This art above explains my thinking from my life of investigation
I am an anarchist (Social anarchism, Left-wing anarchism, or Socialist anarchism) trying to explain prehistory as I see it after studying it on my own starting 2006. Anarchists are for truth and believe in teaching the plain truth; misinformation is against this, and we would and should fight misinformation and disinformation.
I see anarchism as a social justice issue not limited to some political issue or monetary persuasion. People own themselves, have self/human rights, and deserve freedoms. All humanity is owed respect for its dignity; we are all born equal in dignity and human rights, and no plot of dirt we currently reside on changes this.
I fully enjoy the value (axiology) of archaeology (empirical evidence from fact or artifacts at a site) is knowledge (epistemology) of the past, adding to our anthropology (evidence from cultures both the present and past) intellectual (rational) assumptions of the likely reality of actual events from time past.
I am an Axiological Atheist, Philosopher & Autodidact Pre-Historical Writer/Researcher, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Anarcho Humanist, LGBTQI, Race, & Class equality. I am not an academic, I am a revolutionary sharing education and reason to inspire more deep thinking. I do value and appreciate Academics, Archaeologists, Anthropologists, and Historians as they provide us with great knowledge, informing us about our shared humanity.
I am a servant leader, as I serve the people, not myself, not my ego, and not some desire for money, but rather a caring teacher’s heart to help all I can with all I am. From such thoughtfulness may we all see the need for humanism and secularism, respecting all as helpful servant leaders assisting others as often as we can to navigate truth and the beauty of reality.
‘Reality’ ie. real/external world things, facts/evidence such as that confirmed by science, or events taken as a whole documented understanding of what occurred/is likely to have occurred; the accurate state of affairs. “Reason” is not from a mind devoid of “unreason” but rather demonstrates the potential ability to overcome bad thinking. An honest mind, enjoys just correction. Nothing is a justified true belief without valid or reliable reason and evidence; just as everything believed must be open to question, leaving nothing above challenge.
I don’t believe in gods or ghosts, and nor souls either. I don’t believe in heavens or hells, nor any supernatural anything. I don’t believe in Aliens, Bigfoot, nor Atlantis. I strive to follow reason and be a rationalist. Reason is my only master and may we all master reason. Thinking can be random, but reason is organized and sound in its Thinking. Right thinking is reason, right reason is logic, and right logic can be used in math and other scientific methods. I don’t see religious terms Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, or Paganism as primitive but original or core elements that are different parts of world views and their supernatural/non-natural beliefs or thinking.
I am inspired by philosophy, enlightened by archaeology, and grounded by science that religion claims, on the whole, along with their magical gods, are but dogmatic propaganda, myths, and lies. To me, religions can be summed up as conspiracy theories about reality, a reality mind you is only natural and devoid of magic anything. And to me, when people talk as if Atlantis is anything real, I stop taking them seriously. Like asking about the reality of Superman or Batman just because they seem to involve metropolitan cities in their stores. Or if Mother Goose actually lived in a shoe? You got to be kidding.
We are made great in our many acts of kindness, because we rise by helping each other.
NE = Proto-North Eurasian/Ancient North Eurasian/Mal’ta–Buret’ culture/Mal’ta Boy “MA-1” 24,000 years old burial
A = Proto-Afroasiatic/Afroasiatic
S = Samara culture
ST = Proto-Sino-Tibetan/Sino-Tibetan
T = Proto-Transeurasian/Altaic
C = Proto-Northwest Caucasus language/Northwest Caucasian/Languages of the Caucasus
I = Proto-Indo-European/Indo-European
IB = Iberomaurusian Culture/Capsian culture
Natufian culture (15,000–11,500 years ago, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Negev desert)
Nganasan people/Nganasan language
Na-Dene languages/Dené–Yeniseian, Dené–Caucasian
Proto-Semitic/Semitic languages
24,000 years ago, Proto-North Eurasian Language (Ancient North Eurasian) migrations?
My thoughts:
Proto-North Eurasian Language (Ancient North Eurasian) With related Y-DNA R1a, R1b, R2a, and Q Haplogroups.
R1b 22,0000-15,000 years ago in the Middle east creates Proto-Afroasiatic languages moving into Africa around 15,000-10,000 years ago connecting with the Iberomaurusian Culture/Taforalt near the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
R2a 10,000 years ago in Iran brings/creates Proto-Indo-European language and also a possibility is R1a in Russia around 9,000 years ago may have had a version of Proto-Indo-European language.
Around 14,000-10,000 years ago??? Proto-North Eurasian Language goes to the Yellow River basin (eventually relating with the Yangshao culture) in China creates Proto-Sino-Tibetan language.
Proto-Sino-Tibetan language then moves to the West Liao River valley (eventually relating with the Hongshan culture) in China creating Proto-Transeurasian (Altaic) language around 9,000 years ago.
N Haplogroups 9,000 years ago with Proto-Transeurasian language possibly moves north to Lake Baikal. Then after living with Proto-North Eurasian Language 24,000-9,000 years ago?/Pre-Proto-Yeniseian language 9,000-7,000 years ago Q Haplogroups (eventually relating with the Ket language and the Ket people) until around 5,500 years ago, then N Haplogroups move north to the Taymyr Peninsula in North Siberia (Nganasan homeland) brings/creates the Proto-Uralic language.
Q Haplogroups with Proto-Yeniseian language /Proto-Na-Dene language likely emerge 8,000/7,000 years ago or so and migrates to the Middle East (either following R2a to Iraq or R1a to Russia (Samara culture) then south to Iraq creates the Sumerian language. It may have also created the Proto-Caucasian languages along the way. And Q Haplogroups with Proto-Yeniseian language to a migration to North America that relates to Na-Dené (and maybe including Haida) languages, of which the first branch was Proto-Tlingit language 5,000 years ago, in the Pacific Northwest.
Sino-Tibetan language then moves more east in China to the Hemudu culture pre-Austronesian culture, next moved to Taiwan creating the Proto-Austronesian language around 6,000-5,500 years ago.
R1b comes to Russia from the Middle East around 7,500 years ago, bringing a version of Proto-Indo-European languages to the (Samara culture), then Q Y-DNA with Proto-Yeniseian language moves south from the (Samara culture) and may have been the language that created the Proto-Caucasian language. And R1b from the (Samara culture) becomes the 4,200 years or so R1b associated with the Basques and Basque language it was taken with R1b, but language similarities with the Proto-Caucasian language implies language ties to Proto-Yeniseian language.
“Austronesians from Taiwan, circa 3000 to 1500 BCE, are now a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, Madagascar, and then New Zealand by 1250 CE.” ref
Genetic history of East Asians
“The genetic makeup and population history of East Asian peoples and their connection to genetically related populations such as Southeast Asians and North Asians, as well as Oceanians, and partly, Central Asians, South Asians, and Native Americans. They are collectively referred to as “East Eurasians” in population genomics.” ref
“Population genomic research has studied the origin and formation of modern East Asians. The ancestors of East Asians (Ancient East Eurasians) split from other human populations possibly as early as 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. Possible routes into East Asia include a northern route model from Central Asia, beginning north of the Himalayas, and a southern route model, beginning south of the Himalayas and moving through Southeast Asia. Seguin-Orlando et al. (2014) stated that East Asians diverged from West Eurasians, which occurred more than 36, 200 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic. This divergence most likely occurred in the Persian Plateau.” ref
“Phylogenetic data suggests that an early Initial Upper Paleolithic wave (>45,000 years ago) “ascribed to a population movement with uniform genetic features and material culture” (Ancient East Eurasians) used a Southern dispersal route through South Asia, where they subsequently diverged rapidly, and gave rise to Australasians (Oceanians), the Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI), as well as Andamanese and East/Southeast Asians, although Papuans may have also received some geneflow from an earlier group (xOoA), around 2%, next to additional archaic admixture in the Sahul region.” ref
“The southern route model for East Asians has been corroborated in multiple recent studies, showing that most of the ancestry of Eastern Asians arrived from the southern route in to Southeast Asia at a very early period, starting perhaps as early as 70,000 years ago, and dispersed northward across Eastern Asia. However, genetic evidence also supports more recent migrations to East Asia from Central Asia and West Eurasia along the northern route, as shown by the presence of haplogroups Q and R, as well as Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. The southern migration wave likely diversified after settling within East Asia, while the northern wave, which probably arrived from the Eurasian steppe, mixed with the southern wave, probably in Siberia.” ref
“A review paper by Melinda A. Yang (in 2022) described the East- and Southeast Asian lineage (ESEA); which is ancestral to modern East Asians, Southeast Asians, Polynesians, and Siberians, originated in Mainland Southeast Asia at c. 50,000 BCE, and expanded through multiple migration waves southwards and northwards, respectively. The ESEA lineage is also ancestral to the “basal Asian” Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers of Southeast Asia and the c. 40,000-year-old Tianyuan lineage found in Northern China, which can already be differentiated from the deeply related Ancestral Ancient South Indians (AASI) and Australasian (AA) lineages.” ref
“There are currently eight detected, closely related, sub-ancestries in the ESEA lineage:
- Amur ancestry (ANA) – Associated with populations in the Amur River region, Mongolia, and Siberia, as well as parts of Central Asia.
- Fujian ancestry – Associated with ancient samples in the Fujian region of Southern China, and modern Austronesian-speaking populations.
- Guangxi ancestry – Associated with a 10,500-year-old individual from Longlin, Guangxi. This ancestry was not observed in either historical samples from Guangxi or contemporary East and Southeast Asians, suggesting that the lineage is extinct in the modern day.
- Jōmon ancestry – Ancestry associated with 8,000–3,000-year-old individuals in the Japanese archipelago.
- Hoabinhian ancestry – Ancestry on the ESEA lineage associated with 8,000–4,000-year-old hunter-gatherers in Laos and Malaysia.
- Tianyuan ancestry – Ancestry on the ESEA lineage associated with an Upper Paleolithic individual dating to 40,000 years ago in northern China.
- Tibetan ancestry – Associated with 3,000-year-old individuals in the Himalayan region of the Tibetan Plateau.
- Yellow River ancestry – Associated with populations in the Yellow River region and common among Sino-Tibetan-speakers.” ref
“The genetic makeup of East Asians is primarily characterized by “Yellow River” (East Asian) ancestry which formed from a major Ancient Northern East Asian (ANEA) component and a minor Ancient Southern East Asian (ASEA) one. The two lineages diverged from each other at least 19,000 years ago, after the divergence of the Jōmon, Guangxi (Longlin), Hoabinhian and Tianyuan lineages.” ref
“Contemporary East Asians (notably Sino-Tibetan speakers) mostly have Yellow River ancestry, which is associated with millet and rice cultivation. “East Asian Highlanders” (Tibetans) carry both Tibetan ancestry and Yellow River ancestry. Japanese people were found to have a tripartite origin; consisting of Jōmon ancestry, Amur ancestry, and Yellow River ancestry. East Asians carry a variation of the MFSD12 gene, which is responsible for lighter skin color. Huang et al. (2021) found evidence for light skin being selected among the ancestral populations of West Eurasians and East Eurasians, prior to their divergence.” ref
“Northeast Asians such as Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic peoples derive most of their ancestry from the “Amur” (Ancient Northeast Asian) subgroup of the Ancient Northern East Asians, which expanded massively with millet cultivation and pastoralism. Tungusic peoples display the highest genetic affinity to Ancient Northeast Asians, represented by c. 7,000 and 13,000 year old specimens, whereas Turkic peoples have significant West Eurasian admixture.” ref
“East Asian populations exhibit some European-related admixture, originating from Silk Road traders and interactions with Mongolians, who were well-acquainted with European-like populations. This is more common among northern Han Chinese (2.8%) than southern Han Chinese (1.7%), Japanese (2.2%), and Koreans (1.6%). However, East Asians have less European-related admixture than Northeast Asians like Mongolians (10.9%), Oroqen (9.6%), Daur (8.0%), and Hezhen (6.8%).” ref
A 2020 genetic study about Southeast Asian populations, found that mostly all Southeast Asians are closely related to East Asians and have mostly “East Asian-related” ancestry.” ref
“Ancient remains of hunter-gatherers in Maritime Southeast Asia, such as one Holocene hunter-gatherer from South Sulawesi, had ancestry from both, an Australasian lineage (represented by Papuans and Aboriginal Australasians) and an “Ancient Asian” lineage (represented by East Asians or Andamanese Onge). The hunter-gatherer individual had approximately c. 50% “Basal-East Asian” ancestry and c. 50% Australasian/Papuan ancestry, and was positioned in between modern East Asians and Papuans of Oceania. The authors concluded that East Asian-related ancestry expanded from Mainland Southeast Asia into Maritime Southeast Asia much earlier than previously suggested, as early as 25,000 BCE, long before the expansion of Austroasiatic and Austronesian groups.” ref
“A 2022 genetic study confirmed the close link between East Asians and Southeast Asians, which the authors term “East/Southeast Asian” (ESEA) populations, and also found a low but consistent proportion of South Asian-associated “SAS ancestry” (best samplified by modern Bengalis from Dhaka, Bangladesh) among specific Mainland Southeast Asian (MESA) ethnic groups (~2–16% as inferred by qpAdm), likely as a result of cultural diffision; mainly of South Asian merchants spreading Hinduism and Buddhism among the Indianized kingdoms of Southeast Asia. The authors however caution that Bengali samples harbor detechtable East Asian ancestry, which may affect the estimation of shared haplotypes. Overall, the geneflow event is estimated to have happened between 500 and 1000 years ago.” ref
“The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood due to a lack of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people. We report genome-wide data from 166 East Asians dating to 6000 BCE – 1000 CE and 46 present-day groups. Hunter-gatherers from Japan, the Amur River Basin, and people of Neolithic and Iron Age Taiwan and the Tibetan plateau are linked by a deeply-splitting lineage likely reflecting a Late Pleistocene coastal migration. We follow Holocene expansions from four regions. First, hunter-gatherers of Mongolia and the Amur River Basin have ancestry shared by Mongolic and Tungusic language speakers but do not carry West Liao River farmer ancestry contradicting theories that their expansion spread these proto-languages.” ref
“Second, Yellow River Basin farmers at ~3000 BCE likely spread Sino-Tibetan languages as their ancestry dispersed both to Tibet where it forms up ~84% to some groups and to the Central Plain where it contributed ~59–84% to Han Chinese. Third, people from Taiwan ~1300 BCE to 800 CE derived ~75% ancestry from a lineage also common in modern Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic speakers likely deriving from Yangtze River Valley farmers; ancient Taiwan people also derived ~25% ancestry from a northern lineage related to but different from Yellow River farmers implying an additional north-to-south expansion. Fourth, Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist ancestry arrived in western Mongolia after ~3000 BCE but was displaced by previously established lineages even while it persisted in western China as expected if it spread the ancestor of Tocharian Indo-European languages. Two later gene flows affected western Mongolia: after ~2000 BCE migrants with Yamnaya and European farmer ancestry, and episodic impacts of later groups with ancestry from Turan.” ref
“Austronesians mainly carry “Fujian” (Ancient Southern East Asian) ancestry, which is associated with the spread of rice cultivation. Isolated hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia, specifically in Malaysia and Thailand, such as the Semang, derive most of their ancestry from the Hoabinhian lineage. The emergence of the Neolithic in Southeast Asia went along with a population shift caused by migrations from southern China. Neolithic Mainland Southeast Asian samples predominantly have Ancient Southern East Asian ancestry with Hoabinhian-related admixture. In modern populations, this admixture of Ancient Southern East Asian and Hoabinhian ancestry is most strongly associated with Austroasiatic speakers.” ref
Austronesian Peoples
“The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia.” ref
“Austronesian peoples, originated from a prehistoric seaborne migration, known as the Austronesian expansion, from Taiwan, circa 3000 to 1500 BCE. Austronesians reached the northernmost Philippines, specifically the Batanes Islands, by around 2200 BCE. They used sails some time before 2000 BCE. In conjunction with their use of other maritime technologies (notably catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed-lug boats, and the crab claw sail), this enabled phases of rapid dispersal into the islands of the Indo-Pacific, culminating in the settlement of New Zealand c. 1250 CE. During the initial part of the migrations, they encountered and assimilated (or were assimilated by) the Paleolithic populations that had migrated earlier into Maritime Southeast Asia and New Guinea. They reached as far as Easter Island to the east, Madagascar to the west, and New Zealand to the south. At the furthest extent, they might have also reached the Americas.” ref
“Aside from language, Austronesian peoples widely share cultural characteristics, including such traditions and traditional technologies as tattooing, stilt houses, jade carving, wetland agriculture, and various rock art motifs. They also share domesticated plants and animals that were carried along with the migrations, including rice, bananas, coconuts, breadfruit, Dioscorea yams, taro, paper mulberry, chickens, pigs, and dogs.” ref
Quantifying the legacy of the Chinese Neolithic on the maternal genetic heritage of Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia
“Abstract: There has been a long-standing debate concerning the extent to which the spread of Neolithic ceramics and Malay-Polynesian languages in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) were coupled to an agriculturally driven demic dispersal out of Taiwan 4,000 years ago. We previously addressed this question using founder analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control-region sequences to identify major lineage clusters most likely to have dispersed from Taiwan into ISEA, proposing that the dispersal had a relatively minor impact on the extant genetic structure of ISEA, and that the role of agriculture in the expansion of the Austronesian languages was therefore likely to have been correspondingly minor. Here we test these conclusions by sequencing whole mtDNAs from across Taiwan and ISEA, using their higher chronological precision to resolve the overall proportion that participated in the “out-of-Taiwan” mid-Holocene dispersal as opposed to earlier, postglacial expansions in the Early Holocene. We show that, in total, about 20 % of mtDNA lineages in the modern ISEA pool result from the “out-of-Taiwan” dispersal, with most of the remainder signifying earlier processes, mainly due to sea-level rises after the Last Glacial Maximum. Notably, we show that every one of these founder clusters previously entered Taiwan from China, 6,000–7,000 years ago, where rice-farming originated, and remained distinct from the indigenous Taiwanese population until after the subsequent dispersal into ISEA.” ref
General patterns of migration and expansion in Island Southeast Asia
“For the phylogeographic analysis, we used 870 previously published and 114 newly sequenced mitogenomes belonging to haplogroups R9b, R9c, F1a4, F3, F4b, B4b1, B4c1, B5b, N9, Y and D5. Figure 1 shows an outline topology of the main subclades in East Asia and SEA for these haplogroups, scaled against the ML age estimates. F4b, which entered Taiwan from China at the time of the Neolithic, but does not disperse further into ISEA, is not included. We can group the haplogroups into those with Early Holocene and those with mid-Holocene ancestry in ISEA. The clades B4a1, E1, E2 (the higher-frequency lineages analysed previously, F3b1, R9c1a, B5b1c and B4c1b2a2, corresponding to almost 27 % of all present-day mtDNA lineages in ISEA, most probably expanded within ISEA mainly between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, many of them reaching Taiwan at some point in the last 8,000 years ago. Haplogroups M7c3c, Y2a1, B4b1a2, F1a4, D5b1c1 and M7b3, amounting to ~20 % overall in ISEA primarily show founder ages that indicate a mid-Holocene, potentially Neolithic entrance into this region, probably from a source in Taiwan (Table 1).” ref
