Formosa, the Origin of the Austronesian Language (Brief Note)

By Jim Cheng

One must also bear in mind that part of confusions persists is due to Taiwanese ignorance that allows falsified and twisted Chinese fairy tales to prevail among the public. A recent expedition led by a deputy director of the Academia Sinica made an interesting discovery of archaic stone tools proven to be 20,000-year old by the radioactive dating. It was a fanfare as the major discovery in archaic history of Taiwan. However, the find came from the same site, Pasheng Caves, that the late professor Lin Chao-chi (林朝棨) made archaic stone tool discoveries, which were radio-dated nearly 40,000 to 35,000 years ago (林朝棨, 1965, see also by Dr. Chou Stella Wan-yaw, 1997). The discovery was witnessed also by a professor at NTU who participated in the previous expedition led by Professor Lin to those earlier stone tools. I failed to understand why the professor did not come forth to recognize Professor Lin’s earlier report?

There are two important historical events linked to Professor Lin’s 1965 findings: The dating of over 35,000 old human stone tools imply that Formosa was first peopled near that ancient site that jibes with the time that the Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) reached most available lands in the old world (Eurasia) after they left the birth land Africa ~60,000 years ago into Eurasia. Second, the much cerebrated article in Nature (One of the most respected Science Magazine), “Taiwan’s Gift to the World, Feb 17, 2000” suspected southern Chinese “farmers” immigrated into Formosa and brought farmers and farming technologies and initial Austronesian languages to Taiwan some15,000 years ago. These are of pure conjectured speculation without a merit of evidence. Especially, The Formosan Encounter clearly inhabitants, aka Austronesian Formosan, did neither speak Chinese, nor did have a shred trace of alleged China farming skills when landed and stayed on island until 1662. Furthermore, the farming was introduced first by the Dutch into Formosa but had nothing whatsoever to do with China farmers.

This is based on the witnessed and written accounts recorded in the Netherlands since early 1600 AD when the VOC came to existence in 1602! Whether Taiwanese will still insist on believing Chinese stories to put Formosan History as a subset of China is completely up to Taiwanese. I wish to also warn Taiwanese that they should examine the alleged history on Taiwan in China records with modern science technology before believing the authenticity of such records. One should not judge as did by the recent expedition by the group I mentioned above. The new field of history called “History Anthropology” should be the principle in studying history, today.
(8/7/2009)