Austronesian peoples

History of research

The linguistic connections between Madagascar, Polynesia, and Southeast Asia, particularly the similarities between Malagasy, Malay, and Polynesian numerals, were recognized early in the colonial era by European authors. The first formal publication on these relationships was in 1708 by Dutch Orientalist Adriaan Reland, who recognized a "common language" from Madagascar to western Polynesia, although Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman observed linguistic links between Madagascar and the Malay Archipelago a century earlier, in 1603. German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, who traveled with James Cook on his second voyage, also recognized the similarities of Polynesian languages to those of Island Southeast Asia. In his book Observations Made during a Voyage round the World (1778), he posited that the ultimate origins of the Polynesians might have been the lowland regions of the Philippines and proposed that they arrived to the islands via long-distance voyaging.

The Spanish philologist Lorenzo Hervás later devoted a large part of his Idea dell'universo (1778–1787) to the establishment of a language family linking the Malay Peninsula, the Maldives, Madagascar, Indonesia (Sunda Islands and Moluccas), the Philippines, and the Pacific Islands eastward to Easter Island. Multiple other authors corroborated this classification (except for the erroneous inclusion of Maldivian), and the language family came to be known as "Malayo-Polynesian", first coined by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1841 (German: malayisch-polynesisch). The connections between Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and the Pacific Islands were also noted by other European explorers, including the Orientalist William Marsden and the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach added Austronesians as the fifth category to his "varieties" of humans in the second edition of De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa (1781). He initially grouped them by geography and thus called Austronesians the "people from the southern world". In the third edition, published in 1795, he named Austronesians the "Malay race", or the "brown race", after correspondence with Joseph Banks, who was part of the first voyage of James Cook. Blumenbach used the term "Malay" due to his belief that most Austronesians spoke the "Malay idiom" (i.e., the Austronesian languages), though he inadvertently caused the later confusion of his racial category with the Malay ethnic group. The other varieties Blumenbach identified were the "Caucasians" (white), "Mongolians" (yellow), "Ethiopians" (black), and "Americans" (red). Blumenbach's definition of the "Malay" race is largely identical to the modern distribution of the Austronesian peoples, including not only Islander Southeast Asians but also the people of Madagascar and the Pacific Islands. Although Blumenbach's work was later used in scientific racism, Blumenbach was a monogenist and did not believe the human "varieties" were inherently inferior to each other. Rather, he believed that the Malay race was a combination of the "Ethiopian" and "Caucasian" varieties.

Geographic distribution

Austronesians were the first humans with seafaring vessels that could cross large distances on the open ocean; this technology allowed them to colonize a large part of the Indo-Pacific region. Prior to the 16th-century colonial era, the Austronesian language family was the most widespread in the world, spanning half the planet from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean to Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean.

Languages of the Austronesian family are today spoken by about 386 million people (4.9% of the global population), making it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard, named Indonesian), Javanese, and Filipino (Tagalog). The family contains 1,257 languages, the second-largest number of any language family.

The geographic region that encompasses native Austronesian-speaking populations is sometimes referred to as "Austronesia". Other geographic names for various subregions include Malay Peninsula, Greater Sunda Islands, Lesser Sunda Islands, Island Melanesia, Island Southeast Asia, Malay Archipelago, Maritime Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Near Oceania, Oceania, Pacific Islands, Remote Oceania, Polynesia, and Wallacea. In Indonesia, the nationalistic term Nusantara, from Old Javanese, is also popularly used for the Indonesian islands.

Austronesian regions are almost exclusively islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans, with predominantly tropical or subtropical climates with considerable seasonal rainfall.

Inhabitants of these regions include Taiwanese indigenous peoples, most ethnic groups in Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Micronesia, the Philippines, and Polynesia. Also included are the Malays of Singapore; the Polynesians of New Zealand, Hawaii, and Chile; the Torres Strait Islanders of Australia; the non-Papuan peoples of Melanesia and coastal New Guinea; the Shibushi speakers of Mayotte, and the Malagasy and Shibushi speakers of Réunion. Austronesians are also found in the regions of Southern Thailand; the Cham areas in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Hainan; and the Mergui Archipelago of Myanmar.

Additionally, modern-era migration has brought Austronesian-speaking people to the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, mainland Europe, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Hong Kong, Macau, and West Asian countries.