“Southeast Asia (SEA) harbours a rich variety of human populations with contrasting patterns of diversity seen in their ethnic cultures, languages, physical appearance and genetic heritage. The population history of this region was traditionally framed in terms of two distinct major prehistoric population movements. The first settlers, described as “Australo-Melanesian” people, arrived around 50,000–60,000 years ago, and were the ancestors of several “Australoid” populations found in SEA, New Guinea and Australia. The second migration occurred during the mid-Holocene (5–4 ka) and involved a large-scale demic expansion of rice agriculturalists starting in South China ~6 ka, which spread in two directions, one towards Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), and the other, via Taiwan, to Island Southeast Asia (ISEA), Near and Remote Oceania, and Madagascar. Proponents of this “two-layer” model, drawn essentially from historical linguistics and some archaeological data, argue that the South Chinese rice agriculturalists partly or largely replaced the previous inhabitants of the region, whilst spreading Austronesian languages in ISEA and Austroasiatic languages in MSEA.” ref
“It is, however, possible that ISEA received direct influence from both of these hypothetical Neolithic migrations, as suggested by Anderson (2005), taking into consideration both archaeological and linguistic evidence. Anderson (2005) offered a more comprehensive view of the Neolithic spread in the region, suggesting that it most likely followed a reticulate pattern, and not a linear expansion model. He proposed the existence of two Neolithic movements from different sources: an earlier minor one ~4,500 years ago from MSEA (“Neolithic I”), related to the spread of Austroasiatic languages and basket or cord-marked ceramics, into the Malay Peninsula and Borneo; and a second, major wave (“Neolithic II”), encompassing the hypothetical “out-of-Taiwan” migration. Our recent genetic work supports this view but emphasizes that both mid-Holocene expansions were due to small-scale migrations.” ref
“Our genetic evidence suggests that other demographic events also contributed to current population structure in SEA, especially as a consequence of the massive climatic changes that occurred at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). In the Late Pleistocene, ~20,000 years ago, global sea levels were ~130 m below present-day levels, MSEA and Western ISEA were interconnected by a vast continental landmass, called Sundaland, that facilitated early human dispersals through the region. After the LGM, rapid episodes of sea-level rises at ~14,500, 11,500 and 7,500 years ago flooded about half of the land area of Sundaland, with a concomitant doubling of the length of the coastline.” ref
“Taking into consideration the past climatic changes in SEA, and the pressure suffered from the flooding of large areas of the landscape, some authors have suggested that these episodes triggered massive migratory events in the region. Thus the dispersals across SEA could have resulted from movement and expansion of indigenous Southeast Asian people, possibly reflected in the increase in sites across ISEA at the end of the Pleistocene. Following this premise, Solheim’s Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network hypothesis (NMTCN) argues that Southeast Asian natives, regardless of language, developed a highly maritime-oriented culture as a result of the changes in the climate and landscape in the region which promoted successful exchange systems between populations in the region for the past 10,000 years ago. The cultural and linguistic similarities could then have been promoted through this wide-ranging trade and communication network.” ref
“Recent technological advances have led to the generation of huge amounts of new genetic data. Maternal, paternal and autosomal genetic markers have all been used to shed light on population migration history but genetic studies on SEA and the Pacific are often still framed within the two-layer model. For example, Friedlaender et al. (2008) suggested that the autosomal variation of Remote Pacific Islanders resulted almost solely from the mid-Holocene expansion of Austronesian-speaking Taiwanese, although their analysis did not include SEA populations. From a slightly different premise, Kayser et al. (2008) also argued that the Polynesian populations have clear maternal Asian ancestry, while Y chromosomes are mostly from New Guinean populations. On this view, Polynesian genetic make-up becomes the result of the intermarriage between Austronesian-speaking females carrying Asian mtDNA lineages (e.g. the mtDNA “Polynesian motif”) with male Melanesians en route to the Pacific.” ref
“However, although the Polynesian motif (defining mtDNA haplogroup B4a1a1) is extremely frequent in the Remote Pacific, with ancestral lineages present equally in ISEA and Taiwanese aboriginals, this need not imply an “Austronesian dispersal”. In fact, the Polynesian motif itself is absent in most of ISEA and not found further west of Wallace’s line, except for southeast Borneo, and it has a coalescence time much greater than expected if it had emerged en route between Taiwan and the Pacific in the mid-Holocene. The molecular-clock evidence (strongly corroborated by archaeologically consistent estimates for the entry into Remote Oceania itself) rather suggests the ancestral lineage reached the Pacific in the Early Holocene, where it evolved into the Polynesian motif ~6,000–7,000 years ago, probably in the Bismarck Archipelago, before expanding both east into the Remote Pacific and west back into ISEA.” ref
“In fact, an increasing number of studies in recent years have indicated that the simple two-layer expansion model does not capture the complexity of the demographic history in ISEA, analysing patterns of Y chromosome variation (Y-SNPs), argued for a discontinuous four-phase colonization process with several population incursions in SEA, starting with the introduction of basal haplogroups with the first settlers, followed by Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene postglacial migrations from the mainland, the mid-Holocene “out-of-Taiwan”, and a more recent migration in the historical era. Significantly, they suggest that only few paternal lineages are associated with the Austronesian dispersal, and that the other major lineages date to earlier population movements.” ref
“These results have been corroborated in other recent. In terms of mtDNA, although studies showed the existence of mtDNA lineages shared between Austronesian speakers of Formosan, Filipino and other ISEA populations, many have contradicted a demic “out-of-Taiwan” expansion due to the time frame. Moreover, some ISEA maternal mtDNA lineages did not trace back their origin to Taiwan, but instead arose within the ISEA region and spread toward Taiwan, probably because of climatic changes. For example, mtDNA haplogroup E underwent major expansions and dispersals in the Early to mid-Holocene, extending west into Malaysia, east into New Guinea and north into Taiwan, somewhere between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago (using the recalibrated mtDNA clock). Thus, Taiwan appears to have been a recipient of haplogroup E lineages from the south, before the Austronesian dispersal, rather than being the major source of Holocene population migrations southwards across ISEA (as in the “out-of-Taiwan” model). Genome-wide analyses have independently supported the notion that Taiwan was, at least in part, the recipient of genetic input from ISEA, rather than the other way around.” ref
“Nevertheless, the genetic picture of SEA remains far from being fully understood. Recently, Soares et al. (2016) performed a founder analysis for ISEA that highlighted three major haplogroups representing the main signals in the analysis; two were postglacial or Early Holocene (haplogroups E and B4a1) and one was a mid-Holocene “out-of-Taiwan” marker (haplogroup M7c3c). Overall, the data, representing 30–40 % of all present-day mtDNA lineages, matched the Early Holocene period, implying that although migrations from Taiwan did occur in the mid- to late Holocene, the so-called Austronesian expansion was mainly a process of cultural diffusion and assimilation. The remaining mtDNA lineages, many displaying low frequencies, cannot be so clearly partitioned using a founder analysis based on HVS-I sequences (first hypervariable segment of the control region). Here, therefore, we analyse in detail the sequence variation of whole-mtDNA genomes (“mitogenomes”) of these low frequency mtDNA lineages.” ref
“These lineages have already been tentatively associated with various demographic events in SEA, including the first settlement (haplogroup F3, R9b), Early Holocene postglacial expansions (haplogroup R9c, N9a) and mid-Holocene dispersals from Taiwan (haplogroups B4c1, F1a4, B5b, Y2, B4b1 and D5), potentially identifying the spread of Neolithic material culture. We previously analysed R9b with whole mtDNAs (Hill et al. 2006), but the subsequent increase in sampling, as well as a revision of the molecular clock demand a reassessment of the phylogeography of the clade. A comprehensive study of these low-frequency haplogroups in Southeast Asia can complete the picture of both the main dispersal routes and the impact of dispersals on the population history in the region. Our study ranges across the vast geographic region of Taiwan, MSEA, ISEA and Near Oceania, in contrast to other recent studies, in which more limited geographic regions were targeted.” ref
“Genetic studies have been conducted on Austronesian peoples. Haplogroup O1a, marked by the M119 SNP, is frequently detected in Native Taiwanese and people of the northern Philippines as well as some people in Indonesia, Malaysia, and non-Austronesian populations in southern China.” ref
“Haplogroup O-M122 has been implicated as a diagnostic genetic marker of the Austronesian expansion when it is found in populations of insular Southeast Asia and Oceania.” ref
“Haplogroup O mtDNA is a haplogroup derived from haplogroup N and found in Oceania. Specifically, it is found among Aboriginal Australians. Its defining mutations are G6755A, C9140T, and G16213A.” ref
“The genetic ancestry of Polynesians can be traced to both Asia and Melanesia, which presumably reflects admixture occurring between incoming Austronesians and resident non-Austronesians in Melanesia before the subsequent occupation of the greater Pacific; however, the genetic impact of the Austronesian expansion to Melanesia remains largely unknown. We therefore studied the diversity of nonrecombining Y chromosomal (NRY) and mitochondrial (mt) DNA in the Admiralty Islands, located north of mainland Papua New Guinea, and updated our previous data from Asia, Melanesia, and Polynesia with new NRY markers. The Admiralties are occupied today solely by Austronesian-speaking groups, but their human settlement history goes back 20,000 years prior to the arrival of Austronesians about 3,400 years ago. On the Admiralties, we found substantial mtDNA and NRY variation of both Austronesian and non-Austronesian origins, with higher frequencies of Asian mtDNA and Melanesian NRY haplogroups, similar to previous findings in Polynesia and perhaps as a consequence of Austronesian matrilocality.” ref
“Thus, the Austronesian language replacement on the Admiralties (and elsewhere in Island Melanesia and coastal New Guinea) was accompanied by an incomplete genetic replacement that is more associated with mtDNA than with NRY diversity. These results provide further support for the “Slow Boat” model of Polynesian origins, according to which Polynesian ancestors originated from East Asia but genetically mixed with Melanesians before colonizing the Pacific. We also observed that non-Austronesian groups of coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia had significantly higher frequencies of Asian mtDNA haplogroups than of Asian NRY haplogroups, suggesting sex-biased admixture perhaps as a consequence of non-Austronesian patrilocality. We additionally found that the predominant NRY haplogroup of Asian origin in the Admiralties (O-M110) likely originated in Taiwan, thus providing the first direct Y chromosome evidence for a Taiwanese origin of the Austronesian expansion. Furthermore, we identified a NRY haplogroup (K-P79, also found on the Admiralties) in Polynesians that most likely arose in the Bismarck Archipelago, providing the first direct link between northern Island Melanesia and Polynesia. These results significantly advance our understanding of the impact of the Austronesian expansion and human history in the Pacific region.” ref
“The vast majority (94%) of Polynesian mtDNA types are of East Asian origin (Kayser et al. 2006), and a genetic trail for a particular mtDNA HV1 motif (the Polynesian motif [PM]) that is in high frequency (∼78%) in Polynesians can be traced back along Island Melanesia and coastal New Guinea to Eastern Indonesia, continuing via the immediate precursor HV1 sequence (lacking the transition at 16247) through the Philippines to Taiwan. Surprisingly, most (∼66%) Polynesian Y chromosomes are of Melanesian origin; this large discrepancy between the mtDNA and NRY ancestry of Polynesians led us to propose the “Slow Boat” model of Polynesian origins. According to this model, Austronesians spread from East Asia (perhaps Taiwan), intermixed with people in coastal New Guinea and/or Island Melanesia, and then continued spreading eastward across the western and southern Pacific.” ref
“To explain the discrepancy between the mtDNA and NRY in the ancestry of Polynesians, it was proposed that this intermixing was sex biased, involving primarily the occasional union of an Austronesian woman and a non-Austronesian man, as is typical of matrilocal residence and no other; a position we further affirmed by additional Polynesian data. Recently, this Slow Boat model has received further genetic support from studies of genome-wide autosomal DNA variation in Polynesians, which indicate a primarily East Asian origin of Polynesians but with nonnegligible genetic contributions from Melanesia.” ref
“An important question raised by this scenario is the overall genetic impact of the Austronesian expansion on Melanesia, especially the islands north of mainland New Guinea. We use the term “Austronesian” to refer to the people who brought languages classified as Austronesian into this part of the world, including their current speakers. Northern Island Melanesia represents the area where seafaring, pottery-making people, who most likely spoke an Austronesian language immediately ancestral to Proto-Oceanic, first arrived in Melanesia about 3,400 years ago according to archaeological evidence.” ref
“Because human settlement in this region goes back into the Pleistocene period according to archaeological data, northern Island Melanesia can be assumed as the first regional contact zone for the incoming pre-Proto-Oceanic–speaking Austronesians and the local non-Austronesian inhabitants of Melanesia and presumably reflects the region where the assumed genetic admixture between these 2 groups of people mostly occurred initially. These people then developed in the Bismarcks the characteristic elements of the Lapita cultural complex (most notable highly decorated dentate-stamped pottery), as well as the Proto-Oceanic language. Subsequent voyages distributed Lapita cultural elements further east to Santa Cruz, Reef Island, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, and eventually into (western) Polynesia within only about 500 years, whereas the Proto-Oceanic language of the voyagers started to diversify into different Oceanic subgroups finally leading to the approximately 450 Oceanic languages known today.” ref
“To investigate the genetic impact of the Austronesian expansion in Melanesia, we analyzed mtDNA and NRY variation in the Admiralty Islands, located north of mainland New Guinea. The “Admiralties” were first colonized by humans from about 21 to 24,000 years ago onward linking them with similarly old and older sites (40,000–50,000 years ago) in mainland New Guinea and other parts of northern Island Melanesia. The human Pleistocene occupation of the Admiralty Islands is quite remarkable as it involved a minimum blind crossing of 60–90 km of open ocean, with no land in sight, in a 200- to 230-km voyage, thus representing one of the few examples of humans crossing water where land was not intervisible prior to the Austronesian expansion across the Pacific. Today, the Admiralties are settled by people speaking 30 different Oceanic languages belonging to the Admiralties subgroup of Oceanic within the Austronesian language family. The presence of at least 1 (perhaps 3) Lapita site on the Admiralty Islands together with a distribution of obsidian tools from Lou Island to regions outside the Admiralties such as to New Britain, the Solomons and as far as Vanuatu from the Lapita period onward suggests that the Admiralties could have played an important role during the Austronesian expansion.” ref
“Thus, the Admiralty Islands were already inhabited for about 20,000 years before the Austronesians arrived there. Did the Austronesian newcomers completely replace the local non-Austronesian inhabitants, or can one find either linguistic or genetic traces of these first inhabitants in contemporary Admiralty Islanders? The complete lack of knowledge on the extinct non-Austronesian languages of the Admiralties makes it difficult (if not impossible) to search for their traces in the contemporary Austronesian languages of these islands. Here, we analyze mtDNA and NRY variation in contemporary Admiralty Islanders in order to search for genetic traces of the pre-Austronesian inhabitants and to test if the Austronesian language replacement on these islands was accompanied by a genetic replacement. Our results provide further insights into the genetic impact of the Austronesian expansion and enhance our understanding of the human colonization of Island Melanesia and the southern Pacific region.” ref
“The observed higher frequencies of Asian than Melanesian mtDNA haplogroups in the Admiralty Islanders, together with their higher frequencies of Melanesian than Asian NRY haplogroups, suggest sex-biased genetic admixture between the incoming Austronesians and the local non-Austronesians inhabitants of northern Island Melanesia. Thus, the data presented here provide additional support for the Slow Boat model of Polynesian origins because the genetic findings concerning the Admiralties of northern Island Melanesia, the region of assumed first contact between the incoming pre-Proto-Oceanic–speaking Austronesians and the local non-Austronesian inhabitants of Melanesia were similar to those from Polynesia, the final eastern destination of the Austronesian expansion. The observation of more Asian mtDNA haplogroups than Asian NRY haplogroups on the Admiralty Islands as well as in other Austronesian-speaking groups from coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia suggests that the Austronesian language replacement in Melanesia was driven by Austronesian women rather than men, perhaps as a consequence of a matrilocal residence pattern in combination with a matrilineal social structure.” ref
“Sex-biased admixture is also observed in those groups speaking non-Austronesian languages in coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia, but here there was a much bigger contribution inferred for Austronesian women than for Austronesian men, in keeping with the patrilocal residence and patrilineal social structure of non-Austronesian (Papuan) groups in Melanesia. The major Asian NRY haplogroup on the Admiralties (O-M110) can be ultimately traced back to Taiwan, which provides a genetic parallel to mtDNA data evidence and strikingly intersects with linguistic and archaeological evidence for a Taiwanese source of the Austronesian expansion.” ref
“Furthermore, our genetic data are in line with archaeological evidence suggesting human Pleistocene contacts between mainland New Guinea and the Admiralties, as we found most known NRY and mtDNA haplogroups with an inferred origin in mainland New Guinea on the Admiralties, as well as with other archaeological data proposing at most limited human contacts between the Admiralties and the nearby New Britain and New Ireland, as we found many mtDNA and NRY haplogroups with an inferred origin in New Britain/New Ireland absent or nearly so in the Admiralties. Finally, we showed that the Melanesian NRY haplogroup K-P79 was most likely contributed to Polynesia from New Britain/New Ireland, and in fact northern Island Melanesia may have been the source of all the haplogroups of Melanesian origin found in Polynesia. Thus, the work reported here substantially advances our knowledge on the genetic impact of the Austronesian expansion and human history in the western and southern Pacific region.” ref
“Strong genetic affinity with the indigenous Taiwan aborigines, which may support a coastal route of the Jomon-ancestry migration, 2,500-year-old individual (IK002) from the main-island of Japan that is characterized with a typical Jomon culture.” ref
Ancient Jomon genome sequence analysis sheds light on migration patterns of early East Asian populations
