From the Yangtze Valley of southern China to the Pacific - an update of archaeological perspective on Austronesian prehistory - unpublished conference paper

In order to build a holistic view and update information on the dispersal history of ancient Austronesian-speaking populations, new archaeological data will be synthesized from the region between the Yangtze Valley of southern China and Micronesia. Primary archaeological field data are discussed, especially concerning the new dating results and cultural remains from the early Neolithic phase in the Marianas (Micronesia) and northern Luzon (Philippines), as well as newly unearthed findings by colleagues in southern China, Taiwan and Hainan Island. According to the findings of cultural assemblages and earliest Neolithic dates, this paper traces the homeland of the earliest Neolithic migrants in the Pacific back to Taiwan and eventually to southern China. The cultural relations between the last hunter-gatherers (ca.18,000-3,000 BC) and earliest farmers in southern China (ca. 7000BC~) played a significant role in our understanding of the origin of the TPK (Dabenkeng) population - the earliest Neolithic horizon in Taiwan, regarded as the earliest Austronesian archaeological culture. In the paper, we also noticed that many questions are yet to be answered. However, it is evident that the ancient Austronesians not only crossed the Taiwan Strait 5500- 6000 years ago from southern China to Taiwan, but also made the longest seacrossing undertaken by 3500 BP in human history, from northern Philippines to the Marianas, and eventually reaching throughout the great Pacific region.