List of Austronesian peoples

Austronesian peoples include the following groupings by name and geographic location (incomplete):

Formosan: Taiwan (e.g., Amis, Atayal, Bunun, Paiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese indigenous peoples)

Malayo-Polynesian:

Borneo groups (e.g., Kadazan-Dusun, Murut, Iban, Bidayuh, Dayak, Lun Bawang/Lundayeh)

Chamic group: Cambodia, Hainan, Cham areas of Vietnam (remnants of the Champa kingdom, which covered central and southern Vietnam) as well as Aceh, in northern Sumatra (e.g., Acehnese, Chams, Jarai, Utsuls)

Moken

Central Luzon group: (e.g., Kapampangan, Sambal)

Igorot (Cordillerans): Cordilleras (e.g., Balangao, Ibaloi, Ifugao, Itneg, Kankanaey)

Lumad: Mindanao (e.g., Kamayo, Mandaya, Mansaka, Kalagan, Manobo, Tasaday, T'boli)

Malagasy: Madagascar (e.g., Betsileo, Merina, Sihanaka, Bezanozano)

Melanesians: Melanesia (e.g., Fijians, Kanak, Ni-Vanuatu, Solomon Islands)

Micronesians: Micronesia (e.g., Carolinian, Chamorro, Palauans)

Moro: Bangsamoro (Mindanao & Sulu Archipelago, e.g., Maguindanao, Iranun, Maranao, Tausug, Yakan, Sama-Bajau)

Northern Luzon lowlanders (e.g., Ilocano, Pangasinan, Ibanag, Itawes)

History

Prehistory

The broad consensus on Austronesian origins is the "two-layer model", where an original Paleolithic indigenous population in Island Southeast Asia were assimilated to varying degrees by incoming migrations of Neolithic Austronesian-speaking peoples from Taiwan and Fujian, in southern China, from around 4,000 BP. Austronesians also mixed with other preexisting populations as well as later migrant populations among the islands they settled, resulting in further genetic input. The most notable are the Austroasiatic-speaking peoples in western Island Southeast Asia (peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java); the Bantu peoples in Madagascar; as well as Japanese, Persian, Indian, Arab, and Han Chinese traders and migrants in more recent centuries.

Island Southeast Asia was settled by modern humans in the Paleolithic following coastal migration routes, presumably starting before 70,000 BP from Africa, long before the development of Austronesian cultures. These populations are typified by having dark skin, curly hair, and short statures, leading Europeans to believe, in the 19th century, that they were related to African Pygmies. However, despite these physical similarities, genetic studies have shown that they are more closely related to other Eurasian populations than to Africans.

The lowered sea levels of the Pleistocene made some of the modern-day islands of Sundaland accessible via land bridges. However, the spread of humans across the Wallace line and into Sahul necessitated crossing bodies of water. Remains of stone tools and marine shells in Liang Sarru, Salibabu Island, North Sulawesi, dated to 32,000–35,000 years ago, is possible evidence for the longest sea voyage by Paleolithic humans ever recorded. The island was previously uninhabited by humans or hominins and can only be reached from either Mindanao or the Sangihe Islands by crossing an expanse of water at least 100 km (62 mi) wide, even during the low sea levels of the Pleistocene. Other evidence of early maritime transport are the appearance of obsidian tools with the same source on neighboring islands. These include the Philippine obsidian network (Mindoro and Palawan, ca.33,000-28,000 BP), and the Wallacea obsidian network (Timor, Atauro, Kisar, Alor, ca.22,000 BP). However, the method of crossing remains unknown and could have ranged from simple rafts to dugout canoes by the terminal Pleistocene.

These early settlers are generally historically referred to as "Australo-Melanesians", though the terminology is problematic, as they are genetically diverse, and most groups within Austronesia have significant Austronesian admixture and culture. The unmixed descendants of these groups today include the interior Papuans and Indigenous Australians.

Migration from Taiwan

The Austronesian expansion (also called the "Out of Taiwan" model) is a large-scale migration of Austronesians from Taiwan, occurring around 3000 to 1500 BCE. Population growth primarily fueled this migration. These first settlers settled in northern Luzon, in the archipelago of the Philippines, intermingling with the earlier Australo-Melanesian population who had inhabited the islands since about 23,000 years earlier. Over the next thousand years, Austronesian peoples migrated southeast to the rest of the Philippines, and into the islands of the Celebes Sea and Borneo. From southwestern Borneo, Austronesians spread further west in a single migration event to both Sumatra and the coastal regions of southern Vietnam, becoming the ancestors of the speakers of the Malayic and Chamic branches of the Austronesian language family. A 2021 study, however, suggests an earlier divergence date between Cordilleran-related groups and populations from mainland East Asia and Taiwan at ~8,000 B.P., coinciding with the Cordilleran settlement of the Philippines.

