Ancient relationship between Formosa and Vietnam

Here is a brief on Vietnamese origin (AMH migrations into Vietnam in history.)

The 1st specifically Vietnamese culture (VC) emerged around 5,000 BC in the caves and grottoes near Hoa-Binh (North V). Hoabinhian man belonged to the Australoid group (Australoid language speakers) moving from Central Asia southeastward into Indonesia and Australia; he may have been as dark-skinned as the present-day Melanesians of New Caledonia & Solomon Islands. Around this time (slightly later?), the AMH in the same wave might have peopled Formosa. The stone tools excavated by Professor 林朝棨 probably were used by this first group may be ones that he dated at 4,000 BC to 3,500 BC old in 1960s with out-of-dated tools. With all respect, the dating should be done again with the advanced technology available today.

2. By 2,000BC, a second wave of Australoid, armed with double-edged-axes, entered the country on their way south.—they are called Bacsonian after the Bac-Son area north of Hanoi where their remains have been mostly found. (Note that such axes were not found on Formosa.) They slowly spread through SE Asia, from Malaya to the Philippines, and became the first “Vietnamese” to settle the country permanently. (This may explain why peoples on Formosa are similar to but genetically cannot be tied directly to the Filipinos.)

3. The third wave from Central Asia brought many of SE Asia’s present inhabitants, in the form of the first Malays, who settled Java, Malaya, and the coastal area of Vietnam from Saigon to what is now the imperial city of Hue, and brought with them cattle, some metals, rudimentary irrigation, and upright stones, or megaliths which have a striking resemblance to similar lithic (stone) monuments found in places as distant as Europe and Easter Island. In Vietnam they also left magnificent burial chambers at Sa-Huynh and near the rubber plantations of Xuan-Loc and Bien-Hoa, just NE of Saigon (Huge containers to store corpse and to let them rot inside. Later, after deboned, they were picked up for burial.) Therefore cultures differed basically between the two races. Megalithic artifacts were also claimed to have been found on Formosa but if they were products from same culture or not should be investigated.

These second and third waves most likely are the reason why Vietnamese differ in appearance from Malaysians and Javanese on the one hand and Chinese on the other. Remember the third wave migrated probably through northern part of Indochina around the present border line with the future China. Some of this group probably went further north to become coalesced peoples that we see in Chinese. Coalesced with whom? Likely, they migrated from central Asia northward to reach Baykal Lake in Siberia and moved southward to reach northern China, Mongolia and Yellow River basin (generally called Mongolians.) Also note they did not journey through southern side of Indochina as in the first wave did. All in all, the present day distribution of anthropological Asian races has thus formed.

You won’t see any one talking about the journey routes that I explained above. This is because most anthropologists (biogeographers, historians included) are busy deciphering more restricted groups so that different sets of info are delineated.

Earlier historians (most Japanese anthropologists, too) are largely influenced by the similarities between Formosan aborigines and Javanese (Polynesians in general) and speculated that Formosan had the origin in Polynesia in early days. Openheimer (as Ed was talking about), Martin, Hill originally in the Brian Sykes’s group are no exception in lauding that Polynesian theory. But I am not sure Sykes were entirely convinced about that. Here the Polynesian motif becomes critical in deciphering the whole picture.

As I have been kept saying that external morphology can get a good guess but that all it goes to the limit. Final solutions always come from confirmable scientific evidence. Of course we should always watch out ourselves from falling into the easy trap set by Chankoro Chinese. Taiwanese are easily fallen into the traps since they do not read English reports and literatures regularly. We have too many Sebo-like bragging most Taiwanese know everything (only fed to them by Chinese.) Are they any different from Chinese? They will take everything for granted!

Jim Cheng. 090607
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In the last posting, I talked about Vietnam because of its close geographic proximity. In ancient days, human dispersion depended entirely on geography, climate, and food supply. Due largely to the only means the AMH has on foot, together with inconvenience of going with a larger crowd (companions, families, close relatives, and perhaps friends,) the rate of migration on the land is often estimated at a slow pace of a kilometer/year. Crossing the width exceeding a jumping capability of a deeper water bodies played an almost absolute obstacle to reach from one shore to the other side. Perhaps, seeing floating woods after storms might have given them ideas to use floating woods. But to move even a group of people together still need human ingenuity and opportunity. Obviously, geography played a critical role in migration.

