By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

FUJIAN PROVINCE, China — Two Hawai'i-based archaeologists have found the first hard evidence that voyagers from the south coast of China about 6,000 years ago set out on the initial leg of migrations that resulted in the peopling of Pacific islands.

Tianlong Jiao of the Bishop Museum and Barry Rolett of the University of Hawai'i have pushed the search for Polynesian origins back to what may have been its source, the province of Fujian on the south coast of China.

The evidence is a small adz the size of a paper weight. It came from a dig by Chinese archaeologists from the Fujian Provincial Museum led by Lin Gong Wu, assistant director. Rolett and Jiao came across the adz while sorting through artifacts from the dig. Jiao said the Chinese archaeologists did not recognize the "meaning" of the adz.

Members of a Bishop Museum tour view a Chinese archaeological dig in Fujian Province that is producing evidence of distant Polynesian origins in China. Archaeologists from Bishop Museum, the University of Hawai'i and the Fujian Provincial Museum are collaborating in research. Bob Krauss • The Honolulu Advertiser

By its shape and color, the Hawai'i archaeologists saw that the adz was made in a quarry discovered by Rolett on the Tenghu Islands midway between Taiwan and the mainland of China. Many similar adzes are found on Taiwan. The adz shows that there was contact between Tenghu and the China mainland and probably between China and Taiwan.

Jiao, Rolett and Lin are building a body of evidence to show that sailing to Taiwan was the first tiny step in Pacific voyaging. The first leg to Taiwan was probably made by bamboo raft, not by canoe.

This cutting edge collaboration between archaeologists from the Fujian Provincial Museum, the Bishop Museum and the University of Hawai'i promises soon to produce more evidence of Polynesian origins in China. The evidence includes a language family, tools, pottery and plants.

This evidence, pointed out to the Chinese by the team based in Hawai'i, has created a stir of interest among Chinese archaeologists about connections between China and the Pacific. It has led to study of the Chinese origins in China of Austronesians, ancestors of Polynesians.

Important digs have taken place in Fujian Province at Hemudu, Kuahuqiao and Keqiutou. Artifacts from the digs point to the evolution of a maritime Austronesian culture on the south coast of China.

This became a language family that spread by water to Madagascar off the coast of Africa in the west to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) off the coast of South America in the east. Jiao and Rolett explained that one offshoot of the Austronesians became Polynesians.

However, the digs in China go back before the Austronesian seagoing culture evolved. Their origins may have been a rice culture that came down the Yangtze River partly by canoe about 8,000 years ago. Fujian Museum archaeologists have excavated the evidence, an 8,000-year-old canoe. It is considered one of China's most important recent archaeological finds, according to Fang Yan Fu, director of the Fujian Provincial Museum.

Jiao and Rolett said a maritime-oriented culture called Hemudu on the Fujian coast emerged about 7,000 years ago. It may have given birth to the Austronesians. "That's what interests Barry and me," said Jiao. "We're studying stone adzes to see where they came from."

The Hemudu site has become a Chinese national archaeological exhibit. The archaeologists said the first stage of expansion appears to have been across the Taiwan Strait about 6,000 years ago.

They believe the voyages were made by bamboo raft because of linguistic evidence. Austronesian words for outrigger canoe parts do not appear on the Chinese coast or on Taiwan but emerged about 4,000 years ago in the Philippine Islands. The outrigger sailing canoe enabled Austronesians to spread rapidly.

The mainstream theory, not accepted by all archaeologists, is that a seafaring Austronesian culture called the Lapita, the nearest ancestors of Polynesians, set out from the Bismark Archipelago about 3,500 years ago. One stream island-hopped south to the Solomon Islands, another sailed east until they reached Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.

Here, on the edge of deep ocean space, distances between islands exceeded their sailing technology. They eventually lost contact with their origins. It was here that they became Polynesians. Polynesian gods and language and technology evolved, possibly the double-hulled voyaging canoes that took them to the most far flung Pacific islands.

Jiao said the earlier Austronesian language culture may have evolved in an analogous way on the South coast of China. Why did they come down the Yangtze River? Why did they jump off the China coast to Taiwan? Why did they island hop into the Pacific? Rolett said their reasons for moving may have been analogous to those of the Polynesians. Jiao and Rolett are now working with Lin and his team on an offshore island that could provide new evidence. They are particularly interested in cataloguing samples of basalt from up and down the coast to determine where stone adzes were mined. This might provide a road map for where the maritime people came from and who they traded with.

Bob Krauss has returned with a Bishop Museum tour from China. On Sunday: the Bishop Museum signs a historic sister-museum agreement with a China museum.

Reach Krauss at 525-8073.

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