Soon after reaching the Philippines, Austronesians colonized the Northern Mariana Islands by 1500 BCE or even earlier, becoming the first humans to reach Remote Oceania. The Chamorro migration was also unique in that it was the only Austronesian migration to the Pacific Islands to successfully retain rice cultivation. Palau and Yap were settled by separate voyages by 1000 BCE.

Another important migration branch was by the Lapita culture, which rapidly spread into the islands off the coast of northern New Guinea and into the Solomon Islands and other parts of coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia by 1200 BCE. They reached the islands of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga by around 900 to 800 BCE. This remained the furthest extent of the Austronesian expansion into Polynesia until around 700 CE, when there was another surge of island colonization. It reached the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas by 700 CE; Hawaii by 900 CE; Rapa Nui by 1000 CE; and New Zealand by 1200 CE. For a few centuries, the Polynesian islands were connected by bidirectional long-distance sailing, with the exception of Rapa Nui, which had limited further contact due to its isolated geographical location. Island groups like the Pitcairns, the Kermadec Islands, and the Norfolk Islands were also formerly settled by Austronesians but later abandoned. There is also putative evidence, based on the spread of the sweet potato, that Austronesians may have reached South America from Polynesia, where they might have traded with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Historical period

By the beginning of the first millennium CE, most of the Austronesian inhabitants in Maritime Southeast Asia began trading with India and China. The adoption of the Hindu statecraft model allowed the creation of Indianized kingdoms, such as Tarumanagara, Champa, Butuan, Langkasuka, Melayu, Srivijaya, Mataram, Majapahit, and Bali. Between the 5th and the 15th century, Hinduism and Buddhism were established as the main religion in the region. Muslim traders from the Arabian Peninsula were thought to have brought Islam by the 10th century. This was established as the dominant religion in the Malay archipelago by the 16th century. The Austronesian inhabitants of Near Oceania and Remote Oceania were unaffected by this cultural trade and retained their indigenous culture in the Pacific region.

The Kingdom of Larantuka in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, was the only Christian (Roman Catholic) indigenous kingdom in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia, with its first king named Lorenzo.

Western Europeans in search of spices and gold later colonized most of the Austronesian-speaking countries of the Asia-Pacific region, beginning in the 16th century, with the Portuguese and Spanish colonization of the Philippines, Palau, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and some parts of Indonesia (present-day East Timor); the Dutch colonization of the Indonesian archipelago; the British colonization of Malaysia and Oceania; the French colonization of French Polynesia; and later, the American governance of the Pacific.

Meanwhile, the British, Germans, French, Americans, and Japanese began establishing spheres of influence within the Pacific islands during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Japanese later invaded most of Southeast Asia and some parts of the Pacific during World War II. The latter half of the 20th century initiated independence of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, and many of the Pacific island nations, as well as the re-independence of the Philippines.

Culture

The native culture of Austronesia varies from region to region. The early Austronesian peoples considered the sea as the basic feature of their life. Following their diaspora to Southeast Asia and Oceania, they migrated by boat to other islands. Boats of different sizes and shapes have been found in every Austronesian culture, from Madagascar, Maritime Southeast Asia, to Polynesia, and have different names. In Southeast Asia, head-hunting was restricted to the highlands as a result of warfare. Mummification is only found among the highland Austronesian Filipinos and in some Indonesian groups in Celebes and Borneo.

Ships and sailing

Seagoing catamaran and outrigger ship technologies were the most important innovations of the Austronesian peoples. They were the first humans with vessels capable of crossing vast distances of water. The crossing from the Philippines to the Mariana Islands at around 1500 BCE, a distance of more than 2,500 km (1,600 mi), is likely the world's first and longest ocean crossing of that time. These maritime technologies enabled them to colonize the Indo-Pacific in prehistoric times. Austronesian groups continue to be the primary users of outrigger canoes today.

Early researchers like Heine-Geldern (1932) and Hornell (1943) once believed that catamarans evolved from outrigger canoes, but modern authors specializing in Austronesian cultures, like Doran (1981) and Mahdi (1988), now believe it to be the opposite.

Two canoes bound together developed directly from minimal raft technologies of two logs tied together. Over time, the double-hulled canoe form developed into the asymmetric double canoe, where one hull is smaller than the other. Eventually the smaller hull became the prototype outrigger, giving way to the single outrigger canoe, then to the reversible single outrigger canoe. Finally, the single outrigger types developed into the double outrigger canoe (or trimarans).