“Abstract: Anatomically modern humans reached East Asia more than 40,000 years ago. However, key questions still remain unanswered with regard to the route(s) and the number of wave(s) in the dispersal into East Eurasia. Ancient genomes at the edge of the region may elucidate a more detailed picture of the peopling of East Eurasia. Here, we analyze the whole-genome sequence of a 2,500-year-old individual (IK002) from the main-island of Japan that is characterized with a typical Jomon culture. The phylogenetic analyses support multiple waves of migration, with IK002 forming a basal lineage to the East and Northeast Asian genomes examined, likely representing some of the earliest-wave migrants who went north from Southeast Asia to East Asia. Furthermore, IK002 shows strong genetic affinity with the indigenous Taiwan aborigines, which may support a coastal route of the Jomon-ancestry migration. This study highlights the power of ancient genomics to provide new insights into the complex history of human migration into East Eurasia.” ref
ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Japan’s population Origins and Religious Beliefs from around 35,000 to 500 years ago
“After the major Out-of-Africa dispersal of Homo sapiens around 60,000 years ago, modern humans rapidly expanded across the vast landscapes of Eurasia. Both fossil and ancient genomic evidence suggest that groups ancestrally related to present-day East Asians were present in eastern China by as early as 40,000 years ago. Two major routes for these dispersals have been proposed, either from the northern or southern parts of the Himalaya mountains. Population genomic studies on present-day humans have exclusively supported the southern route origin of East Asian populations. On the other hand, the archaeological record provides strong support for the northern route as the origin of human activity, particularly for the arrival at the Japanese archipelago located at the east end of Eurasian continent. The oldest use of Upper Paleolithic stone tools goes back 38,000 years, and microblades, likely originated from an area around Lake Baikal in Central Siberia, are found in the northern island (i.e., Hokkaido; ~25,000 years ago) and main-island (i.e., Honshu; ~20,000 years ago) of the Japanese archipelago.” ref
“However, few human remains were found from the Upper Paleolithic sites in the archipelago. The Jomon culture started >16,000 years ago, characterized by a hunter-fisher-gathering lifestyle with the earliest use of pottery in the world. This Jomon culture lasted until a start of rice cultivation which brought by people migrated from the Eurasian continent, plausibly through the Korean peninsula, to northern parts of Kyushu island in the Japanese archipelago 3,000 years ago. Several lines of archaeological evidence support the cultural continuity from the Upper-Paleolithic to the Jomon period, providing a hypothesis that the Jomon people are direct descendants of Upper-Paleolithic people who likely remained isolated in the archipelago until the end of Last Glacial Maximum. Therefore, ancient genomics of the Jomon can provide new insights into the origin and migration history of East Asians.” ref
“A critical challenge for ancient genomics with samples from the Japanese archipelago is the inherent nature of warm and humid climate conditions except for the most north island, Hokkaido, and the soils indicating strong acidity because of the volcanic islands, which generally result in poor DNA preservation. Though whole-genome sequences of two Hokkaido Jomon individuals dated to be 3500–3800-year-old were recently published with sufficient coverage, a partial genome of a 3000-year-old Jomon individual from the east-north part of Honshu Japan was reported, with very limited coverage (~0.03-fold) due to the poor preservation. To identify the origin of the Jomon people, we sequenced the genome of a 2500-year-old Jomon individual (IK002) excavated from the central part of Honshu to 1.85-fold genomic coverage.” ref
“Comparing this IK002 genome with ancient Southeast Asians, we previously reported genetic affinity between IK002 and the 8000 years old Hòabìnhian hunter-gatherer. This direct evidence on the link between the Jomon and Southeast Asians, thus, suggests the southern route origin of the Jomon lineage. Nevertheless, key questions still remain as to (1) whether the Jomon were the direct descendant of the Upper Paleolithic people who were the first migrants into the Japanese archipelago and (2) whether the Jomon, as well as present-day East Asians, retain ancestral relationships with people who took the northern route.” ref
“Here, we test the deep divergence of the Jomon lineage and the impacts of southern- versus northern-route ancestry on the genetic makeup of the Jomon. The Jomon forms a lineage basal to both ancient and present-day East Asians; this deep origin supports the hypothesis that the Jomon were direct descendants of the Upper Paleolithic people. Furthermore, the Jomon has strong genetic affinities with the indigenous Taiwan aborigines. Our study shows that the Jomon-related ancestry is one of the earliest-wave migrants who might have taken a coastal route on the way from Southeast Asia toward East Asia.” ref
Subsequently, we carried out model-based unsupervised clustering using ADMIXTURE. Assuming K = 15 ancestral clusters, an ancestral component unique to IK002 appears, which is the most prevalent in the Hokkaido Ainu (average 79.3%). This component is also shared with present-day Honshu Japanese as well as Ulchi (9.8% and 6.0%, respectively). Those results also support the strong genetic affinity between IK002 and the Hokkaido Ainu.” ref
“We used ALDER in order to date the timing of admixture in populations with Jomon ancestry. Using IK002 and the Hokkaido Jomon as a merged source population representing Jomon ancestry, and present-day Han Chinese as the second source representing mainland East Asian ancestry, we estimated the admixture in present-day Honshu Japanese to be between 60 and 77 generations ago (~1700–2200 years ago assuming 29 years/generation), which is slightly earlier than previous estimates but more consistent with the archaeological record. This indicates the admixture started and continuously occurred after the Yayoi period. For the Ulchi we estimated a more recent timing (31–47 generations ago) consistent with the higher variance in the IK002 component observed in ADMIXTURE. Finally, we detected more recent (17–25 generations ago) admixture for the Hokkaido Ainu, likely a consequence of still ongoing gene flow between the Hokkaido Ainu and Honshu Japanese. The estimates of admixture timing are consistent when replacing Han with Korean, Ami or Devil′s Gate cave as mainland East Asian source population, and exponential curves from a single admixture event fit the observed LD curve well.” ref
“To further explore the deep relationships between the Jomon and other Eurasian populations, we used TreeMix to reconstruct admixture graphs of IK002 and 18 ancient and present-day Eurasians and Native Americans. We found the IK002 lineage placed basal to the divergence between ancient and present-day Tibetans and to the common ancestor of the remaining ancient/present-day East Eurasians and Native Americans. These genetic relationships are stable across different numbers of migration incorporated into the analysis. Major gene flow events recovered include the well-documented contribution of the Mal′ta individual (MA-1) to the ancestor of Native Americans, as well as a contribution of IK002 to present-day mainland Japanese (m = 3–8) .” ref
“IK002 can be modeled as a basal lineage to East Asians, Northeast Asians/East Siberians, and Native Americans, supporting a scenario in which their ancestors arrived through the southern route and migrated from Southeast Asia toward Northeast Asia. However, regarding Native Americans, high genetic contributions (11.8–36.8%) were detected from the Upper Paleolithic individual, MA-1, which means that Native Americans were admixture between the southern and the northern routes as shown in Raghavan et al. (2014). The divergence of IK002 from the ancestors of continental East Asians therefore likely predates the split between East Asians and Native Americans, which has been previously estimated at 26,000 years ago. Thus, our TreeMix results support the hypothesis that IK002 is a direct descendant of the people who brought the Upper Paleolithic stone tools 38,000 years ago into the Japanese archipelago.” ref
Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples
“Taiwanese indigenous peoples, also known as Native Taiwanese, Formosan peoples, Austronesian Taiwanese, Yuanzhumin or Gaoshan people, and formerly as Taiwanese aborigines, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognised subgroups numbering about 569,000 or 2.38% of the island’s population. This total is increased to more than 800,000 if the indigenous peoples of the plains in Taiwan are included, pending future official recognition. When including those of mixed ancestry, such a number is possibly more than a million. Academic research suggests that their ancestors have been living on Taiwan for approximately 6,500 years. A wide body of evidence suggests that the Taiwanese indigenous peoples had maintained regular trade networks with numerous regional cultures of Southeast Asia before the Han Chinese colonists began settling on the island from the 17th century, at the behest of the Dutch colonial administration and later by successive governments towards the 20th century.” ref
“Taiwanese indigenous peoples are Austronesians, with linguistic, genetic and cultural ties to other Austronesian peoples in the region. Taiwan is also the origin and linguistic homeland of the oceanic Austronesian expansion whose descendant groups today include the majority of the ethnic groups throughout many parts of East and Southeast Asia as well as Oceania, which includes Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, Philippines, Micronesia, Island Melanesia and Polynesia. The Chams and Utsul of contemporary central and southern Vietnam and Hainan respectively are also a part of the Austronesian family.” ref
“Currently, there are 16 officially recognized indigenous tribes in Taiwan: Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Yami, Thao, Kavalan, Truku, Sakizaya, Sediq, Hla’alua and Kanakanavu.” ref
“Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago.” ref
“Taiwan was joined to the Asian mainland in the Late Pleistocene, until sea levels rose about 10,000 years ago. Human remains and Paleolithic artifacts dated 20,000 to 30,000 years ago have been found. Study of the human remains suggested they were Australo-Papuan people similar to Negrito populations in the Philippines. Paleolithic Taiwanese likely settled the Ryukyu Islands 30,000 years ago. Slash-and-burn agriculture practices started at least 11,000 years ago.” ref
“Stone tools of the Changbin culture have been found in Taitung and Eluanbi. Archaeological remains suggest they were initially hunter-gatherers that slowly shifted to intensive fishing. The distinct Wangxing culture, found in Miaoli County, were initially gatherers who shifted to hunting. Around 6,000 years ago, Taiwan was settled by farmers of the Dapenkeng culture, most likely from what is now southeast China. These cultures are the ancestors of modern Taiwanese Indigenous peoples and the originators of the Austronesian language family.” ref
“Trade with the Philippines persisted from the early 2nd millennium BCE, including the use of Taiwanese jade in the Philippine jade culture. The Dapenkeng culture was succeeded by a variety of cultures throughout the island, including the Tahu and Yingpu; the Yuanshan were characterized by rice harvesting. Iron appeared in such cultures as the Niaosung culture, influenced by trade with China and Maritime Southeast Asia. The Plains Indigenous peoples mainly lived in permanent walled villages, with a lifestyle based on agriculture, fishing, and hunting. They had traditionally matriarchal societies.” ref
The early migration route of early Austronesians into and out of Taiwan was suggested based on ancient and modern mtDNA data. This hypothesis assumes the Sino-Austronesian grouping, a minority view among linguists. (Ko et al.., 2014)” ref
Dapenkeng Culture
“The Dapenkeng culture (Chinese: 大坌坑文化; pinyin: Dàbènkēng wénhuà) was an early Neolithic culture that appeared in northern Taiwan between 4000 and 3000 BC and quickly spread around the coast of the island, as well as the Penghu islands to the west. Most scholars believe this culture was brought across the Taiwan Strait by the ancestors of today’s Taiwanese aborigines, speaking early Austronesian languages. No ancestral culture on the mainland has been identified, but a number of shared features suggest ongoing contacts.” ref
“The Sino-Austronesian hypothesis, on the other hand, is a relatively new hypothesis by Laurent Sagart, first proposed in 1990. It argues for a north–south linguistic genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian. This is based on sound correspondences in basic vocabulary and morphological parallels. Sagart places special significance in shared vocabulary on cereal crops, citing them as evidence of shared linguistic origin. However, this has largely been rejected by other linguists. The sound correspondences between Old Chinese and Proto-Austronesian can also be explained as a result of the Longshan interaction sphere, when pre-Austronesians from the Yangtze region came into regular contact with Proto-Sinitic speakers in the Shandong Peninsula, around the 4th to 3rd millennia BCE.” ref
“This corresponded with the widespread introduction of rice cultivation to Proto-Sinitic speakers and conversely, millet cultivation to Pre-Austronesians. An Austronesian substratum in formerly Austronesian territories that have been Sinicized after the Iron Age Han expansion is also another explanation for the correspondences that do not require a genetic relationship. In relation to Sino-Austronesian models and the Longshan interaction sphere, Roger Blench (2014) suggests that the single migration model for the spread of the Neolithic into Taiwan is problematic, pointing out the genetic and linguistic inconsistencies between different Taiwanese Austronesian groups. The surviving Austronesian populations in Taiwan should rather be considered as the result of various Neolithic migration waves from the mainland and back-migration from the Philippines. These incoming migrants almost certainly spoke languages related to Austronesian or pre-Austronesian, although their phonology and grammar would have been quite diverse.” ref
“Blench considers the Austronesians in Taiwan to have been a melting pot of immigrants from various parts of the coast of East China that had been migrating to Taiwan by 4000 years ago. These immigrants included people from the foxtail millet-cultivating Longshan culture of Shandong (with Longshan-type cultures found in southern Taiwan), the fishing-based Dapenkeng culture of coastal Fujian, and the Yuanshan culture of northernmost Taiwan, which Blench suggests may have originated from the coast of Guangdong. Based on geography and cultural vocabulary, Blench believes that the Yuanshan people may have spoken Northeast Formosan languages. Thus, Blench believes that there is in fact no “apical” ancestor of Austronesian in the sense that there was no true single Proto-Austronesian language that gave rise to present-day Austronesian languages. Instead, multiple migrations of various pre-Austronesian peoples and languages from the Chinese mainland that were related but distinct came together to form what we now know as Austronesian in Taiwan. Hence, Blench considers the single-migration model into Taiwan by pre-Austronesians to be inconsistent with both the archaeological and linguistic (lexical) evidence.” ref
The Sino-Austronesian hypothesis/Sino-Austronesian languages
“Sino-Austronesian or Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian is a proposed language family suggested by Laurent Sagart in 1990. Using reconstructions of Old Chinese, Sagart argued that the Austronesian languages are related to the Sinitic languages phonologically, lexically and morphologically. Sagart later accepted the Sino-Tibetan languages as a valid group and extended his proposal to include the rest of Sino-Tibetan. He also placed the Tai–Kadai languages within the Austronesian family as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. The proposal has been largely rejected by other linguists who argue that the similarities between Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan more likely arose from contact rather than being genetic.” ref
“Sagart suggests that monosyllabic Old Chinese words correspond to the second syllables of disyllabic Proto-Austronesian roots. However, the type A/B distinction in OC, corresponding to non-palatalized or palatalized syllables in Middle Chinese, is considered to correspond to a voiceless/voiced initial in PAN. Stanley Starosta (2005) expands Sagart’s Sino-Austronesian tree with a “Yangzian” branch, consisting of Austroasiatic and Hmong–Mien, to form an East Asian superphylum. Weera Ostapirat (2005) supports the link between Austronesian and Kra–Dai (Sagart built upon Ostapirat’s findings), though as sister groups. However, he rejects a link to Sino-Tibetan, noting that the apparent cognates are rarely found in all branches of Kra–Dai, and almost none are in core vocabulary.” ref
“Austronesian linguists Paul Jen-kuei Li and Robert Blust have criticized Sagart’s comparisons, on the grounds of loose semantic matches, inconsistent correspondences, and that basic vocabulary is hardly represented. They also note that comparing with the second syllable of disyllabic Austronesian roots vastly increases the odds of chance resemblance. Blust has been particularly critical of Sagart’s use of the comparative method. Laurent Sagart (2016) responds to some of the criticisms by Blust (2009).” ref
“Alexander Vovin (1997) does not accept Sino-Austronesian as a valid grouping, but instead suggests that some of the Sino-Austronesian parallels proposed by Sagart may in fact be due to an Austronesian substratum in Old Chinese. This view is also espoused by George van Driem, who suggests that Austronesian and Sinitic had come into contact with each other during the fourth and third millennia BCE in the Longshan interaction sphere.” ref
“Left: Proposed routes of Austroasiatic and Austronesian migrations into Indonesia (Simanjuntak, 2017).” ref
“Right: Possible language family homelands and the spread of rice into Southeast Asia (ca. 5,500–2,500 years ago). The approximate coastlines during the early Holocene are shown in lighter blue.” ref
“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.” ref
“In modern literature, descendants of these groups, located in Island Southeast Asia west of Halmahera, are usually collectively referred to as “Negritos“, while descendants of these groups east of Halmahera (excluding Indigenous Australians) are referred to as “Papuans“. They can also be divided into two broad groups based on Denisovan admixture. Philippine Negritos, Papuans, Melanesians, and Indigenous Australians display Denisovan admixture, while Malaysian and western Indonesian Negritos (Orang Asli) and Andamanese islanders do not.” ref
“Mahdi (2017) also uses the term “Qata” (from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *qata) to distinguish the indigenous populations of Southeast Asia, versus “Tau” (from Proto-Austronesian *Cau) for the later settlers from Taiwan and mainland China. Both are based on proto-forms for the word “person” in Malayo-Polynesian languages that referred to darker-skinned and lighter-skinned groups, respectively. Jinam et al. (2017) also proposed the term “First Sundaland People” in place of “Negrito”, as a more accurate name for the original population of Southeast Asia.” ref
“These populations are genetically distinct from later Austronesians, but through fairly extensive population admixture, most modern Austronesians have varying levels of ancestry from these groups. The same is true for some populations historically considered “non-Austronesians”, due to physical differences—like Philippine Negritos, Orang Asli, and Austronesian-speaking Melanesians, all of whom have Austronesian admixture. In Polynesians in Remote Oceania, for example, the admixture is around 20 to 30% Papuan and 70 to 80% Austronesian. The Melanesians in Near Oceania are roughly around 20% Austronesian and 80% Papuan, while in the natives of the Lesser Sunda Islands, the admixture is around 50% Austronesian and 50% Papuan. Similarly, in the Philippines, the groups traditionally considered to be “Negrito” vary between 30 and 50% Austronesian.” ref
“The high degree of assimilation among Austronesian, Negrito, and Papuan groups indicates that the Austronesian expansion was largely peaceful. Rather than violent displacement, the settlers and the indigenous groups absorbed each other. It is believed that in some cases, like in the Toalean culture of Sulawesi (c. 8,000–1,500 years ago), it is even more accurate to say that the densely populated indigenous hunter-gatherer groups absorbed the incoming Austronesian farmers, rather than the other way around. Mahdi (2016) further asserts that Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *tau-mata (“person”) is derived from a composite protoform *Cau ma-qata, combining “Tau” and “Qata” and indicative of the mixing of the two ancestral population types in these regions.” ref
“The broad consensus on the Urheimat (homeland) of Austronesian languages as well as the Neolithic early Austronesian peoples is accepted to be Taiwan, as well as the Penghu Islands. They are believed to have descended from ancestral populations in coastal mainland southern China, which are generally referred to as the “pre‑Austronesians”. Through these pre-Austronesians, Austronesians may also share a common ancestry with neighboring groups in Neolithic southern China.” ref
