced again 8,400 years.
Furthermore, analyses of pottery vessel morphology and cultural traditions proven within the show additionally assist the view that China’s southeast coast was one of many main origins of Austronesian peoples.
An vital part of the exhibition is the Neolithic cultural relics found in Fujian, which can have been left by the ancestors of the Austronesian peoples. A lot of them are newly unearthed and being offered to the general public for the primary time.
Qin says the archaeological discoveries in Fujian appear to indicate a pattern that individuals developed from mountainous areas to coastal areas, as Paleolithic findings are positioned within the mountainous areas, whereas Neolithic discoveries lengthen to coastal areas.
One spotlight is an oyster shell software from the Xiying web site on Pingtan Island in Fujian, which was seemingly used to extract oyster meat. “It is a stone software from about 7,000 years in the past. We judged its perform primarily based on its format, the unearthing setting, and the ethnological supplies. This exhibits historical individuals tailored to their setting and made essentially the most of native assets,” says Qin.
Communication between present-day Fujian and China’s Central Plains may also be traced. For instance, a drum-shaped pottery vessel on show, unearthed from the Huangtulun web site in Fuzhou from about 3,500 to three,000 years in the past, has the same type to the bronze drum-shaped vessels discovered within the Central Plains, indicating potential cultural interactions at the moment.
The origins and migrations of Austronesian peoples have been a major topic in “Archaeology China”, a serious program that research early Chinese language historical past by way of well-planned excavations. Previously few years, archaeologists have excavated the Keqiutou group websites on Pingtan Island and gained a greater understanding of the Austronesian peoples’ ancestors.
Though students have made important progress in learning the group’s origins and the way they migrated, the the reason why they migrated are but to be revealed.
The exhibition is a facet occasion of the second normal meeting of the Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia, which was held in Chongqing in November.
To realize a greater understanding of the Austronesian peoples, the ACHA Austronesian and Maritime Civilization Committee introduced its institution in the course of the occasion. The committee’s first normal convention was then held in Pingtan county, Fujian.
“The Austronesian language household prolonged from China’s southeast coast, throughout Southeast Asia, and deep into the Pacific. Our shared heritage is each tangible, as seen in archaeological websites and artifacts, and intangible, mirrored in our tales, navigational information, agricultural and fishing traditions, and people customs that also exist at this time,” stated Ottino, in the course of the convention.