This would also explain why older Austronesian populations in Island Southeast Asia tend to favor double outrigger canoes, as it keeps the boats stable when tacking. However, there are small regions where catamarans and single-outrigger canoes are still used. In contrast, more distant outlying descendant populations in Micronesia, Polynesia and Madagascar retained the double-hull and the single-outrigger canoe types, but the technology for double outriggers never reached them (although it exists in western Melanesia). To deal with the problem of the boat's instability when the outrigger faces leeward when tacking, they instead developed the shunting technique in sailing, in conjunction with reversible single-outriggers.

The simplest form of all ancestral Austronesian boats had five parts. The bottom consisted of a single piece of hollowed-out log. At the sides were two planks, and two horseshoe-shaped wood pieces formed the prow and stern. These were fitted tightly together edge-to-edge, with dowels inserted into holes in between, and then lashed to each other with ropes (made from rattan or fiber) wrapped around protruding lugs on the planks. This characteristic and ancient Austronesian boatbuilding practice is known as the "lashed-lug" technique. They were commonly caulked with pastes made from various plants as well as tapa bark and fibers that would expand when wet, further tightening joints and making the hull watertight. They formed the shell of the boat, which was then reinforced by horizontal ribs. Shipwrecks of Austronesian ships can be identified from this construction as well as the absence of metal nails. Austronesian ships traditionally had no central rudders but were instead steered using an oar on one side.

Architecture

Austronesian architecture is diverse but often shares certain characteristics that indicate a common origin. The reconstructed Proto-Austronesian and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian forms of various terms for "house", "building", or "granary" among the different linguistic subgroups of Austronesians include *rumaq ("house"); *balay ("public building", "community house", or "guest house"); *lepaw ("hut", "field hut", or "granary"); *kamaliR ("bachelor's house", or "men's house"); and *banua ("inhabited land", or "community territory").

Austronesian structures commonly have raised floors. The structures are raised on piles, usually with space underneath also utilized for storage or domestic animals. The raised design has multiple advantages, including mitigating damage during flooding and (in very tall examples) acting as defensive structures during conflicts. The house posts are also distinctively capped with larger-diameter discs at the top, to prevent vermin and pests from entering the structures by climbing them. Austronesian houses and other structures are usually built in wetlands and alongside bodies of water but can also be constructed in the highlands or even directly on shallow water.

Building structures on pilings is believed to be derived from the design of raised granaries and storehouses, which are highly important status symbols among the ancestrally rice-cultivating Austronesians. The rice granary shrine was also the archetypal religious building among Austronesian cultures and was used to store carvings of ancestor spirits and local deities.

Another common feature are pitched roofs with ornamented gables. The most notable of these are saddlebacked roofs, a design common for longhouses used for village meetings or ceremonies. The overall effect of this is reminiscent of a boat, underlining the strong maritime connections of Austronesian cultures. The boat motif is common throughout, particularly in Eastern Indonesia. In some ethnic groups, the houses are built on platforms that resemble catamarans. Among the Nage people, a woven representation of a boat is added to the ridge of the roof; among the Manggarai people, the roofs of houses are shaped like an upside-down boat; while among the people of Tanimbar and eastern Flores, the ridge itself is carved into a representation of a boat. Furthermore, elements of Austronesian structures (as well as society in general) are often referred to in terminologies used for boats and sailing. These include calling elements of structures "masts", "sails", or "rudders", or calling the village leaders "captains" or "steersmen". In the case of the Philippines, the villages themselves are referred to as barangay, from an alternate form of balangay, a type of sailboat used for trading and colonization.

Pottery

Outside of Taiwan, assemblages of red-slipped pottery, plainware, and incised and stamped pottery associated with Austronesian migrations are first documented from around 2000 to 1800 BCE in the northern Philippines, from sites in the Batanes Islands and the Cagayan Valley of Northern Luzon. From there, pottery technology rapidly spread to the east, south, and southwest.

This type of pottery dispersed south and southwest to the rest of Island Southeast Asia. The eastward and southward branches of the migrations converged in Island Melanesia, resulting in what is now known as the Lapita culture, centered around the Bismarck Archipelago.

The oldest known pottery assemblages in Oceania are circle- and punctate/dentate-stamped pottery in the Marianas Islands, securely dated to 1500 BCE–1300 BCE from multiple archaeological sites. It predates the earliest Lapita culture pottery assemblages (c. 1350 –1300 BCE) and bears closest resemblance to a subset of the more diverse Nagsabaran pottery of the northern Philippines. It is currently disputed whether this is indicative of a direct ancient voyage from the northern Philippines to the Marianas. Hung et al. (2011) proposed a direct deliberate voyage from eastern Luzon, which would make it the longest sea crossing undertaken by that time in human history. This has also been proposed by earlier authors like Blust (2000) and Reid (2002), based on linguistics.