“These Neolithic pre-Austronesians from the coast of southeastern China are believed to have migrated to Taiwan between approximately 10,000 and 6000 BCE. Other research has suggested that, according to radiocarbon dates, Austronesians may have migrated from mainland China to Taiwan as late as 4000 BCE (Dapenkeng culture). They continued to maintain regular contact with the mainland until 1500 BCE.” ref
“The identity of the Neolithic pre-Austronesian cultures in China is contentious. Tracing Austronesian prehistory in Fujian and Taiwan has been difficult due to the southward expansion of the Han dynasty (2nd century BCE) and the recent Qing dynasty annexation of Taiwan (1683 CE). Today, the only Austronesian language in southern China is Tsat, spoken in Hainan. The politicization of archaeology is also problematic, particularly erroneous reconstructions among some Chinese archaeologists of non-Sinitic sites as Han. Some authors, favoring the “Out of Sundaland” model, like William Meacham, reject the southern Chinese mainland origin of pre-Austronesians entirely.” ref
“Nevertheless, based on linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence, Austronesians are most strongly associated with the early farming cultures of the Yangtze River basin that domesticated rice from around 13,500 to 8,200 years ago. They display typical Austronesian technological hallmarks, including tooth removal, teeth blackening, jade carving, tattooing, stilt houses, advanced boatbuilding, aquaculture, wetland agriculture, and the domestication of dogs, pigs, and chickens. These include the Kuahuqiao, Hemudu, Majiabang, Songze, Liangzhu, and Dapenkeng cultures that occupied the coastal regions between the Yangtze River delta and the Min River delta.” ref
“Based on linguistic evidence, there have been proposals linking Austronesians with other linguistic families into linguistic macrofamilies that are relevant to the identity of the pre-Austronesian populations. The most notable are the connections of Austronesians to the neighboring Austroasiatic, Kra-Dai, and Sinitic peoples (as Austric, Austro-Tai, and Sino-Austronesian, respectively). These are still not widely accepted, as evidence of these relationships are still tenuous, and the methods used are highly contentious.” ref
“In support of both the Austric and Austro-Tai hypothesis, Robert Blust connects the lower Yangtze Neolithic Austro-Tai entity with the rice-cultivating Austroasiatic cultures, assuming the center of East Asian rice domestication, and putative Austric homeland, to be located in the Yunnan/Burma border area, instead of the Yangtze River basin, as is currently accepted. Under that view, there was an east–west genetic alignment, resulting from a rice-based population expansion, in the southern part of East Asia: Austroasiatic-Kra-Dai-Austronesian, with unrelated Sino-Tibetan occupying a more northerly tier. Depending on the author, other hypotheses have also included other language families like Hmong-Mien and even Japanese-Ryukyuan into the larger Austric hypothesis.” ref
“While the Austric hypothesis remains contentious, there is genetic evidence that at least in western Island Southeast Asia, there had been earlier Neolithic overland migrations (pre-4,000 years ago) by Austroasiatic-speaking peoples into what is now the Greater Sunda Islands when the sea levels were lower, in the early Holocene. These peoples were assimilated linguistically and culturally by incoming Austronesian peoples in what is now modern-day Indonesia and Malaysia.” ref
“The proposed genesis of Daic languages and their relation with Austronesians (Blench, 2018).” ref
“Several authors have also proposed that Kra-Dai speakers may actually be an ancient daughter subgroup of Austronesians that migrated back to the Pearl River Delta from Taiwan and/or Luzon, shortly after the Austronesian expansion, later migrating further westwards to Hainan, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Northeast India. They propose that the distinctiveness of Kra-Dai (it is tonal and monosyllabic) was the result of linguistic restructuring due to contact with Hmong-Mien and Sinitic cultures. Aside from linguistic evidence, Roger Blench has also noted cultural similarities between the two groups, like facial tattooing, tooth removal or ablation, teeth blackening, snake (or dragon) cults, and the multiple-tongued jaw harps shared by the indigenous Taiwanese and Kra-Dai-speakers.” ref
“However, archaeological evidence for this is still sparse. This is believed to be similar to what happened to the Cham people, who were originally Austronesian settlers (likely from Borneo) to southern Vietnam around 2100–1900 years ago and had languages similar to Malay. Their languages underwent several restructuring events to syntax and phonology due to contact with the nearby tonal languages of Mainland Southeast Asia and Hainan. Although the populations of the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and neighboring islands are Austronesian-speaking, they have significantly high admixture from Mainland Southeast Asian populations. These areas were already populated (most probably by speakers of Austroasiatic languages) before they were reached by the Austronesian expansion, roughly 3,000 years ago. Currently, only the indigenous Aslians still speak Austroasiatic languages. However, some of the languages in the region show signs of underlying Austroasiatic substrates.” ref
“According to Juha Janhunen and Ann Kumar, Austronesians may have also settled parts of southern Japan, especially on the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku, and influenced or created the Japanese hierarchical society. It is suggested that Japanese tribes like the Hayato people, the Kumaso, and the Azumi were of Austronesian origin. Until today, local traditions and festivals show similarities to Malayo-Polynesian culture.” ref
“Map showing the migration of the Austronesians from Taiwan” ref
Migration from Taiwan
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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 in 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.” ref
“In the Indian Ocean, Austronesians in Maritime Southeast Asia established trade links with South Asia. They also established early long-distance contacts with Africa, possibly as early as before 500 BCE, based on archaeological evidence like banana phytoliths in Cameroon and Uganda and remains of Neolithic chicken bones in Zanzibar. By the end of the first millennium BCE, Austronesians were already sailing maritime trade routes linking the Han dynasty of China with the western Indian Ocean trade in India, the Roman Empire, and Africa.” ref
“An Austronesian group, originally from the Makassar Strait region around Kalimantan and Sulawesi, eventually settled Madagascar, either directly from Southeast Asia or from preexisting mixed Austronesian-Bantu populations from East Africa. Estimates for when this occurred vary, from the 5th to 7th centuries CE. It is likely that the Austronesians that settled Madagascar followed a coastal route through South Asia and East Africa, rather than directly across the Indian Ocean. Genetic evidence suggests that some individuals of Austronesian descent reached Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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).” ref
“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, Madagascar, and the Comoros 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.” ref
“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 fibre) 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 fibres 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.” ref
“The ancestral rig was the mastless triangular crab claw sail, which had two booms that could be tilted to the wind. These were built in the double-canoe configuration or had a single outrigger on the windward side. In Island Southeast Asia, these developed into double outriggers on each side, which provided greater stability. The triangular crab claw sails also later developed into square or rectangular tanja sails, which, like crab claw sails, had distinctive booms spanning the upper and lower edges. Fixed masts also developed later in both Southeast Asia (usually as bipod or tripod masts) and Oceania. Austronesians traditionally made their sails from woven mats of the resilient and salt-resistant pandanus leaves. These sails allowed them to embark on long-distance voyaging. In some cases, however, they were one-way voyages. The failure to establish populations in Rapa Nui and New Zealand is believed to have isolated their settlements from the rest of Polynesia.” ref
“Austronesian proto-historic and historic maritime trade network in the Indian Ocean.” ref
“The ancient Champa of Vietnam also uniquely developed basket-hulled boats whose hulls were composed of woven and resin-caulked bamboo, either entirely or in conjunction with plank strakes. They ranged from small coracles (o thúng) to large oceangoing trading ships like the ghe mành. The acquisition of catamaran and outrigger technology by non-Austronesian peoples in Sri Lanka and southern India is due to the result of very early Austronesian contact with the region, including the Maldives and the Laccadive Islands, estimated to have occurred around 1000 to 600 BCE and onwards.” ref
“This may have possibly included limited colonization by people who have since been assimilated. This is still evident in Sri Lankan and South Indian languages. For example, Tamil paṭavu, Telugu paḍava, and Kannada paḍahu, all meaning “ship”, are all derived from Proto-Hesperonesian *padaw, “sailboat”, with Austronesian cognates like Sundanese parahu, Javanese perahu, Kadazan padau, Maranao padaw, Cebuano paráw, Samoan folau, Hawaiian halau, and Māori wharau.” ref
“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”).” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“Austronesian buildings have spiritual significance, often containing what has been coined by anthropologist James J. Fox as a “ritual attractor”. These are specific posts, beams, platforms, altars, and so on that embody the house as a whole, usually consecrated at the time of building. The Austronesian house itself also often symbolizes various aspects of indigenous Austronesian cosmology and animism. In the majority of cases, the loft of the house (usually placed above the hearth), is considered to be the domain of deities and spirits. It is essentially a raised granary built into the structure of the house itself and functioning as a second floor. It is commonly used to store sacred objects (like effigies of granary idols or deceased ancestors), heirlooms, and other important objects. These areas are usually not part of the regular living space and may only be accessible to certain members of the family or after performing a specific ritual. Other parts of the house may also be associated with certain deities, and thus certain activities like receiving guests or conducting marriage ceremonies can only be performed in specific areas.” ref
“While rice cultivation wasn’t among the technologies carried into Remote Oceania, raised storehouses still survived. The pātaka of the Māori people is an example. The largest pātaka are elaborately adorned with carvings and are often the tallest buildings in the Māori pā. These were used to store implements, weapons, ships, and other valuables; while smaller pātaka were used to store provisions. A special type of pātaka, supported by a single tall post, also had ritual importance and was used to isolate high-born children during their training for leadership.” ref
“The majority of Austronesian structures are not permanent. They are made from perishable materials like wood, bamboo, plant fibre, and leaves. Similar to traditional Austronesian boats, they do not use nails but are traditionally constructed solely by joints, weaving, ties, and dowels. Elements of the structures are repaired and replaced regularly or as they get damaged. Because of this, archaeological records of prehistoric Austronesian structures are usually limited to traces of house posts, with no way of determining the original building plans.” ref
“Indirect evidence of traditional Austronesian architecture, however, can be gleaned from their contemporary representations in art, such as friezes on the walls of later Hindu-Buddhist stone temples (like in reliefs at Borobudur and Prambanan). But these are limited to the recent centuries. They can also be reconstructed linguistically from shared terms for architectural elements, like ridge poles, thatch, rafters, house posts, hearths, notched log ladders, storage racks, public buildings, and so on. Linguistic evidence also makes it clear that stilt houses were already present among Austronesian groups since at least the Late Neolithic. In modern Indonesia, varying styles are collectively known as rumah adat.” ref
“Arbi et al. (2013) have also noted the striking similarities between Austronesian architecture and Japanese traditional raised architecture (shinmei-zukuri). Particularly the buildings of the Ise Grand Shrine, which contrast with the pit-houses typical of the Neolithic Yayoi period. They propose significant Neolithic contact between the people of southern Japan and Austronesians or pre-Austronesians that occurred prior to the spread of Han Chinese cultural influence to the islands. Rice cultivation is also believed to have been introduced to Japan from a para-Austronesian group from coastal eastern China. Waterson (2009) has also argued that the architectural tradition of stilt houses is originally Austronesian and that similar building traditions in Japan and mainland Asia (notably among Kra-Dai and Austroasiatic-speaking groups) correspond to contacts with a prehistoric Austronesian network.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“The dentate-stamped pottery of the Lapita culture (c. 1350–1300 BCE) retained elements also found in the Nagsabaran pottery in the Philippines, including stamped circles as well as the cross-in-circle motif. They carried pottery technology as far as Tonga in Polynesia. Pottery technology in Tonga, however, became reduced to undecorated plainware within only two centuries before abruptly disappearing completely by around 400 BCE. The reasons for this are still unknown. Pottery was absent in subsequent migrations to the rest of Remote Oceania, being replaced instead with carved wooden or bamboo containers, bottle gourds, and baskets. However, the geometric designs and stylized figures used in the pottery are still present in other surviving art forms, such as tattooing, weaving, and barkcloth patterns.” ref
“A common practice among Austronesians in a large area of Island Southeast Asia is the use of burial jars, which emerged during the Late Neolithic and flourished in the first millennium CE. They are characteristic of a region bordered by the Philippines to the north, southern Sumatra in the southwest, and Sumba and the Maluku Islands in the southeast. However, these didn’t comprise a single tradition but can be grouped into at least fourteen different traditions scattered across the islands. In most cases, the earliest burial jars used were large indigenous earthenware jars, followed by indigenous or imported stoneware jars (martaban), and finally imported porcelain jars acquired from the burgeoning maritime trade with China and Mainland Southeast Asia around the 14th century CE.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“The ancestral pre-Austronesian Liangzhu culture (3400–2250 BCE) of the Yangtze River delta was one of the ancient centres 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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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 years ago. 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 years ago. Some hunter-gatherer groups have also continued to produce rock art well into the present period, as evidenced by their modern subjects.” ref
“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 to 16th century 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.” ref
“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 ochre 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.” ref
“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.” ref
“The earliest APT site dated is from Vanuatu and was found to be around 3,000 years ago, corresponding to the initial migration wave of the Austronesians. These early sites are largely characterized by face motifs and hand stencils. Later sites, from 1,500 years ago onwards, however, begin to show regional divergence in their art styles. APT can be readily distinguished from older Pleistocene-era Australo-Melanesian cave paintings by their motifs, color, and composition, though they can often be found in the same locality. The most recognizable motifs of APT (like boats) do not occur in cave paintings (or engravings) that definitely pre-date the Austronesian arrival—the sole exception being the stenciled hand motif. Some APT examples are also characteristically found in relatively inaccessible locations, including very high up in cliffsides overlooking the sea. No traces of APT have been found in Taiwan or the Philippines, though there is continuity in the motifs of spirals and concentric circles found in ancestral petroglyphs.” ref
“AES, which consists of petroglyphs carved into rock surfaces, is far less common than APT. The majority of these sites are in coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia. AES sites, which can be tentatively traced back to the similar Wanshan petroglyphs of Taiwan, are believed to be largely correlated to the prehistoric extent of the Lapita culture. The common motif of this tradition is curvilinear geometric engravings like spirals, concentric circles, and face-like forms. These resemble the geometric motifs in APT, though they are considered to be two separate artistic traditions. AES is particularly dominant in the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia, where engravings are far more abundant than painted sites.” ref
“O’Connor et al. (2015) proposes that APT developed during the initial rapid southward Austronesian expansion, and not before, possibly as a response to the communication challenges brought about by the new maritime mode of living. Along with AES, these material symbols and associated rituals and technologies may have been manifestations of “powerful ideologies” spread by Austronesian settlers that were central to the “Neolithization” and rapid assimilation of the various non-Austronesian indigenous populations of ISEA and Melanesia.” ref
“The easternmost islands of Island Melanesia (Vanuatu, Fiji, and New Caledonia) are considered part of Remote Oceania, as they are beyond the inter-island visibility threshold. These island groups begin to show divergence from the APT and AES traditions of Near Oceania. While their art traditions show a clear continuation of the APT and AES traditions, they also feature innovations unique to each island group, like the increasing use of black charcoal, rectilinear motifs, and being more commonly found inside sacred caves rather than on open cliffsides.” ref
“In Micronesia, the rock art traditions can be divided into three general regions: western, central, and eastern. The divisions reflect the various major migration waves from the Philippines into the Mariana Islands and Palau in 3,500 years ago; a Lapita culture back-migration from Island Melanesia into central and eastern Micronesia around 2,200 years ago; and finally, a back-migration from western Polynesia into eastern Micronesia around 1,000 years ago.” ref
“In western Micronesia (Palau, Yap, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands), rock art primarily consists of paintings on high cave ceilings and sea-facing cliffs. It is very similar to APT in terms of its motifs as well as its placement in relatively inaccessible locations. Common motifs include hand stencils, faces, turtles and fish, concentric circles, and characteristic four-pointed stars. Petroglyphs are rare and mainly consist of human forms with triangular bodies without heads or arms. This is believed to be connected to the funerary rite of removing the heads from the bodies of deceased relatives. A notable megalithic tradition in western Micronesia are the haligi stone pillars of the Chamorro people. These are capped stone pillars that are believed to have served as supports for raised buildings. They are associated with the Latte period (900 to 1700 CE), when a new wave of migrants from Southeast Asia reintroduced rice cultivation to the islands. Another megalithic tradition is that of the rai stones, massive doughnut-shaped discs of rock that were used as currency on Yap.” ref
“Rock art in central Micronesia (Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae), in contrast, is dominated by rock engravings with motifs tying it to the rock art traditions of Island Melanesia. They include curvilinear shapes like spirals and concentric circles, tree-like shapes, and the distinctive “enveloped cross” motif. The Pohnpaid petroglyphs are the largest assemblage of rock engravings in the region, with motifs dominated by footprints, enveloped crosses, and outlined “sword-paddles”. Central Micronesia also hosts the ruins of the stone cities of Nan Madol (1,180–1,200 CE) and Leluh (1,200–1,800 CE), on the islands of Pohnpei and Kosrae, respectively. In the low-lying atolls of eastern Micronesia, rock art is rare-to-nonexistent, due to the absence of suitable rock surfaces for painting or engraving.” ref
