By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

A University of Hawai'i archaeologist and his Chinese counterparts have excavated artifacts on an island on the coast opposite Taiwan that strongly suggest a link between Polynesians and a Neolithic culture on the China mainland.

The site could become a Holy Grail for Pacific anthropologists who have been searching for Polynesian origins since the first Pacific Science Congress was held in Honolulu in 1920.

Stone adzes excavated last month on Dongshan Island in Fujian Province closely resemble those carved by Marquesans and Samoans.

Shards of pottery from the site are decorated with cord impressions and incised markings similar to pottery on Taiwan that is already considered proto-Polynesian.

Barry Rolett, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai'i, and TienLong Jiao, a Chinese scholar in the department of anthropology at Harvard University, dated the artifacts at 6,000 to 4,500 years old. That's contemporary with a Neolithic seafaring culture discovered on Taiwan that is believed to be an early step in the evolution of Polynesian culture.

Tienlong Jiao and Barry Rolett examine an adze excavated on Dongshan island, in Fujian. Bob Krauss • The Honolulu Advertiser

This first attempt to look for Polynesian origins on the China mainland is a joint effort of UH, Harvard, the Fujian Provincial Museum, the Dongshan County Museum and a Beijing geologist.

TienLong, the first Chinese archaeologist to explore Polynesian origins, said Chinese scholars tend to focus on linking South China's Neolithic coastal culture with the Han Chinese culture in the north. But the coastal culture of Fujian Province is Austronesian, or of Pacific Island origin, not Chinese, he said.

The proper comparison is with Pacific Island cultures, fellow members of an early seafaring language family that spread from Madagascar off the coast of Africa to Easter Island off the coast of South America. Tienlong said the ancient Austronesian culture has disappeared on the Chinese mainland.

His interest in Polynesian origins began when Rolett, then a visiting professor at Harvard, taught a course he attended in Pacific archaeology. Their combined expertise made the discovery possible.

TienLong, one of China's top scholars, has excellent connections in the Chinese scientific community. Rolett provides expertise in Pacific archaeology, especially the Marquesas, and funding sources in the United States. He has studied Chinese at UH for the last two years to increase his effectiveness.

In the 1980s, a geologist on Dongshan Island reported piles of sea shells on the slope of a small mountain some 250 feet above sea level. The small Dongshan County Museum sent an archaeologist to investigate who found stone adzes and pottery.

TienLong said he read the report in a small scientific journal. He and Rolett realized it could be a Neolithic site, because sea level 4,500 years ago was 7 1/2 feet higher than it is now. What is now coastal plain was then lagoon, Rolett said. The mountains then rose out of the water, creating islands.

Residents of the village on the slope harvested sea shells on the nearby shore and brought them home for food. In time, they created piles of shells. The site is called Damaoshan, or Big Hat Mountain.

One reason that no link with Polynesia was discovered in China until now is that Chinese archaeologists didn't know what to look for, and didn't recognize it when they saw it.

An example occurred to Rolett while exploring the Penghu Islands 40 miles off the coast of Taiwan. He stumbled on a basalt adz quarry where, it turned out, adzes found on Taiwan were made. The Taiwanese archaeologist working with him insisted the pile of stone chips at the quarry was a natural formation until Rolett picked up adzes and hammer stones used to create the chips during manufacture of adzes.

It was the first major adz quarry discovered on the China coast. Discovery of the quarry that provided adzes for Taiwan proved the Neolithic coastal people of Taiwan were capable of ocean voyages 6,000 years ago.

Rolett and TienLong explained that a great deal of work must be done before the Damaoshan site can be designated as an origin of the seafaring Polynesian culture.

Two conflicting theories on the subject exist. One model projects an island-studded corridor extending from eastern Indonesia to the Solomon Islands as a "voyaging nursery" that spawned Polynesian maritime technology.

The second hypothesis looks to early voyages between China and Taiwan as the beginning of Austronesian, then Polynesian, seafaring. Rolett and Tienlong hold with the second theory.

They said the seafaring culture found on Taiwan was "totally different" from other Neolithic cultures there. It appeared suddenly, suggesting a mobile people. The Damaoshan site was occupied for a time, then abandoned.

Artifacts dug up there include an arrowhead like those excavated on Taiwan, a broken piece of jade bracelet, pottery shards similar to those found on Taiwan, and adzes. A concentration of fish bones suggests heavy reliance on the ocean for food, and fishermen. The fish species have yet to be identified. Some were very large.

Tienlong said the artifacts suggest a culture related to the seafaring culture discovered on Taiwan called Dapengkeng, or DPK. A previous dig to the north on the coast of Fujian Province did not reveal the same similarities.

Two stone adzes, about 8 and 5 inches long, became the center of attention during a survey of the artifacts. Rolett said he was amazed by the similarity with the adzes he dug up in the Marquesas.

"It's incredible," he said. "Show this to Pat Kirch (archaeologist at the University of California at Berkeley) and tell him they're from Samoa, and he'd believe you. He'd just say, 'What else have you got?' "

Rolett arrived in China last week to help identify the artifacts, traveling with Dwayne Steel of the Dwayne and Marti Steel Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation, a sponsor of the project.

This reporter went along. Chinese television and newspapers covered the excavation.

TienLong and Rolett obtained a sample of Dongshan Island basalt to start a regional collection of basalt samples up and down the coast to determine by chemical analysis where the adzes found on the Big Hat Mountain site came from.