Winter et al. (2012), on the other hand, dismissed the similarities as being generic rather than specific to the region. This is from both analysis of the microscopic structure of the shards (indicating manufacturing techniques) and the impossibility of drift voyaging from Luzon, due to the prevailing wind and currents. Instead of a voyage directly from Luzon, they instead proposed an origin either from a direct single voyage from Mindanao (southern Philippines) or Morotai (Maluku Islands) to Guam; or two voyages, with way stations in Palau or Yap.

Hung et al. (2012) pointed out in response that no pottery assemblages older than 2,000 years old have been found in Morotai, which also has a Papuan-speaking population. They also mentioned that present-day data on wind and currents is not a reliable way of ascertaining migration routes, and that the voyages settling Remote Oceania would have been deliberate, not uncontrolled drifting. Similar presumptions by Thor Heyerdahl led to his erroneous conclusion that Polynesia was settled from the Americas. Pottery manufacturing techniques are also diverse, even within a single community. Thus, analysis of manufacturing methods is less significant than comparison of decorative systems. Nevertheless, Hung et al. (2012) emphasized that they also did not discount other sources (yet undiscovered) from the southern Philippines. They also proposed the Eastern Visayas as a likely point of origin. Sources south of the Philippines remain unlikely without further archaeological findings due to their related pottery assemblages being younger than 1500 BCE.

Music and dance

Slit drums are indigenous Austronesian musical instruments invented and used by Southeast Asian-Austronesian and Oceanic-Austronesian ethnic groups.

Gong ensembles are also a common musical heritage of Island Southeast Asia. The casting of gong instruments is believed to have originated from the Bronze Age cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia. It spread to the Austronesian islands initially through trade as prestige goods. However, mainland Asian gongs were never used in ensembles; the innovation of using gong sets is uniquely Austronesian. Gong ensembles are found in western Malayo-Polynesian groups, though they never penetrated much further east. There are roughly two gong ensemble traditions among Austronesians, which also produced gongs in ancient times.

In western Island Southeast Asia, these traditions are collectively known as gamelan, being centred on the island of Java in Indonesia. They include the celempung of the Malay Peninsula, talempung of northern Sumatra, caklempung of central Sumatra, chalempung of southern Sumatra, bonang of Java, kromong of western Kalimantan, engkromong of Sarawak, and trompong of western Nusa Tenggara.

In eastern Island Southeast Asia, these traditions are known as kulintang and are centred in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago of the southern Philippines. They include the kulintangan of Sabah and Palawan, kolintang of northern Sulawesi, kulintang of Halmahera and Timor, and totobuang of the southern Maluku Islands.

Jade carving

The ancestral pre-Austronesian Liangzhu culture (3400–2250 BCE) of the Yangtze River delta was one of the ancient centers of Neolithic jade carving. Jade was spread to Taiwan by around 3,000 BCE, then further into the Philippines at 2,000 BCE and Vietnam at 1,800–1,500 BCE. All of them began to produce various tools and ornaments in indigenous jade workshops, including adzes, bracelets, beads, and rings.

The most notable jade products of these regions were the vast amounts of penannular (in the form of an incomplete circle) and double-headed earrings and pendants known as lingling-o, primarily produced in the Philippines and the Sa Huỳnh culture of Vietnam, mostly with raw jade material sourced from eastern Taiwan. These typically depicted two-headed animals or were ring-shaped with side projections. They were indicative of a very active ancient maritime trading region, known as the Sa Huynh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere, that imported and exported raw jade and finished jade ornaments. They were produced during a period from 500 BCE to as late as 1000 CE, although later examples were replaced with metal, wood, bone, clay, green mica, black nephrite, or shell materials, rather than green jade.

Polished and ground stone adzes, gouges, and other implements, some of which are made from jade-like stone, have also been recorded in areas of Island Melanesia and eastern New Guinea associated with the Lapita culture. These were considered valuable currency and were primarily used to trade for goods. In 2012, a Lapita jadeite gouge used for wood carving was found on Emirau Island in the Bismarck Archipelago. It was dated to around 3,300 BCE, but the origin of the jade material is unknown. Similar stone tools have also been found in New Caledonia.

Jade was absent in most of Remote Oceania, due to the lack of deposits. However, there is putative evidence that Polynesians may have remained familiar with jade and may acquired it through prehistoric trade contacts with New Caledonia, Island Melanesia, and/or New Zealand.