“In Polynesia, rock art is dominated by petroglyphs, rather than paintings, and they show less variation than the rock art of Near Oceania and ISEA. In the western Polynesian islands nearest to Island Melanesia, rock art is rare (like in Tonga and Samoa) or absent entirely (like in the Cook Islands). However, petroglyphs are abundant on the islands in the further reaches of the Polynesian triangle, particularly on Hawaii, the Marquesas, and Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui has the densest concentration of engravings in Polynesia as a whole, while the Puʻuloa petroglyphs site on Hawaii has the largest number of petroglyphs in a single site, at over 21,000 engravings. Polynesia also features megalithic sacred ceremonial centres generally known as marae.” ref
“On Tonga and Samoa, the existing rock art sites consist mostly of engravings with motifs including curvilinear shapes, human figures, “jellyfish”, turtles, birds, and footprints. These are typically carved in natural rock formations or marae sites. In the central-eastern Polynesian islands, which include the Marquesas and the Society Islands, petroglyphs are more numerous. They show the archetypal Polynesian motifs of turtles, faces, cup-like depressions (cupules), stick-like human figures, boats, fish, curvilinear shapes, and concentric circles. Like in western Polynesia, they are typically carved into marae sites or in rocks beside streams. The existing rock paintings also display the same motifs but are rendered in different styles.” ref
“On the Hawaiian islands, the abundant petroglyphs are remarkably all similar in execution. Their common subjects include stick-like human figures, dogs, boats, sails, paddles, footprints, and ceremonial headdresses. Depictions of marine life, however, are rare, unlike in the rest of Polynesia. They are typically carved into boulders, lava rock formations, and cliffsides. Red paintings of dogs on cliffsides and caves can also be found on Kauʻai and Maui. The megalithic traditions of Hawaii can be exemplified by the heiau sacred sites, which can range from simple earth terraces to standing stones.” ref
“On Rapa Nui, the engravings are distinctive but still show similarities to the techniques and motifs of the Marquesas. Their motifs commonly include disembodied parts of the human body (vulvae in particular), animals, plants, ceremonial objects, and boats. A prominent motif is also that of the “birdman” figure, which is associated with the tangata manu cult of Makemake. The best-known rock art assemblage of Rapa Nui, however, are the moai megaliths. A few paintings, mostly of birds and boats, have also been discovered, which are associated with the engravings, rather than being separate artforms.” ref
“The rock art in New Zealand can be divided into two regions. North Island features more engravings than paintings, while South Island is unique in that it is the only Polynesian island where there are more paintings than engravings. New Zealand rock paintings are done in red and black pigments and can sometimes be found at inaccessible heights. They typically depict human figures (particularly a front-facing human figure with flexed arms), birds, lizards, dogs, fish, and what has been identified as “birdmen”. Engravings in open spaces like cliffsides are generally of spirals and curvilinear shapes, while engravings in enclosed caves and shelters depict faces and boats. The same motifs can also be seen in dendroglyphs on living trees.” ref
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Tattoos in Prehistory Ritual and Religion with a wide Dispersal of Cultures and Places
“Body art among Austronesian peoples is common, especially elaborate tattooing, which is one of the most well-known pan-Austronesian traditions.” ref
Tattooing
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“Among the Indigenous Taiwanese, tattoos were present for both men and women. Among the Tayal, 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.” ref
“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.” ref
“Among the Māori of New Zealand, tattoos (moko) were originally carved into the skin using bone chisels (uhi) rather than through puncturing, as in usual practice. In addition to being pigmented, the skin was also left raised into ridges of swirling patterns.” ref
Dental modification
“Teeth blackening was the custom of dyeing one’s teeth black with various tannin-rich plant dyes. It was practiced throughout almost the entire range of Austronesia, including Island Southeast Asia, Madagascar, Micronesia, and Island Melanesia, reaching as far east as Malaita. However, it was absent in Polynesia. It also existed in non-Austronesian populations in Mainland Southeast Asia and Japan. The practice was primarily preventative, as it reduced the chances of developing tooth decay, similar to modern dental sealants. It also had cultural significance and was seen as beautiful. A common sentiment was that blackened teeth separated humans from animals. Teeth blackening was often done in conjunction with other modifications to the teeth associated with beauty standards, including dental evulsion and filing.” ref
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.” ref
“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.” ref
Proto-Austronesian language
“Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world’s major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify c. 4000 BCE – c. 3500 BCE in Taiwan. Lower-level reconstructions have also been made, and include Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian. Recently, linguists such as Malcolm Ross and Andrew Pawley have built large lexicons for Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian.” ref
“Proto-Austronesian is reconstructed by constructing sets of correspondences among consonants in the various Austronesian languages, according to the comparative method. Although in theory the result should be unambiguous, in practice given the large number of languages there are numerous disagreements, with various scholars differing significantly on the number and nature of the phonemes in Proto-Austronesian. In the past, some disagreements concerned whether certain correspondence sets were real or represent sporadic developments in particular languages. For the currently remaining disagreements, however, scholars generally accept the validity of the correspondence sets but disagree on the extent to which the distinctions in these sets can be projected back to proto-Austronesian or represent innovations in particular sets of daughter languages.” ref
“As Proto-Austronesian transitioned to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian, the phonemic inventories were continually reduced by merging formerly distinct sounds into one sound. Three mergers were observed in the Proto-Austronesian to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian transition, while nine were observed for the Proto-Oceanic to Proto-Polynesian transition. Thus, Proto-Austronesian has the most elaborate sound system, while Proto-Polynesian has the fewest phonemes. For instance, the Hawaiian language is famous for having only eight consonants, while Māori has only ten consonants.” ref
“This is a sharp reduction from the 19–25 consonants of the Proto-Austronesian language that was originally spoken on Taiwan or Kinmen. Blust also observed the following mergers and sound changes between Proto-Austronesian and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Proto-Oceanic merged even more phonemes. This is why modern-day Polynesian languages have some of the most restricted consonant inventories in the world.” ref
“Proto-Austronesian is a verb-initial language (including VSO and VOS word orders), as most Formosan languages, all Philippine languages, some Bornean languages, all Austronesian dialects of Madagascar, and all Polynesian languages are verb-initial. However, most Austronesian (many of which are Oceanic) languages of Indonesia, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Micronesia are SVO, or verb-medial, languages. SOV, or verb-final, word order is considered to be typologically unusual for Austronesian languages, and is only found in various Austronesian languages of New Guinea and to a more limited extent, the Solomon Islands. This is because SOV word order is very common in the non-Austronesian Papuan languages.” ref
“The Austronesian languages of Taiwan, Borneo, Madagascar and the Philippines are also well known for their unusual morphosyntactic alignment, which is known as the symmetrical voice (also known as the Austronesian alignment). This alignment was also present in the Proto-Austronesian language. Unlike Proto-Austronesian, however, Proto-Oceanic syntax does not make use of the focus morphology present in Austronesian-aligned languages such as the Philippine languages. In the Polynesian languages, verbal morphology is relatively simple, while the main unit in a sentence is the phrase rather than the word.” ref
“However, Ross (2009) notes that what may be the most divergent languages, Tsou, Rukai, and Puyuma, are not addressed by this reconstruction, which therefore cannot claim to be alignment system of the protolanguage of the entire family. He calls the unit to which this reconstruction applies Nuclear Austronesian. Morphology and syntax are often hard to separate in the Austronesian languages, particularly the Philippine languages. This is because the morphology of the verbs often affects how the rest of the sentence would be constructed (i.e., syntax).” ref
“The Proto-Austronesians used two types of directions, which are the land-sea axis and the monsoon axis. The cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west developed among the Austronesian languages only after contact with the Europeans. For the land-sea axis, upstream/uphill and inland, as well as downstream/downhill and seaward, are synonym pairs. This has been proposed as evidence that Proto-Austronesians used to live on a mainland, since the sea would be visible from all angles on small islands.” ref
“In Kavalan, Amis, and Tagalog, the reflexes of *timuR mean “south” or “south wind,” while in the languages of the southern Philippines and Indonesia it means “east” or “east wind.” ref
“In Ilocano, dáya and láud respectively mean “east” and “west,” while in Puyuma, ɖaya and ɭauɖ respectively mean “west” and “east.”[20] This is because the Ilocano homeland is the west coast of northern Luzon, while the Puyuma homeland is on the eastern coast of southern Taiwan. Among the Bontok, Kankanaey, and Ifugaw languages of northern Luzon, the reflexes of *daya mean “sky” because they already live in some of the highest elevations in the Philippines.” ref
“Also, the Malay reflex of *lahud is laut, which means “sea”, used as directions timur laut (means “northeast”, timur = “east”) and barat laut (means “northwest”, barat = “west”). Meanwhile, *daya only performs in barat daya, which means “southwest.” ref
“*lima ‘five’, ultimately the root for ‘hand’, is not found for ‘five’ in some Formosan languages, such as Pazeh, Saisiat, Luilang, Favorlang and Taokas; numerals cognate with Proto-Malayo-Polynesian 6–10 are found in Amis, Basay, Bunun, Kanakanabu, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Saaroa and Tsou. Pazeh, Favorlang, Saisiat and Taokas reflect *RaCep ‘five’.” ref
“Laurent Sagart suggests that this was the PAn root, replaced by *lima in a lineage that lead to the remaining languages, rather than the reverse, because it seems to be retained in proto-Malayo-Polynesian in the forms 7, 8, 9, which appear to be disyllabic contractions of additive phrases attested from some of the western Formosan languages, especially Pazeh: Pazeh xaseb-uza ‘six’ (literally ‘five-one’); xaseb-i-dusa ‘seven’ (‘five-and-two’), with the bidu cognate with PMP *pitu; xaseb-a-turu ‘eight’ (‘five-and-three’), with the baturu cognate with PMP *walu; xaseb-i-supat ‘nine’ (‘five-and-four’), with the supa (< PAn *Sepat ‘four’) cognate with PMP *Siwa.” ref
“The Proto-Austronesian language had different sets of numerals for non-humans (“set A”) and humans (“set B”). Cardinal numerals for counting humans are derived from the non-human numerals through Ca-reduplication. This bipartite numeral system is found in Thao, Puyuma, Yami, Chamorro, and various other languages (however, Paiwan uses ma- and manə- to derive human numerals). In many Philippine languages such as Tagalog, the two numeral systems are merged.” ref
Austronesian languages
“Austronesian languages (/ˌɔːstrəˈniːʒən/ AW-strə-NEE-zhən) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken by about 328 million people (4.4% of the world population). This makes 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, Sundanese, Tagalog (standardized as Filipino), Malagasy and Cebuano. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.” ref
“In 1706, the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the Malay Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the 19th century, researchers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herman van der Tuuk) started to apply the comparative method to the Austronesian languages. The first extensive study on the history of the phonology was made by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff. It included a reconstruction of the Proto-Austronesian lexicon. The term Austronesian was coined (as German austronesisch) by Wilhelm Schmidt, deriving it from Latin auster “south” and Ancient Greek νῆσος (nêsos “island”).” ref
“Most Austronesian languages are spoken by island dwellers. Only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages, are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people. For example, Indonesian is spoken by around 197.7 million people. This makes it the eleventh most-spoken language in the world. Approximately twenty Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see the list of major and official Austronesian languages) .” ref
“By the number of languages they include, Austronesian and Niger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world. They each contain roughly one-fifth of the world’s languages. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family in the first half of the second millennium CE, before the spread of Indo-European in the colonial period. It ranged from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. Hawaiian, Rapa Nui, Māori, and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar) are the geographic outliers.” ref
“According to Robert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided into several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively in Taiwan. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside the Taiwan mainland (including its offshore Yami language) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (sometimes called Extra-Formosan) branch.” ref
“Most Austronesian languages lack a long history of written attestation. This makes reconstructing earlier stages—up to distant Proto-Austronesian—all the more remarkable. The oldest inscription in the Cham language, the Đông Yên Châu inscription dated to c. 350 CE, is the first attestation of any Austronesian language.” ref
Writing
See also: Decipherment of rongorongo
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“Oral tradition holds that the ruling classes were the only ones who could read the tablets, and the ability to decipher the tablets was lost along with them. Numerous attempts have been made to read the tablets, starting from a few years after their discovery. But to this day, none have proven successful. Some authors have proposed that rongorongo may have been an attempt to imitate European script after the idea of writing was introduced during the “signing” of the 1770 Spanish Treaty of Annexation or through knowledge of European writing acquired elsewhere. They cite various reasons, including the lack of attestation of rongorongo prior to the 1860s, the clearly more recent provenance of some of the tablets, the lack of antecedents, and the lack of additional archaeological evidence since its discovery. Others argue that it was merely a mnemonic list of symbols meant to guide incantations. Whether rongorongo is merely an example of trans-cultural diffusion or a true indigenous Austronesian writing system (and one of the few independent inventions of writing in human history) remains unknown.” ref
“In Southeast Asia, the first true writing systems of pre-modern Austronesian cultures were all derived from the Grantha and Pallava Brahmic scripts, all of which are abugidas from South India. Various forms of abugidas spread throughout Austronesian cultures in Southeast Asia as kingdoms became Indianized through early maritime trading. The oldest use of abugida scripts in Austronesian cultures are 4th-century stone inscriptions written in Cham, from Vietnam. There are numerous other Brahmic-derived writing systems among Southeast Asian Austronesians, usually specific to a certain ethnic group. Notable examples include Balinese, Batak, Baybayin, Buhid, Hanunó’o, Javanese, Kulitan, Lontara, Old Kawi, Rejang, Rencong, Sundanese, and Tagbanwa. They vary from having letters with rounded shapes to characters with sharp cuneiform-like angles, as a result of the difference in writing mediums, with the former being ideal for writing on soft leaves and the latter on bamboo panels. The use of the scripts ranged from mundane records to encoding esoteric knowledge on magico-religious rituals and folk medicine.” ref
“In regions that converted to Islam, abjads derived from the Arabic script started replacing the earlier abugidas at around the 13th century in Southeast Asia. Madagascar adopted the Arabic script in the 14th century. Abjads, however, have an even greater inherent problem with encoding Austronesian languages than abugidas, because Austronesian languages have more varied and salient vowels that the Arabic script usually cannot encode. As a result, the Austronesian adaptations such as the Jawi and the Pegon scripts have been modified with a system of diacritics that encode sounds, both vowels and consonants, native to Austronesian languages but absent in Semitic ones.” ref
“With the advent of the Colonial Era, almost all of these writing systems have been replaced with alphabets adapted from the Latin, as in the Hawaiian, Filipino, and Malay alphabet. However, several Formosan languages had been written in zhuyin, and Cia-Cia off Sulawesi has experimented with hangul. On Woleai and surrounding islands, a script was developed for the Woleaian language in the early 20th century. Approximately 20% of the script’s letterforms were borrowed from Latin letters; the remaining characters seem to have been derived from indigenous iconography. Despite this heavy Latin influence, the script was a syllabary.” ref
“Vanuatu has a unique tradition of sand drawing, in which images are created by a single continuous line drawn in the sand. It is believed to have functioned as a means of symbolic communication in pre-contact Island Melanesia, especially between travelers and ethnic groups that do not speak the same language. The sand drawings consist of around 300 different designs and seem to be shared across language groups. In the 1990s, elements of the drawings were adapted into a modern constructed script called Avoiuli by the Turaga indigenous movement on Pentecost Island.” ref
“Prehistoric peoples in China Haplogroup O1 in the Neolithic Liangzhu culture. Haplogroup O1a, frequently in Native Taiwanese. Austronesian-speaking have high-to-moderate frequencies of Haplogroup O1.” ref, ref
Austronesian Genetic studies
See also: Genetic studies on Filipinos
“Genetic studies have been conducted on Austronesian peoples. Haplogroup O1a, marked by the M119 SNP, is frequently detected in Native Taiwanese and people of the northern Philippines 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.” ref
“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.” ref
“Moodley et al. (2009) identified two distinct populations of the gut bacteria Helicobacter pylori that accompanied human migrations into Island Southeast Asia and Oceania, called hpSahul and hspMāori. The study sampled Native Australians, Native Taiwanese, highlanders in New Guinea, and Melanesians and Polynesians in New Caledonia, which were then compared with other H. pylori haplotypes from Europeans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and others. They found that hpSahul diverged from mainland Asian H. pylori populations approximately 31,000 to 37,000 years ago and have remained isolated for 23,000 to 32,000 years, confirming the Australo-Melanesian substratum in Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea. hspMāori, on the other hand, is a subpopulation of hpEastAsia, previously isolated from Polynesians (Māori, Tongans, Samoans) in New Zealand, and three individuals from the Philippines and Japan.” ref
“The study found hspMāori from Native Taiwanese, Melanesians, Polynesians, and two inhabitants from the Torres Strait Islands, all of which are Austronesian sources. As expected, hspMāori showed greatest genetic diversity in Taiwan, while all non-Taiwanese hspMāori populations belonged to a single lineage they called the “Pacific clade”. They also calculated the isolation-with-migration model (IMa), which showed that the divergence of the Pacific clade of hspMāori was unidirectional from Taiwan to the Pacific. This is consistent with the Out-of-Taiwan model of Austronesian expansion.” ref
“On 16 January 2020, the personal genomics company 23andMe added the category “Filipino & Austronesian” after customers with no known Filipino ancestors were getting false positives for 5% or more “Filipino” ancestry in their ancestry composition report (the proportion was as high as 75% in Samoa, 71% in Tonga, 68% in Guam, 18% in Hawaii, and 34% in Madagascar). The company’s scientists surmised that this was due to the shared Austronesian genetic heritage being incorrectly identified as Filipino ancestry.” ref
