Paper mulberry hints at migration
Archaeologists theorize that a group of brave indigenous Taiwanese ventured out into the Pacific Ocean some 4000 years ago, relying on wind, currents and the stars to steer their course to the Philippines.
Their descendants continued to explore unknown waters, and within 1000 or so years had reached Malaysia, Indonesia, Polynesia, New Zealand, and even Madagascar. But for all the density and complexity of the routes within this network, each points to Taiwan as the place of origin.
Lin Ching-tsai, chair of the Department of Music at National Taitung University, has long studied ethnomusicology, Taiwan’s musical history, and Aboriginal music. Recalling a performance in Taiwan by an arts group from Palau, he said, “In Taiwan, that style of song and dance, the call and response between the lead singer and the group, is seen only among the Puyuma people.” To him, the parallel represents a tangible example of the connection between Taiwanese and Austronesian culture.
Another example of the connections between islands emerged in October 2011. At the time, Lin was showing the director of New Zealand’s Maori cultural tourism department around, and traveled with him to Taitung to visit Amis and Puyuma villages. On the night of October 31, tribal ancestral spirits entered the director’s dreams, greeting him and laughingly informing him: “Your ancestors set out from here.” In his dream, the director then took part in a traditional ceremony and contacted his ancestral spirits. Since then, whenever officials from Taiwan’s Council of Indigenous Peoples have visited New Zealand, local people have welcomed them with great ceremony and spread word of their arrival: “Our brothers have returned!”
Lin added that these encounters not only brought Taiwan’s indigenous peoples and the Maori closer together, but also indirectly spurred the inclusion of an article on indigenous cooperation in the Agreement Between New Zealand and the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu on Economic Cooperation (ANZTEC), which opened a new frontier for Taiwan’s free trade agreements.
Margaret Chang-hwa Wang, director of Taiwan’s National Museum of Prehistory, offered two pieces of archaeological evidence in support of the “out of Taiwan” theory. The first involves paper mulberry trees: a genetic comparison of paper mulberry trees in Taiwan with those in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hawaii found that all of Oceania’s paper mulberries originated in Taiwan. Moreover, all the peoples of this region make clothing from the tree’s bark.
The other involves Taiwanese jade carvings from a Puyuma archaeological site. As Wang explained: “There is now very clear evidence that during a period from roughly 2200 years ago to 1000 years ago, Taiwanese artisans carried Taiwanese jade to Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and the Philippines using ocean currents to travel southward, and the Kuroshio Current to return northward.”
The Luxury Logico art collective used waste materials to create this piece, entitled Rebirth, in Taitung. (photo by Kent Chuang)