Jade-carving traditions reappeared among the Māori people of New Zealand. These were produced from locally sourced pounamu (greenstone) and were used to produce taonga (treasure). They include various tools and weapons like adzes, scrapers, fishing hooks, and mere, as well as ornaments like the hei-tiki and hei matau. Certain ornaments like the pekapeka (double-headed animal pendant) and the kākā pōria (bird leg ring) bear remarkably strong resemblances to the double-headed and ring-type lingling‑o. Bellwood et al. (2011) has suggested that the reappearance of these motifs might be evidence of a preserved tradition of Southeast Asian jade motifs (perhaps carved in perishable wood, bone, or shell by Polynesians prior to the reacquisition of a jade source), or they might even be the result of later Iron Age contact between eastern Polynesia and the Philippines.

Rock art

There are approximately six to seven hundred rock art sites discovered in Southeast Asia and Island Melanesia, as well as over eight hundred megalithic sites. The sites specifically associated with the Austronesian expansion contain examples of indigenous pictograms and petroglyphs. Within Southeast Asia, the sites associated with Austronesians can be divided into three general rock art traditions: the Megalithic Culture of Borneo, Sulawesi, and the Greater Sunda Islands; the Austronesian Painting Tradition (APT) of the Lesser Sunda Islands, coastal New Guinea, and Island Melanesia; and the Austronesian Engraving Style (AES) of Papua New Guinea and Island Melanesia. Despite proximity, these traditions can be distinguished readily from the Australo-Melanesian rock art traditions of Australia (except the Torres Strait Islands) as well as the interior highlands of New Guinea, indicating the borders of the extent of the Austronesian expansion.

Dating rock art is difficult, but some of the sites subjected to direct dating pre-date Austronesian arrival, like the Lene Hara paintings of East Timor, which have an age range of 6,300 to 26,000 BP. Conversely, others are more recent and can be dated indirectly by their subjects. The depictions of pottery, ships, and metal objects, for example, put certain rock art sites at a range of 2,000 to 4,000 BP. Some hunter-gatherer groups have also continued to produce rock art well into the present period, as evidenced by their modern subjects.

The Megalithic Culture is mostly limited to western Island Southeast Asia, with the greatest concentration being western Indonesia. While most sites are not dated, the age ranges of dating sites are between the 2nd and 16th centuries CE. They are divided into two phases: The first is an older megalithic tradition associated with the Neolithic Austronesian rectangular axe culture (2,500 to 1,500 BCE), while the second is the 3rd- or 4th-century BCE megalithic tradition associated with the (non-Austronesian) Dong Son culture of Vietnam. Prasetyo (2006) suggests that the megalithic traditions are not originally Austronesian but rather innovations acquired through trade with India and China, but this has little to no evidence in the intervening regions in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

The Austronesian Painting Traditions are the most common types of rock art in Island Southeast Asia. They consist of scenes and pictograms typically found in rock shelters and caves near coastal areas. They are characteristically rendered in red ocher pigments for the earlier forms, later sometimes superseded by paintings done in black charcoal pigments. Their sites are mostly clustered in Eastern Indonesia and Island Melanesia, although a few examples can be found in the rest of Island Southeast Asia. Their occurrence has a high correlation to Austronesian-speaking areas, further evidenced by the appearance of bronze artifacts in the paintings. They are mostly found near the coastlines. Their common motifs include hand stencils, "sun-ray" designs, boats, and active human figures with headdresses or weapons and other paraphernalia. They also feature geometric motifs similar to those of the Austronesian Engraving Style. Some paintings are also associated with traces of human burials and funerary rites, including ship burials. The representations of boats themselves are believed to be connected to the widespread "ship of the dead" Austronesian funerary practices.

Body art

Body art among Austronesian peoples is common, especially elaborate tattooing, which is one of the most well-known pan-Austronesian traditions.

In modern times, tattoos are usually associated with Polynesian culture, due to the highly influential accounts of James Cook in his explorations of the Pacific in the 18th century. Cook introduced the word "tattoo" (archaic: "tattaow", "tattow") into the English vocabulary from Tahitian and Samoan tātau ("to tap"). However, tattoos existed prominently in various other Austronesian groups prior to contact with other cultures.

Tattoos had various functions among Austronesian societies. Among men, they were strongly linked to the widespread practice of head-hunting raids. In head-hunting societies, tattoos were records of how many heads the warrior had taken in battle, and they were part of the initiation rites into adulthood. The number and location of tattoos, therefore, were indicative of a warrior's status and prowess.