“A study about the ancestral composition of modern ethnic groups in the Philippines from 2021 similarly suggests that distinctive Basal-East Asian (East-Eurasian) ancestry originated in Mainland Southeast Asia at ~50,000 BCE and expanded through multiple migration waves southwards and northwards, respectively. Basal-East Asian ancestry as well as later Austroasiatic ancestry from Mainland Southeast Asia, arrived into the Philippines prior to the Austronesian expansion. Austronesian speakers themselves are suggested to have arrived in Taiwan and the northern Philippines between 10,000 to 7,000 years ago from coastal Fujian. The authors concluded that the Austronesian expansion into Island Southeast Asia and Polynesia was outgoing from the Philippines rather than Taiwan and that modern Austronesian-speaking people mostly have ancestry from the earliest Basal-East Asians, Austroasiatic migrants from Mainland Southeast Asia, and Austronesian-speaking seafarers from the Philippines.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
“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.” ref
Pre-Columbian contact with the Americas
“A 2013 genetic study suggested the possibility of contact between Ecuador and East Asia, that would have happened no earlier than 6,000 years ago (4000 BCE) via either a trans-oceanic or a late-stage coastal migration that did not leave genetic imprints in North America. Further research did not support this but was rather “a case of a rare founding lineage that has been lost elsewhere by drift.” ref
“Archaeologist Emilio Estrada and co-workers wrote that pottery which was associated with the Valdivia culture of coastal Ecuador and dated to 3000–1500 BCE exhibited similarities to pottery which was produced during the Jōmon period in Japan, arguing that contact between the two cultures might explain the similarities. Chronological and other problems have led most archaeologists to dismiss this idea as implausible. The suggestion has been made that the resemblances (which are not complete) are simply due to the limited number of designs possible when incising clay.” ref
“Alaskan anthropologist Nancy Yaw Davis claims that the Zuni people of New Mexico exhibit linguistic and cultural similarities to the Japanese. The Zuni language is a linguistic isolate, and Davis contends that the culture appears to differ from that of the surrounding natives in terms of blood type, endemic disease, and religion. Davis speculates that Buddhist priests or restless peasants from Japan may have crossed the Pacific in the 13th century, traveled to the American Southwest, and influenced Zuni society.” ref
“In the 1890s, lawyer and politician James Wickersham argued that pre-Columbian contact between Japanese sailors and Native Americans was highly probable, given that from the early 17th century to the mid-19th century several dozen Japanese ships are known to have been carried from Asia to North America along the powerful Kuroshio Currents. Japanese ships landed at places between the Aleutian Islands in the north and Mexico in the south, carrying a total of 293 people in the 23 cases where head-counts were given in historical records. In most cases, the Japanese sailors gradually made their way home on merchant vessels.” ref
“In 1834, a dismasted, rudderless Japanese ship was wrecked near Cape Flattery in the Pacific Northwest. Three survivors of the ship were enslaved by Makahs for a period before being rescued by members of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Another Japanese ship went ashore in about 1850 near the mouth of the Columbia River, Wickersham writes, and the sailors were assimilated into the local Native American population. While admitting there is no definitive proof of pre-Columbian contact between Japanese and North Americans, Wickersham thought it implausible that such contacts as outlined above would have started only after Europeans arrived in North America and began documenting them.” ref
“A genomic analysis in 2020 showed Austronesian contact with South America around 1150–1200 CE, the earliest one being between Fatu Hiva and Colombia.” ref
“Between 2007 and 2009, geneticist Erik Thorsby and colleagues published two studies in Tissue Antigens that offer evidence of an Amerindian genetic contribution to human populations on Easter Island, determining that it was probably introduced before European discovery of the island. In 2014, geneticist Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen published a study in Current Biology that found human genetic evidence of contact between the populations of Easter Island and South America, dating to approximately 600 years ago (i.e. 1400 CE ± 100 years). In 2017, a comprehensive genomes study found “no Native American admixture in pre- and post-European-contact individuals.” ref
“Two skulls suggested to belong to “Botocudo” people (a term used to refer to Native Americans who live in the interior of Brazil that speak Macro-Jê languages), were found in research published in 2013 to have been members of mtDNA haplogroup B4a1a1, which is normally found only among Polynesians and other subgroups of Austronesians. This was based on an analysis of 14 skulls. Two belonged to B4a1a1, while twelve belonged to subclades of mtDNA haplogroup C1 (common among Native Americans). The research team examined various scenarios, none of which they could say for certain were correct.” ref
“They dismissed a scenario of direct contact in prehistory between Polynesia and Brazil as “too unlikely to be seriously entertained.” While B4a1a1 is also found among the Malagasy people of Madagascar (which experienced significant Austronesian settlement in prehistory), the authors described as “fanciful” suggestions that B4a1a1 among the Botocudo resulted from the African slave trade (which included Madagascar). A later review paper of Polynesian history suggested that it was “more likely that these are the skulls of two people who died in Polynesia sometime early in the period of European voyaging, and whose graves were robbed by later visitors, and then mistakenly grouped in collections with the remains of Native Americans.” ref
“In 2020, a study in Nature found that populations in the Mangareva, Marquesas, and Palliser islands and Easter Island had genetic admixture from indigenous populations of South America, with the DNA of contemporary populations of Zenú people from the Pacific coast of Colombia being the closest match. The authors suggest that the genetic signatures were probably the result of a single ancient contact. They proposed that an initial admixture event between indigenous South Americans and Polynesians occurred in eastern Polynesia between 1150 and 1230 CE, with later admixture in Easter Island around 1380 CE, but suggested other possible contact scenarios—for example, Polynesian voyages to South America followed by Polynesian people’s returning to Polynesia with South American people, or carrying South American genetic heritage. Several scholars uninvolved in the study suggested that a contact event in South America was more likely. Furher genetic analysis on Easter Island indigenous population showed about 10% of the genome to be of Native American origin.” ref
“The sweet potato, a food crop native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia by the time European explorers first reached the Pacific.” ref
Plant genetics
“The genetics of several plant species has also been used to support pre-Columbian contact via the Pacific. For example, there is a genetically distinct sub-population of coconuts on the western coast of South America. This has been suggested to be evidence of introduction by Austronesian seafarers.” ref
Sweet potato
See also: Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia
“The sweet potato, a food crop native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia by the time European explorers first reached the Pacific. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated to 1000 CE in the Cook Islands. Current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia c. 700 CE and spread across Polynesia from there. It has been suggested that it was brought by Polynesians who had traveled across the Pacific to South America and back, or that South Americans brought it to Polynesia. It is also possible that the plant floated across the ocean after being discarded from the cargo of a boat. According to the “tripartite hypothesis”, phylogenetic analysis supports at least two separate introductions of sweet potatoes from South America into Polynesia, including one before and one after European contact. However other scholars assert that the sweet potato arrived in Polynesia some 100,000 years ago, long before humans ventured to this part of the world.” ref
“Dutch linguists and specialists in Amerindian languages Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken have suggested that the word for sweet potato is shared by Polynesian languages and languages of South America. Proto-Polynesian *kumala (compare Easter Island kumara, Hawaiian ʻuala, Māori kūmara; even though a proto-form is reconstructed above, apparent cognates outside Eastern Polynesian are either definitely borrowed from Eastern Polynesian languages or irregular, calling Proto-Polynesian status and age into question) may be connected with dialectal Quechua and Aymara k’umar ~ k’umara; most Quechua dialects actually use apichu instead, but comal was attested at extinct Cañari language on the coast of what is now Ecuador in 1582.” ref
“Adelaar and Muysken assert that the similarity in the word for sweet potato “constitutes near proof of incidental contact between inhabitants of the Andean region and the South Pacific.” The authors argue that the presence of the word for sweet potato suggests sporadic contact between Polynesia and South America, but not necessarily migrations.” ref
Ageratum conyzoides
“Ageratum conyzoides, also known as billygoat-weed, chick weed, goatweed, or whiteweed, is native to the tropical Americas, and was found in Hawaii by William Hillebrand in 1888 who considered it to have grown there before Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778. A legitimate native name (meie parari or mei rore) and established native medicinal usage and use as a scent and in leis have been offered as support for the pre-Cookian age.” ref
Turmeric
“Turmeric (Curcuma longa) originated in Asia, and there is linguistic and circumstantial evidence of the spread and use of turmeric by the Austronesian peoples into Oceania and Madagascar. Günter Tessmann in 1930 (300 years after European contact) reported that a species of Curcuma was grown by the Amahuaca tribe to the east of the Upper Ucayali River in Peru and was a dye-plant used for the painting of the body, with the nearby Witoto people using it as face paint in their ceremonial dances. David Sopher noted in 1950 that “the evidence for a pre-European, transpacific introduction of the plant by man seems very strong indeed.” ref
“In December 2007, several human skulls were found in a museum in Concepción, Chile. These skulls originated on Mocha Island, an island which is located just off the coast of Chile on the Pacific Ocean, formerly inhabited by the Mapuche. Craniometric analysis of the skulls, according to Lisa Matisoo-Smith of the University of Otago and José Miguel Ramírez Aliaga of the Universidad de Valparaíso, suggests that the skulls have “Polynesian features” – such as a pentagonal shape when they are viewed from behind, and rocker jaws.” ref
“Rocker jaws have also been found at an excavation led José Miguel Ramírez in the coastal locality of Tunquén, Central Chile. The site of excavation corresponds to an area with pre-Hispanic tombs and shell middens (Spanish: conchal). A global review of rocker jaws among different populations show that while rocker jaws are not unique to Polynesians “[t]he rarity of rocker jaw in South American natives supports” the view of “Polynesian voyagers who ventured to the west coast of South America.” ref
Araucanian chickens
“In 2007, evidence emerged which suggested the possibility of pre-Columbian contact between the Mapuche people (Araucanians) of south-central Chile and Polynesians. Bones of Araucana chickens found at El Arenal site in the Arauco Peninsula, an area inhabited by Mapuche, support a pre-Columbian introduction of landraces from the South Pacific islands to South America. The bones found in Chile were radiocarbon-dated to between 1304 and 1424, before the arrival of the Spanish. Chicken DNA sequences were matched to those of chickens in American Samoa and Tonga, and found to be dissimilar to those of European chickens.” ref
“However, this finding was challenged by a 2008 study which questioned its methodology and concluded that its conclusion is flawed, although the theory it posits may still be possible. Another study in 2014 reinforced that dismissal, and posited the crucial flaw in the initial research: “The analysis of ancient and modern specimens reveals a unique Polynesian genetic signature” and that “a previously reported connection between pre-European South America and Polynesian chickens most likely resulted from contamination with modern DNA, and that this issue is likely to confound ancient DNA studies involving haplogroup E chicken sequences” ref
“However, in a 2013 study, the original authors extended and elaborated their findings, concluding:
“This comprehensive approach demonstrates that the examination of modern chicken DNA sequences does not contribute to our understanding of the origins of Chile’s earliest chickens. Interpretations based on poorly sourced and documented modern chicken populations, divorced from the archeological and historical evidence, do not withstand scrutiny. Instead, this expanded account will confirm the pre-Columbian age of the El Arenal remains and lend support to our original hypothesis that their appearance in South America is most likely due to Polynesian contact with the Americas in prehistory.” ref
“A 2019 study of South American chickens “revealed an unknown genetic component that is mostly present in the Easter Island population that is also present in local chicken populations from the South American Pacific fringe”. The Easter Island chicken’s “genetic proximity with the SA continental gamefowl can be explained by the fact that both populations were not crossed with cosmopolitan breeds and therefore remain closer to the ancestral population that originated them. ” The genetic proximity might also “be indicative of a common origin of these two populations.” ref
California canoes
“Researchers including Kathryn Klar and Terry Jones have proposed a theory of contact between Hawaiians and the Chumash people of Southern California between 400 and 800 CE. The sewn-plank canoes crafted by the Chumash and neighboring Tongva are unique among the indigenous peoples of North America, but similar in design to larger canoes used by Polynesians and Melanesians for deep-sea voyages. Tomolo’o, the Chumash word for such a craft, may derive from tumulaʻau/kumulaʻau, the Hawaiian term for the logs from which shipwrights carve planks to be sewn into canoes. The analogous Tongva term, tii’at, is unrelated. If it occurred, this contact left no genetic legacy in California or Hawaii. This theory has attracted limited media attention within California, but most archaeologists of the Tongva and Chumash cultures reject it on the grounds that the independent development of the sewn-plank canoe over several centuries is well-represented in the material record.” ref
Clava hand-club and words for axes
“Archaeological artefacts known as clava hand-clubs found in Araucanía and nearby areas of Argentina have a strong resemblance to the mere okewa found in New Zealand. The clava hand-clubs are also mentioned in the Spanish chronicles dating to the Conquest of Chile. According to Grete Mostny, clava hand-clubs “appear to have arrived to the west coast of South America from the Pacific”. Polynesian clubs from Chatham Islands are reportedly the most similar to those of Chile. The clava hand-club is one of various Polynesian-like Mapuche artifacts known.” ref
“Possible linguistic evidence for Austronesian-American contact is found in words for axes. On Easter Island, the word for a stone axe is toki; among the New Zealand Maori, the word toki denotes an adze. Similar words are found in the Americas: In the Mapuche language of Chile and Argentina, the word for a stone axe is toki; and further afield in Colombia, the Yurumanguí word for an axe is totoki.” ref
“Stone adzes often had ceremonial value and were worn by Maori chiefs. The Mapuche word toki may also mean “chief” and thus may be related to the Quechua word toqe (“militia chief”) and the Aymara word toqueni (“person of great judgement”). In the view of Moulian et al. (2015) the possible South American links complicate matters regarding the meaning of the word toki because they are suggestive of Polynesian contact.” ref
Population Y
“A 2015 study found some Indigenous American groups, particularly those in the Amazon, carry a small admixture (around 1-2% of the genome) related to groups in Southeast Asia and Australasia like Andamanese peoples, Indigenous Australians, Papuans and the Mamanwa people of the Philippines. This ancestry component has been dubbed “Population Y”. Some authors have suggested that this reflects a trans-Pacific migration, but scholars have suggested that this more likely reflects genetic heterogeneity in the initial founding population of Native Americans present in Beringia, only some of which carried the “Population Y” ancestry. It has also been noted that a 40,000 year old individual from Tianyuan Cave in northern China also carries this ancestry, making it more likely that this ancestry was the result of contact in Eurasia, prior to the arrival of the ancestors of Native Americans in Beringia.” ref
Austronesian Madagascar
“Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country comprising the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world’s fourth largest island, the second-largest island country and the 46th largest country in the world. Madagascar was first permanently settled during or before the mid-first millennium AD by Austronesian peoples, presumably arriving on outrigger canoes from present-day Indonesia. These were joined around the ninth century AD by Bantu groups crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. Consequently, there are 18 or more classified peoples of Madagascar, the most numerous being the Merina of the central highlands.” ref
“Traditionally, archaeologists have estimated that the earliest settlers arrived in successive waves in outrigger canoes from South Borneo, possibly throughout the period between 350 BCE and 550 CE, while others are cautious about dates earlier than CE 250. In either case, these dates make Madagascar one of the most recent major landmasses on Earth to be settled by humans, predating the settlement of Iceland and New Zealand. It is proposed that Ma’anyan people were brought as laborers and slaves by Javan and Sumatran–Malays in their trading fleets to Madagascar. Dates of settlement of the island earlier than the mid-first millennium CE are not strongly supported. However, there is scattered evidence for much earlier human visits and presence. (See History of Madagascar). Archaeological finds such as cut marks on bones found in the northwest and stone tools in the northeast indicate that Madagascar was visited by foragers around 2000 BCE.” ref
“Upon arrival, early settlers practiced slash-and-burn agriculture to clear the coastal rainforests for cultivation. The first settlers encountered Madagascar’s abundance of megafauna, including 17 species of giant lemurs, the large flightless elephant birds (including possibly the largest bird to ever exist, Aepyornis maximus), the giant fossa, and several species of Malagasy hippopotamus, which have since become extinct because of hunting and habitat destruction. By 600 CE, groups of these early settlers had begun clearing the forests of the central highlands.” ref
“Arab traders first reached the island between the 7th and 9th centuries. A wave of Bantu-speaking migrants from southeastern Africa arrived around the year 1000. Around this time, zebu from South India were first brought, intermingling with sanga found in East Africa. Irrigated paddy fields were developed in the central highland Betsileo Kingdom and were extended with terraced paddies throughout the neighboring Kingdom of Imerina a century later. The rising intensity of land cultivation and the ever-increasing demand for zebu pasturage had largely transformed the central highlands from a forest ecosystem to grassland by the 17th century.” ref
“The oral histories of the Merina people, who arrived in the central highlands between 600 and 1,000 years ago, describe encountering an established population they called the Vazimba. Probably the descendants of an earlier and less technologically advanced Austronesian settlement wave, the Vazimba were assimilated or expelled from the highlands by the Merina kings Andriamanelo, Ralambo, and Andrianjaka in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Today, the spirits of the Vazimba are revered as tompontany (ancestral masters of the land) by many traditional Malagasy communities.” ref
I surmise the first proto-king originates in the Balkans Varna culture’s Bulgarian cemetery dating to around 6,500 years old. Moreover, while 65 out of the 320 burials held 3100 gold objects but only five burials: 1, 4, 36, 41, and 43 comprise over 80% of the gold found. Yet of these five burials only grave 43 shown here contained an actual skeletal while the others are symbolic faces. These metaphorical burial faces, to me, both represent the clay head around 6,500 years old, found submerged in Varna Lake from the Hamangia Culture, of which I think could relate to the emergence of the first male gods.