Today we are still mystified by the crossing of the strait from the Sunderland that land-bridged to Eurasia to the Sahulland, an archaic continent including both New Guinea and Australia. But the earliest traces of AMH in Munroe Lake, Australia dated 60,000 to 50,000 years old when no means of crossing the strait is ever found. In addition, ample evidence pointed to the fact that ancestors of the present Australian aborigines’ journey started from the common AMH origin in the mid-eastern Africa; and they marked the first bands of human adventures out of Africa to Eurasia, the historical initiation of the human adventure into the New World.

One may ask what is about China. Today, China enjoys the geographic proximity to Formosa. But in history before 600 AD, China most likely did not know where is the island that separates from Eurasian Continent across the Formosa Strait at the closest site of today’s Fukien that as yet to be conquered. All alleged suggestion of a possible immigration of “China farmers” before that time or as early as 15,000 years ago into the island is a mere speculation coped with wild guess.China
would use that as a political agenda in a desire to occupying the Island and forging many other stories to falsify a link between the two lands. I will describe them later in detail.

The closest geography to Formosa is the area that was larger than the present-day Fu-kien in China; it was occupied by Bei-Yueh, which ethnically belongs to the ancient Vietnamese but not to Chinese Han. The area, however, was isolated distantly from the rest of Vietnam to the south intercepted broadly along the coast south to the northern edge of the rest of the Vietnam territory, as known in China history since Ch’ing dynasty integrated into the entire area of today’s China territory. The Bei-Yueh remained in non-Han people until the Tang Dynasty finally took over in AD 618-907. Thus, any possible contact with Formosa before AD 600 must be by Vietnamese who were historically known as marine ventures. By contrast, Chinese entered the Island first by the hired hard laborers (Ro-han-ka) of the Dutch until Koxinga invaded and chased away Dutch in 1662. It colonized the island as the base for counterattack to recover the China Mainland from Manchurian Ch’in that recently conquered China Han. That part of history is known worldwide.

To what degree of Formosan integration into China even during the Koxinga period is still a big mystery. The often cited mass immigrations of Chinese into the island must be reexamined since reliable evidence is lacking except for coming out of Chinese stories. These stories often aided by exaggerating numbers that Chinese could easily fabricate. The so-called “immigration en masse” in “China records” probably was rewritten after they renamed the island “Taiwan” by the Manchuria Ch’in sometimes after 1683. In China records, the Taiwan name is filled with given in tens of alternatives. They even claimed some bogus names appeared before Soon Chung’s time of the “Disunion Period” around AD 230 in China history. Even when the recent Manchuria Ch’in replaced the Koxinga in 1683, it came with mass repatriation of nearly entire Chinese on Taiwan to prevent further turmoil caused by Koxinga royalist clans and Chinese Ming Dynasty followers. Thereafter, overall disregard of the island was well known that historians intentionally skipped and put that history into oblivion. The claim of China disowned the vast southern land of Formosa as foreign by the Ch’in even in 1871. The Botan (Mutan in Chinese) incident that year became public knowledge due to clear records in Japanese history who had direct involvement in the incident (detailed later).

All stories on Chinese en masse conjectures, however, lack any solid archaeological evidence and mostly based on a wishful imagination. It is as enigmatic as anyone could dream up. The Dutch VOC that documented all detailed witnessed accounts in detail since the Dutch troop first landed on Formosa in 1623 until 1662 is clearly described in “The Formosan Encounter” edited from the VOC with both original Dutch contrasted with the English translation and published since 1999. The whole accounts of Formosan society and culture when Chinese Koxinga Cheng Ch’eng-Kung chased out the Dutch from Formosa are described in detail. The original VOC document is also known to cover 1176 meter-long and safely kept all along in the National Archives, Hague, the Netherlands (Nationaal Archief, Den Haag). Clearly, throughout the entire island, aborigines were still living totally in the ancient hunter-gatherer society as witnessed when the Dutch landed on Formosa in 1623 and proven to be true when they conquered the entire land by early 1630s. The year 1623 also marked the beginning of the Formosan History with full witnessed and written documents. The island is formerly called Formosa and so recorded in the world.

Jim Cheng. 090707