Among the Indigenous Taiwanese, tattoos were present for both men and women. Among the Atayal, facial tattoos were dominant. They indicated maturity and skill in weaving and farming for women and skill in hunting and battle for men. As in most of Austronesia, tattooing traditions in Taiwan have largely disappeared due to the Sinicization of native peoples after the Chinese colonization of the island in the 17th century, as well as conversion to Christianity. Most of the remaining tattoos are only found among elders.

One of the earliest descriptions of Austronesian tattoos by Europeans was during the 16th-century Spanish expeditions to the Philippines, beginning with the first voyage of circumnavigation by Ferdinand Magellan. The Spanish encountered the heavily tattooed Visayan people in the Visayas Islands, whom they named the Pintados (Spanish for "the painted ones"). However, Philippine tattooing traditions (batok) have mostly been lost as the natives of the islands converted to Christianity and Islam, though they are still practiced in isolated groups in the highlands of Luzon and Mindanao. Philippine tattoos were usually geometric patterns or stylized depictions of animals, plants, and human figures. Some of the few remaining traditional tattoos in the Philippines are among elders of the Igorot peoples. Most of these were records of war exploits against the Japanese during World War II.

Religion

The religious traditions of the Austronesian people focus mostly on ancestral spirits, nature spirits, and gods, making it a complex animistic religion. Mythologies vary by culture and geographical location but share common basic aspects, such as ancestor worship, animism, shamanism, and the belief in a spirit world and powerful deities. There is also a great amount of shared mythology and a common belief in Mana.

Many of these beliefs have gradually been replaced. Examples of native religions include: Indigenous Philippine folk religions (including beliefs in Anito), Sunda Wiwitan, Kejawen, Kaharingan, and Māori religion. Many Austronesian religious beliefs have been incorporated into foreign religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, which Austronesian peoples were introduced to later.

Writing

With the possible exception of rongorongo on Rapa Nui, Austronesians did not have an indigenous writing system but rather adopted or developed writing systems after contact with various non-Austronesian cultures. There existed various forms of symbolic communication using pictograms and petroglyphs, but these did not encode language.

Rongorongo, said to have originally been called kohau motu mo rongorongo ("lines of inscriptions for chanting out"), is the only pre-contact indigenous Austronesian system of glyphs that appear to be true writing or at least proto-writing. They consist of around 120 glyphs, ranging from representations of plants to animals, celestial objects, and geometric shapes. They were inscribed into wooden tablets about 12 to 20 in (30 to 51 cm) long using shark teeth and obsidian flakes. The wood allegedly came from toromiro and makoʻi trees, which is notable given that Rapa Nui was completely deforested at the time of European contact. Of the surviving two dozen tablets, a few were made from trees introduced after European contact, as well as wood originating from European ships and driftwood. Rapa Nui also has a rich assemblage of petroglyphs largely associated with the tangata manu ("birdman") cult of Makemake. Although some rongorongo glyphs may have been derived from these petroglyphs, rongorongo does not appear in any of the abundant rock carvings in Rapa Nui and seems to be restricted to the wooden tablets.

The tablets were first described by an outsider in 1864 by the Catholic missionary Eugène Eyraud, who said they were found "in all the houses". However, he paid them little attention, and they remained unnoticed by the outside world. It wasn't until 1869 that one of the tablets came into the possession of Florentin-Étienne Jaussen, the Bishop of Tahiti. He brought the tablets to the world's attention and instructed the Rapa Nui mission to gather more information about them. But by then, most of the tablets were allegedly already destroyed, presumed to have been used as fuel by the natives on the deforested island.

At the time of discovery of the tablets, Rapa Nui had undergone severe depopulation. This was largely due to the loss of the island's last trees and the Peruvian and Chilean slave raids in the early 1860s. The literate ruling classes of the Rapa Nui people (including the royal family and the religious caste) and the majority of the island's population were kidnapped or killed in the slave raids. Most of those taken died after only one or two years in captivity from harsh working conditions and European diseases. Succeeding epidemics of smallpox and tuberculosis further decimated the island's population to the point that there were not enough people to bury the dead. The last remnants of the Rapa Nui people were assimilated by the Tahitians who were later brought to the island in an effort to repopulate it, further resulting in the loss of most of the Old Rapa Nui language.

Genetic studies

Genetic studies have been conducted on Austronesian peoples. Haplogroup O1a, marked by the M119 SNP, is frequently detected in native Taiwanese and northern Filipinos, as well as some people in Indonesia, Malaysia, and non-Austronesian populations in southern China.