“The oldest gold treasure in the world, belonging to the Varna culture, was discovered in the Varna Necropolis and dates to 6,600-6,200 years ago. Varna is the third-largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Situated strategically in the Gulf of Varna, the city has been a major economic, social and cultural center for almost three millennia. Varna, historically known as Odessos (Ancient Greek: Ὀδησσός), grew from a Thracian seaside settlement to a major seaport on the Black Sea.” ref, ref
“The Varna culture belongs to the later Neolithic of northeastern Bulgaria, is contemporary and closely related with Gumelnița in southern Romania, often considered as local variants. It is characterized by polychrome pottery and rich cemeteries, the most famous of which are Varna Necropolis, the eponymous site, and the Durankulak complex, which comprises the largest prehistoric cemetery in southeastern Europe.” ref
“The culture had sophisticated religious beliefs about afterlife and developed hierarchical status differences: it constitutes the oldest known burial evidence of an elite male. The end of the fifth millennium BC is the time that Marija Gimbutas, founder of the Kurgan hypothesis claims the transition to male dominance began in Europe. The high status male was buried with remarkable amounts of gold, held a war axe or mace and wore a gold penis sheath. The bull-shaped gold platelets perhaps also venerated virility, instinctive force, and warfare. Gimbutas holds that the artifacts were made largely by local craftspeople.” ref
“Burials at Varna have some of the world’s oldest gold jewelry. There are crouched and extended inhumations. Some graves do not contain a skeleton, but grave gifts (cenotaphs). The symbolic (empty) graves are the richest in gold artifacts. Around 3000 gold artifacts were found, with a weight of approximately 6 kilograms. Grave 43 contained more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for that epoch. Three symbolic graves contained masks of unfired clay. The weight and the number of gold finds in the Varna cemetery exceeds by several times the combined weight and number of all of the gold artifacts found in all excavated sites of the same millenium, 5000-4000 BC, from all over the world, including Mesopotamia and Egypt”.” ref
“Varna Culture Decline: The discontinuity of the Varna, Karanovo, Vinča and Lengyel cultures in their main territories and the large scale population shifts to the north and northwest are indirect evidence of a catastrophe of such proportions that cannot be explained by possible climatic change, desertification, or epidemics. Direct evidence of the incursion of horse-ridingwarriors is found, not only in single burials of males under barrows, but in the emergence of a whole complex of Indo-European cultural traits.” ref
Copper Age migrations likely motivated to escape war/violence and climate caused problems brought waves of migration from Turkey and Iran as well as ideas or possibly people as well from the Balkans to north Israel as well small parts of Jordan around 6,500–5,800 years ago.
“The Funnel Beaker Culture – “First Farmers of Scandinavia” around 6,200-4,650 years ago marks the arrival of Megalithic structures in Scandinavia from western Europe. At graves, the people sacrificed ceramic vessels that contained food along with amber jewelry and flint-axes. Flint-axes and vessels were also deposed in streams and lakes near the farmlands, and virtually all Sweden’s 10,000 flint axes that have been found from this culture were probably sacrificed in water. Ancient DNA and the peopling of the British Isles – pattern and process of the Neolithic transition 6000 years ago.” ref
The first human-caused climate change, dramatically changed how nature works, such as the way plant and animal communities were structured on Earth around 6,000 years ago.
The first human migrations spread the first plague is believed to have contributed to the plunge of Europe’s settlements around. As well as the close contact between humans and animals and the accumulation of food, likely led to poorer sanitary conditions and an increased risk of pathogen around 6,000-5,000 years ago.
The first passage tomb thought to lead to the afterlife from Ireland, close to when people first began farming in the region that seems to mark a transition towards a time when religion played a greater role in people’s lives 5,800-5,500 years ago.
The first birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status 5,500-5,000 years ago. And more than 5,000 years ago a nomadic group of shepherds rode out of the steppes of eastern Europe to conquer the rest of the continent. The group, today is known as the Yamna or Kurgan/Pit Grave culture, brought with them an innovative new technology, wheeled carts, which enabled them to quickly occupy new lands.
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Elite Power Accumulation: Ancient Trade, Tokens, Writing, Wealth, Merchants, and Priest-Kings
Priest-King (at least by 6,000 to 5,000 they emerge)
“A sacred king, a monarch with prominent religious attributes. A theocrat, a sovereign high priest.” ref
“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE or 4,022-5,122 years ago; also known as Protoliterate period) is known to have had “Priest-Kings” and this period existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. The late Uruk period (34th to 32nd centuries) saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age; it has also been described as the “Protoliterate period.” ref
The cylinder seals of Susa I and Susa II in Iran near the border with southern Iraq had a very rich iconography, uniquely emphasizing scenes of everyday life, although there is also some kind of local potentate which P. Amiet sees as a ‘proto-royal figure,’ preceding the ‘priest-kings’ of Late Uruk. These cylinder seals, as well as bullae and clay tokens, indicate the rise of administration and of accounting techniques at Susa during the second half of the 4th millennium BCE. The Uruk period levels at Susa are called Susa I (c. 4000–3700 BCE) and Susa II (c. 3700–3100 BCE), during which the site became an urban settlement. Susa I saw the beginning of monumental architecture on the site, with the construction of a ‘High Terrace’, which was increased during Susa II to measure roughly 60 x 45 metres.” ref
“Mesopotamian king as Master of Animals on the Gebel el-Arak Knife, dated circa 3300-3200 BCE, Abydos, Egypt. This work of art suggests early Egypt-Mesopotamia relations, showing the influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt at an early date, and the state of Mesopotamian royal iconography during the Uruk period. A similar portrait of a probable Uruk King-Priest with a brimmed round hat and large beard, excavated in Uruk and dated to 3300 BCE.” ref
“The Uruk period provides the earliest signs of the existence of states in the Near East. The monumental architecture is more imposing than that of the preceding period; ‘Temple D’ of Eanna covers around 4600 m2—a substantial increase compared to the largest known temple of the Ubayd period, level VI of Eridu, which had an area of only 280 m2—and the Eanna complex’s other buildings cover a further 1000 m2, while the Ubayd temple of Eridu was a stand-alone structure. The change in size reflects a step-change in the ability of central authorities to mobilize human and material resources. Tombs also show a growing differentiation of wealth and thus an increasingly powerful elite, who sought to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population by obtaining prestige goods, through trade if possible, and by employing increasingly specialized artisans. The idea that the Uruk period saw the appearance of a true state, simultaneously with the appearance of the first cities (following Gordon Childe), is generally accepted in scholarship but has been criticized by some scholars, notably J.D. Forest who prefers to see the Empire of Akkad in the 24th century BCE as the first true state and considers Late Uruk to have known only “city-states” (which are not complete states in his view). Regardless, the institution of state-like political structures is concomitant with several other phenomena of the Uruk period.” ref
“What kind of political organization existed in the Uruk period is debated. No evidence supports the idea that this period saw the development of a kind of ‘proto-empire’ centered on Uruk, as has been proposed by Algaze and others. It is probably best to understand an organization in ‘city-states’ like those that existed in the 3rd millennium BCE. This seems to be corroborated by the existence of ‘civic seals’ in the Jemdet Nasr period, which bear symbols of the Sumerian cities of Uruk, Ur, Larsa, etc. The fact that these symbols appeared together might indicate a kind of league or confederation uniting the cities of southern Mesopotamia, perhaps for religious purposes, perhaps under the authority of one of them (Uruk?). It is clear that there were major changes in the political organization of society in this period. The nature of the powerholders is not easy to determine because they cannot be identified in the written sources and the archaeological evidence is not very informative: no palaces or other buildings for the exercise of power have been identified for sure and no monumental tomb for a ruler has been found either. Images on steles and cylinder-seals are a little more evocative. An important figure who clearly holds some kind of authority has long been noted: a bearded man with a headband who is usually depicted wearing a bell-shaped skirt or as ritually naked.” ref
“He is often represented as a warrior fighting human enemies or wild animals, e.g. in the ‘Stele of the Hunt’ found at Uruk, in which he defeats lions with his bow. He is also found in victory scenes accompanied by prisoners or structures. He also is shown leading cult activities, as on a vase from Uruk of the Jemdet Nasr period which shows him leading a procession towards a goddess, who is almost certainly Inanna. In other cases, he is shown feeding animals, which suggests the idea of the king as a shepherd, who gathers his people together, protects them, and looks after their needs, ensuring the prosperity of the kingdom. These motifs match the functions of the subsequent Sumerian kings: war-leader, chief priest, and builder. Scholars have proposed that this figure should be called the ‘Priest-King’. This ruler may be the person designated in Uruk III tablets by the title of en. He could represent a power of a monarchic type, like that would subsequently exist in Mesopotamia.” ref
“It is perhaps at the end of the Uruk period that the first signs of anthropomorphism of divinities that became the norm in subsequent periods emerge. The Uruk vase undoubtedly represents the goddess Inanna in human form. Additionally, real and fantastic animals were always present on seals, often as the principal subject of the scene. A very widespread motif is that of the ‘cycle’ representing a series of animals in a continuous line, exploiting the new possibilities offered by the cylinder seal. Sculpture followed the style and themes of seals. Small statues were made representing gods or ‘priest-kings.’ The artists of Uruk created many remarkable works, represented above all by the works in the Sammelfund (hoard) of level III of Eanna (Jemdet Nasr period). Some bas-reliefs are found on steles like the ‘Hunt stele’ or the great alabaster vase representing a scene of a man giving an offering to a goddess, undoubtedly Inanna. These works also foreground an authority figure who carries out military exploits and manages religious cults.” ref
The king as Priest and Seer
“Religious duties quite often are connected with the office of chieftain, who is also priest or seer and rainmaker—all in one. Correspondingly, in nontribal societies, cultic functions belong to the office of the king. In the 3rd dynasty of Uruk, Lugalzaggisi is described as king of the country, priest of the god Anu (the god of the heavens), and prophet of Nisaba (goddess of grasses and writing). When a division of functions evolved, the intrinsically royal priestly and other cultic functions were transferred to priests, seers, and other servants of the cult; the old concept of the king as priest, however, survived in some fashion for thousands of years. In Mesopotamia, the king was viewed as the cultic mediator between god and man. As head of all of the priests of the country, he had important cultic functions at the New Year’s festival. In critical situations, the king might issue an oracle of blessing; through him the land would be promised salvation, which was often accompanied by the words, “Fear not!” ref
“The Egyptian king was the chief priest of the land and the superior of all priests and other cult functionaries. In many images he is portrayed as presiding over the great festivals and bringing offerings to the gods. Later priests carried out their functions as his representative. The Persian king performed the sacrifice at the horse offering and was also the “guardian of the fire.” In all questions of religion he was the highest authority; he was also the most cultivated of the magicians. The king in Ugarit (in Canaan) also carried out priestly functions and as prophet was the receiver of revelations. Like other ancient Middle Eastern monarchs, the Hittite king was the chief priest. The relationship between sacred kingship and priestly cultic functions has extended over widespread geographic areas and historical eras: East Asia, China, Japan, India, Europe (among the Germanic and Scandinavian kings), Africa (in the great empires), and Madagascar. Sometimes the division of functions brought about a transfer of the royal title to those who carried out cultic functions.” ref
“In Africa from the earliest times, there was a type of king who was called lord of the earth; he originally combined political and cultic functions but, with changing times, retained only the cultic ones. The strict separation of the priestly office from that of the king, as in India, where king and priest belong to different castes—Kshatriya and Brahman, respectively—is an unusual exception, however. The king may be the recipient of a direct revelation of the will of a god. Thus, in Egypt, the pharaoh received a divine oracle through dreams in the temple (a practice known as incubation). In Mesopotamia the duty of the king to ascertain the will of the gods was more strongly emphasized; a directive of the gods could result from omens, dreams, or reading the entrails of offerings. All major undertakings of the king were dependent on directives of the god, who was to be consulted in advance. A direct divine revelation to a king is related in the Hebrew Bible in I Kings, chapter 3, which tells of a dream of the 10th-century-BC Israelite Solomon in which he received the promise of the gift of wisdom. Likewise in Genesis, chapter 41, Yahweh, god of the Hebrews, gives the pharaoh a directive in a dream.” ref
“Although a pharaonic cult occasionally existed in Egypt, the ruler cult differs entirely from sacred kingship because the former came into being from political impulses. The ruler cult, generally developed in a country or empire with many peoples and many religions, was one of the ruler’s means of power. Syncretism, the fusing of various beliefs and practices, often succeeded in bringing together completely different religious and nonreligious motives. Alexander the Great (who established an empire of many peoples and religions), for example, revealed a conscious effort at continuity with the Egyptian kingdom, inasmuch as the oracle of the Egyptian god Amon at Sīwah designated him as the son of Amon and thus the successor of the pharaohs. Among the diadochoi (successors to Alexander) of the first generation, the ruler cult remained limited, but, under Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (reigned 285–246 BCE), it became an established institution that was connected with the deified Alexander.” ref “When the ruler cult was carried over to Rome, the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BCE–CE 14) allowed it to be practiced only in the east in connection with the worship of the goddess Roma—though he allowed it to be pursued with fewer restrictions in the newly conquered western provinces; the adaptation of honouring the divine Caesar (or emperor of Rome) soon became, however, an important expression of the unity of the empire. Serious resistance to the imperial cult was encountered only among the two radical monotheistic religions: Judaism (e.g., against Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria in the mid-2nd century BCE) and Christianity. The Hellenistic and Roman ruler cults never generated a strong religious movement. The sacrifices brought to the king (emperor) date to the ancient custom of bringing tribute to the king (or chief). From this practice, the custom of bringing offerings to the deceased king developed.” refThe king as the Center of Ruler Cults
It is hierarchy oppression from the earliest proto-kings (powerful chieftains?).
Continuing Iconography of Power: smiting enemies
(List of matrilineal or matrilocal societies) “Matrilineal means kinship is passed down through the maternal line, the mother’s lineage, which can involve the inheritance of property and titles.” ref, ref
Chiefdoms are powers that are often believed to mobilize due to surplus labor, food, and prestige items. However, I see it as a cultural package that started with hunter-gather/fisher-foragers in west Siberia with the switch from a Matrilineal society to a patrilineal society from 8,000 to 7,000 years ago and from there spread this new war and powerful male thinking, but some Matrilineal societies changed to the war and power modal as well but kept being female-centered. I often talk as if they were completely wiped out by male clans, but not all were, and some became as horrible as male clans. One such major transfer of such ideas, which I think relates to the Tlingit (Matrilineal Na-Dene language connected to patrilineal Yeniseian languages such as the Ket People of Siberia with mostly to Y-DNA haplogroup Q-M242 linking Tlingit and South America) of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America, were a Slaveholding, matrilineal clan chiefdom. And like 90% of South America shares their DNA and also, to me, likely somewhat influenced all Mesoamerican cultures and Moundbuilding cultures that had “Big Men/Big Women” pre/proto-chiefdoms, chiefdoms, and then clan monarchs: Kings/Empresses.