A 2007 analysis of the DNA recovered from human remains in archaeological sites of prehistoric peoples along the Yangtze River in China also shows high frequencies of Haplogroup O1 in the Neolithic Liangzhu culture, linking them to Austronesian and Tai-Kadai peoples. The Liangzhu culture existed in coastal areas around the mouth of the Yangtze. Haplogroup O1 was absent in other archaeological sites inland. The authors of the study suggest that this may be evidence of two different human migration routes during the peopling of Eastern Asia; one coastal and the other inland, with little gene flow between them.

The 'core Austronesian' population derives more ancestry from Late Neolithic Fujian-related sources (66.9%–74.3%), similar to present Kra-Dai groups and southeastern Han Chinese. Strong affinities also exist between present Austronesians and Qihe3 from Early Neolithic Fujian. Qihe3 clusters with Boshan from Early Neolithic Shandong and is genetically indistinguishable from Liangdao-2. However, Qihe3 could be modeled as a mixture of local ancestries from southeastern China with some input from northeastern China. In contrast, Late Neolithic Fujianese populations, like Xitoucun and Tanshishan, have higher affinities with Dushan-related populations, who have slightly more affinities for present Austroasiatic-speaking groups. Likewise, the Taiwan Hanben population is closely related to Dushan-related populations and are related to the Taiwan Gongguan population, Longli Bouyei and Qiandongnan Dong, who are representatives of the ancestral Kra-Dai population, Kinh Vietnamese etc. Another study states affirms the southeastern Chinese origins of the 'proto-Austronesian' population although there's evidence that they mixed with contemporary populations from Shandong. Using the Atayal as proxies for the ancestral Austronesian population, they can also be modeled as a mixture of North Indian-related (6%) and Naxi/Miao-related groups (94%).

An important breakthrough in studies in Austronesian genetics was the identification of the "Polynesian motif" (haplogroup B4a1a1) in 1989, a specific nine-base-pair deletion mutation in mitochondrial DNA. Several studies have shown that it is shared by Polynesians and Island Southeast Asians, with a sub-branch also identified in Madagascar, indicating shared maternal ancestry among Austronesians. Austronesian-speaking regions also have high-to-moderate frequencies of haplogroup O1 of the Y-DNA (including Madagascar), indicating shared paternal ancestry, with the exception of Polynesia where the Papuan-derived haplogroup C2a1 predominates (although lower frequencies of Austronesian haplogroup O-M122 also exist). This indicates that the Lapita people, the direct ancestors of Polynesians, were likely matrilocal, assimilating Papuan men from outside the community by marriage in Near Oceania, prior to the Polynesian expansion into Remote Oceania.

Evidence from agriculture

The Austronesian migrations were accompanied by a set of domesticated, semi-domesticated, and commensal plants and animals transported via outrigger ships and catamarans that enabled early Austronesians to thrive in their mostly island environments. These include crops and animals believed to have originated from the Hemudu and Majiabang cultures in the hypothetical pre-Austronesian homelands in mainland China, as well as other plants and animals believed to have been first domesticated from within Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, and New Guinea. Some of these plants are sometimes also known as "canoe plants", especially in the context of Polynesian migrations. They provide another source of evidence for Austronesian population movements.

Notable examples of these crops include coconuts, bananas, rice, sugarcane, paper mulberry (tapa tree), breadfruit, taro, ube, areca nut (including the practice of betel chewing), ginger, turmeric, candlenut, pandan, and citruses. The cultivation of sweet potatoes in Polynesia may also be evidence of prehistoric Austronesian contact with the Americas, though this remains disputed. The domesticated animals carried in Austronesian voyages include dogs, pigs, and chickens.

Austronesians also introduced these crops and domesticated animals westward via trade links. Island Southeast Asians established spice trade links with the Dravidian-speaking regions in Sri Lanka and Southern India by around 1500 to 600 BCE. These early contacts resulted in the introduction of Austronesian crops and material culture to South Asia, including betel nut chewing, coconuts, sandalwood, domesticated bananas, sugarcane, cloves, and nutmeg. South Asian crops like the mung bean and horsegram were also present in Southeast Asia by 400–100 BCE, indicating the exchange was reciprocal.

There is also indirect evidence of very early Austronesian contacts with Africa, based on the presence and spread of Austronesian domesticates like bananas, taro, chickens, and purple yam in Africa in the first millennium BCE.

Pre-Columbian contact with the Americas

A genomic analysis in 2020 showed Austronesian contact with South America around 1150–1200 CE, the earliest one being between Fatu Hiva and Colombia.