Hopewell Mound Builder culture (200 BCE–500 CE)
“The Hopewell inherited from their Adena Mound Building culture (500 BCE–100 CE) forebears an incipient social stratification.” ref
“These cultures likely accorded certain families a special place of privilege. Some scholars suggest that these societies were marked by the emergence of “big-men/women”, leaders whose influence depended on their skill at persuasion in important matters such as trade and religion. They also perhaps augmented their influence by cultivating reciprocal obligations with other important community members. The emergence of “big-men/women” was a step toward the development of these societies into highly structured and stratified chiefdoms.” ref
On the Significance of Matrilineal Chiefship
” UNDER the term chiefship as here used we include only that civil office in which the incumbent is the head of a family and has under his rule a band of families, a tribe, or a nation. Such chiefs are, for example, the band chiefs of the north and east Algonkian, the chiefs of the households of the Nootka, of the households or matrilineal “families” of the Iroquois; the tribal head chiefs of the Nootka, Coast, and Delt Salish, Tsimshian, etc., and the kings of the Natchez, man African states, modern European nations, etc. The first essential fact we have to note about this office is that universally it is the prerogative of an adult male. Occasionally, it is held by a child, the functions of pending the child chief’s maturity, being exercise warmer” or regent. Occasionally also, which is more the office is held by a female. A child holds office those peoples with whom the chiefship has become hereditary, and the heir presumptive may not be A woman holds office only where the office is strictly a given family, and when no eligible male heir is near enough in blood to be considered acceptable in a closely related female who can be expected soon son and so perpetuate the chiefship through the descent.” ref
“An example of the type of situation which gave rise to the installation of queens even among so-called “primitive” folk may
well be noted at length at this point, in part because of certain remarkable features which will interest us more in a moment. In the year 1660 the Piscottoways (Ganawagas, Conoys) of Maryland applied to the governor of the province for ratification of their choice of an “emperor,” and to his inquiry as to their customs relative to succession they replied that the office went, on the death of an incumbent, to his brother, “and for want of such, to a sister’s son,” and stated that in such wise the office had descended from their first emperor-who had been some one come to rule over them from the eastern Shore of Maryland-for thirteen generations, without interruption, until the time of the emperor Kittamaqund who preceded the emperor just deceased.” ref
“Kittamaqund had died without having brother or sister, (and, presum without a sister’s son) to succeed him, and took it upon him, therefore, to appoint his daughter to be “queen.” The perejected this appointment, however, as contrary to tribal custom and chose as emperor, Weghucasso, who was descended “from of the brothers, which one, they knew not, of the first emperor “And Weghucasso at his death appointed to be king some descendant of one of the first kings.” This appointee was Jan Wizous, which in their language signifies a true king [they] would not suffer us to call him Towzin, which is the they give to the sons of their kings who by their custom ar to succeed in rule, but his brothers, or the sons of his sisters.” To avoid possible misconceptions it is perhaps at this point to consider a practice prevailing among
Kwakiutl of British Columbia.” ref
“For them Boas patrilineal inheritance is the rule for certain circumstances the annual or winter ceremonies of the secret societies, such as that of master-of-ceremonies, those of caretaker of the drum, of the batons, of the eagle-down, etc. Civil privileges also are sometimes so inherited but much the larger number of these are given by a father to his son-in-law expressly in trust for the donor’s grandson. Hill-Tout has noted for the not-distant Siciatl that the chiefship, a civil “privilege” on the Northwest Coast, maybe so inherited, or bestowed; regularly it goes to the eldest son of a chief but where there is no son the son-in-law will succeed,5 as a consequence of which in the third generation the reigning chief will be the grandson of the chief whose son-in-law succeeded, the chiefship, thereby descending in the direct line of succession just as if the daughter herself had actually succeeded to the office and exercised its functions. It has been suggested that the practice of the southern Kwakiutl indicates an adaptation of a former patrilineal inheritance to concepts diffused from the tribes farther up the coast with whom all privileges and property including the privilege of chiefship descend matrilineally.” ref
“However, it has also been pointed out that the kinship terms of the Kwakiutl correspond to a loose organization in which relationship is reckoned bilaterally, as is the case with the closely related Nootka. For the Nootka Sapir has shown that privileges are inherited through both the male and female lines, with a preference for the male line, the inheritance of privileges being in a measure conditioned by the fact that privileges are not only personally owned but also definitely associated with the local group among whom they originate. More data, especially on the inheritance of the particular of chiefship, is desirable, but it seems evident that the Kwa represent simply a people reckoning bilaterally, but who, like peoples whose developing institution of chiefship has not be affected by the influence of a matrilineal kinship reckoning, the develop a patrilineal inheritance of office.” ref
“Rather than an indication of influences from the northern tribes and an addition to the idea of a matrilineal reckoning, the peculiar Kwa inheritance practice we have noted is simply an indication of Kwakiutl concern that privileges, in general, should descend patrilineally. And, in case a chief only has daughters, the Kw, like the Society, with the son-in-law arrangement, are able to the chiefship in the direct line of descent and, at the same, avoid having a woman chief or queen. We may now confine ourselves to the actual chiefship. Typically, though not always, it is cor the mother-sib. Despite the fact that with many whom the sib, and, specifically, the mother-sib, is a institution-such as the Iroquois, the Haida, etc.-this does not include the concept of even a fictitious kin its members, it yet remains obvious that sib member
patrilineally or matrilineally reckoned, is acquired the blood relationship to a father or a mother member obvious, and is perhaps superfluous to observe, also, whether transmitted matrilineally or patrilineally inherited by virtue of actual blood relationship cumbent of the office.” ref
“But a matrilineal reckoning for an which is universally the prerogative of a male and his male cessors appears as a noteworthy phenomenon, particularly of the fact that different types of inheritance reckonings for ent prerogatives, privileges, things, relationships, etc. contained within the same cultural considered in connection with the processes by which chiefship undoubtedly evolved. Definitely, instituted chiefship is itself an office which cannot be placed too far back in social evolution; and the concept and practice of the inheritance of the office exclusively within some one family of the group of families concerned must be placed reltively later, in that obviously intermediary developments remain on record as the existing practice of many peoples-though very definite records of this gradual evolution for any one people are hardly available. This evolution of the concept of ban and higher chiefships as hereditary within a given family and even as with many peoples, through an inflexible rule of picture took place of course concurrently with the of concepts of the inheritance of other things such ship, real, and personal property, songs, names, other office, etc.” ref
The Real Mound Builders of North America: matrilineal chiefdom
Mississippian Chiefdoms
“Although groups speaking several different languages produced Mississippian societies, they shared many cultural traits. The most spectacular features of these societies were the temple- and burial-mound centers they constructed. The largest such site is at Cahokia in what is now Collinsville, Illinois, just east of St. Louis, Missouri; the village area extended for six miles along the Illinois River, contained eighty-five temple and burial mounds, and sustained a population perhaps as high as seventy-five thousand persons. Being master farmers allowed the Mississippians to develop such large societies, although most chiefdoms were much smaller than Cahokia. All Mississippian sites utilized maize or corn as a primary staple and supplemented it with other plants and meats.” ref
“Chiefdoms. Mississippian societies are called chiefdoms because they were governed by small groups of elites or even by a single individual, called a paramount chief. Commoners and outlying satellite villages paid tributes of corn, deer meat, animal skins, and prestige items to the principal town. In some cases new towns joined a chiefdom by military conquest. The labor of commoners built the mounds and suggests that elites held the power to assemble large bodies of people to do their bidding. Leadership passed through hereditary lines in at least some of these chiefdoms, but high status was most likely based upon command of spiritual forces. The general population recognized the large amounts of power that leaders manipulated and honored them with positions of prestige. Matrilineal kinship characterized Mississippian culture, and female paramount chiefs greeted Spanish expeditions, such as the “Lady of Cofitachequi” from the chiefdom of Cofitachequi in present-day South Carolina who welcomed Hernando de Soto in the 1540s.” ref
“Decline. Mississippian chiefdoms still existed in the mid 1500s when de Soto and others traveled through the Southeast, but just a century later, the mound sites were abandoned. Because of this timing, scholars looked to the de Soto campaign as the cause of this phenomenon. It is probable that some of de Soto’s men, or maybe the horses and pigs that accompanied them, carried diseases to which the Indians had no immunity. Pandemics may have wiped the Mississippians from the map, replacing them with refugee groups of survivors who banded together for protection but lacked the numbers to maintain the mounds. Many Mississippian sites became vacant before European contact, however, which suggests that local reasons contributed to abandonment. Perhaps Mississippians overused their resources, depleting the soil for corn and cutting down trees necessary for their buildings and fires. Possibly, climatic changes resulted in drought or a shorter growing season, thus reducing the food supply. Political conflict and war between chiefdoms could have weakened some to the point of being unsustainable. Likely, all of the above factors contributed to the abandonment of the mound sites. The Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles descended from the Mississippian peoples and held many traits in common with their ancestors.” ref
“Although the first people entered what is now the Mississippi about 12,000 years ago, the earliest major phase of earthen mound construction in this area did not begin until some 2100 years ago. Mounds continued to be built sporadically for another 1800 years, or until around 1700 CE. Archeologists, the scientist who study the evidence of past human lifeways, classify moundbuilding Indians of the Southeast into three major chronological/cultural divisions: the Archaic, the Woodland, and the Mississippian traditions. To date, no mounds of the Archaic period (7000 to 1000 BCE) have been positively identified in Mississippi; the mounds described herein all date to the last two cultural periods.” ref
“The Middle Woodland period (100 BCE to 200 CE) was the first era of widespread mound construction in Mississippi. Middle Woodland peoples were primarily hunters and gatherers who occupied semipermanent or permanent settlements. Some mounds of this period were built to bury important members of local tribal groups. These burial mounds were rounded, dome-shaped structures that generally range from about three to 18 feet high, with diameters from 50 to 100 feet. Distinctive artifacts obtained through long-distance trade were sometimes placed with those buried in the mounds. The construction of burial mounds declined after the Middle Woodland, and only a few were built during the Late Woodland period (circa 400 to 1000 CE). Woodland burial mounds can be visited at the Boyd, Bynum, and Pharr sites and at Chewalla Lake in Holy Springs National Forest. (The Chewalla Mound is not included in this itinerary because it is not listed in the National Register of Historic Places).” ref
“The Mississippian period (1000 to 1700 CE) saw a resurgence of mound building across much of the southeastern United States. Most Mississippian mounds are rectangular, flat-topped earthen platforms upon which temples or residences of chiefs were erected. These buildings were constructed of wooden posts covered with mud plaster and had thatched roofs. Mississippian platform mounds range in height from eight to almost 60 feet and are from 60 to as much as 770 feet in width at the base. Mississippian period mounds can be seen at the Winterville, Jaketown, Pocahontas, Emerald, Grand Village, Owl Creek, and Bear Creek sites.” ref
“Mississippian period mound sites mark centers of social and political authority. They are indicators of a way of life more complex than that of the Woodland and earlier periods. In contrast to the relatively simple, egalitarian tribal organization of most societies of the Woodland period, regional Mississippian populations were typically organized into chiefdoms–territorial groups with hereditary, elite leadership classes. Across the Southeast, the chiefdom system of political organization arose as a means of managing increased social complexity caused by steady population growth. This population growth was sustained by agriculture (corn, beans, and squash)–a revolutionary new means of subsistence that became an economic mainstay during the Mississippian period.” ref
“Mound construction was once again in decline by the time the first Europeans came to this region in the 1500s. Shortly thereafter, epidemic diseases introduced by early European explorers decimated native populations across the Southeast, causing catastrophic societal disruption. As a result, by the time sustained contact with European colonists began about 1700 CE, the long tradition of mound building had nearly ended.” ref
Ancient Colombian chiefdoms
“Chiefdoms in Central America were small groups who developed unique art forms in order to distinguish themselves and compete with one another. c. 500 B.C.E.–1600 C.E.” ref
Tribe versus Chiefdom in Lower Central America
“Abstract: It has commonly been argued that chiefdoms were the dominant form of prehispanic political organization in Lower Central America. Reexamination of the data base, however, reveals that tribal forms of organization were also present in Lower Central America at the time of Spanish contact and before. The salient characteristics of both tribes and chiefdoms are discussed, and criteria for identifying tribes and chiefdoms in the archaeological record are outlined. Data from the Central Provinces of Panama and the Gulf of Nicoya are then examined in light of these criteria. We argue that while a chiefdom form of organization prevailed in Panama, the Gulf of Nicoya was occupied by tribal groups immediately prior to contact with the Spanish.” ref
“The customs and social systems of South American peoples are closely and naturally related to the environments in which they live. These environmental relationships are mediated by the systems of technology that the people use to exploit their resources. Four basic types of social and cultural organization of South American peoples emerge from the archaeological and historical records: (1) central Andean irrigation civilizations, (2) chiefdoms of the northern Andes and the circum-Caribbean, (3) tropical-forest farming villages, and (4) nomadic hunters and gatherers. Each type developed in its own fashion during thousands of years, and since the 16th century each has made a distinctive adjustment to the impact of European civilization. The original migrants to the New World had no knowledge of the domestication of plants or animals, with the exception of dogs, which were used in hunting. Recent discoveries in Mexico indicate that agriculture was independently discovered in the New World in roughly the same era that it was established in the Middle East (about 7000–8000 BCE) and that New World civilizations were built on an indigenous agricultural base.” ref
“The evidence on early hunting and gathering peoples in Peru is still sparse. It is not yet possible to reconstruct social patterns, since most of the remains consist only of shellfish middens and small, widely scattered campsites along the coast. It was a period of thousands of years’ duration, however, toward the end of which some knowledge of plant domestication reached the Peruvian coast. The next major era is set off by incipient agriculture and also is characterized by the remains of small, hamlet-type communities along the Pacific Ocean near river mouths, where the alluvial soil was able to support crops. Technology remained simple, irrigation was not practiced, and population remained small.” ref
“After the passage of 1,000 years or so, marked developments appear in the archaeological record. These include many new crops, irrigation ditches that extended the arable area and controlled the supply of water, more and larger communities that attest to a growing population, and important temple mounds that formed the symbolic centres of theocratic government controlled by a priestly class. The formative era saw the development of the basic technologies and life-styles that were to become elaborated into even more complex cultural forms and state institutions. The emergence of city-states and empires in the central Andes is the result of local cultural-ecological adjustments of this sort, based on an irrigation agriculture that supported growing populations and necessitated controls in the hands of priests and nobles, with a warrior class subservient to the state.” ref
Subsistence Economy and Chiefdom Emergence in the Muisca Area
“ABSTRACT: Muisca societies located in the central mountains of Colombia impressed early Spanish arrivals in the sixteenth century with the power and level of respect commanded by their chiefs and the quality and variety of the crafts their artisans produced, sometimes from raw materials obtained from other regions. Early Spanish accounts especially emphasize the “advanced” economic development of Muisca societies, with what seemed to European eyes especially well-organized and flourishing trade and dense populations that were well-provisioned despite the fairly cold, wet, high-elevation zone they inhabited. As several regional chiefdoms in northern South America have been studied archaeologically, it has often turned out that their subsistence and craft economies do not involve very high degrees of trade, tribute, or household interdependence. This emerging pattern contrasts with sixteenth-century descriptions of the Muisca.” ref
“The archaeological evidence of Muisca societies has provided at best only incomplete confirmation of the descriptions in historical sources, particularly in regard to the development of local, regional, and supra-regional patterns of economic interdependence and the importance of such an economy to the emergence of chiefly power. One aspect of economic interdependence specifically discussed in the historical sources, however, has been subject to very little archaeological investigation. This is the agricultural exploitation of warmer low-elevation zones located quite close to some of the principal Muisca chiefly centers. In these areas higher temperatures led to greater productivity as well as protection from the frosts that were a constant risk to agriculture in the Muisca heartland. There are detailed sixteenth-century historical accounts of the importance of these resources for sustaining the very high population densities of the Muisca heartland, high densities fully attested to by both historical and archaeological information.” ref
“Under the supervision of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, Pedro Argüello will carry out a systematic regional survey of some 100 sq km in the Tena region on the slopes leading down from the western edge of the Muisca heartland toward the valley of the Magdalena River. The Tena region, which ranges from 2200 m above sea level down to about 700 m, is specifically mentioned in sixteenth-century documents as a major source of agricultural produce for the Bogotá chiefdom. If its agricultural resources were increasingly intensively exploited as Muisca chiefdoms emerged and developed and population levels in the high-elevation Muisca heartland grew, this will be reflected in changing patterns of distribution of human occupation in the Tena region. Such a result would provide stronger support for the historical accounts of one of the economic foundations of Muisca chiefly power than has been forthcoming from archaeological investigations of other aspects of Muisca economy. It would help to explain the relatively late but extremely rapid development of the Muisca chiefdoms and to position these societies properly in comparative analysis of the pathways toward the consolidation of political power in general.” ref
“The societies of the Muisca area in the eastern highlands of Colombia were described by early Spanish conquerors as among the richest and most highly developed societies they encountered in northern South America. Chiefs were rich and powerful, and controlled regional populations engaged in well-organized intensive agricultural production to sustain quite high population densities. Archaeological evidence tends to agree that these societies developed vigorously during the last few hundred years before the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spanish, but evidence available to date provides conflicting views about their earlier trajectories of development. In several ways archaeological evidence has failed to convincingly substantiate sixteenth-century written accounts. One aspect of Muisca demography and agricultural production is described in these accounts in particular detail. It involves the expansion by Muisca populations from the high-elevation Bogotá Savannah down the slopes toward the Magdalena River at the expense of Panche people who had previously occupied the zone. The driving force behind this expansion was said to be the need to increase and intensify agricultural production in the warmer Tena region in order to sustain burgeoning populations in the Bogotá Savannah.” ref
“The archaeological research confirmed that Muisca people did, in fact, live in the Tena region, not only in the last few hundred years before the Spanish Conquest but in much earlier times as well. The history of this occupation goes back at least 2400 years to the initial period of sedentary farming. During the earliest occupation of the Tena region—during the Herrera period (400 BCE–800 CE)—the majority of the population lived in widely scattered dispersed farmsteads, although a cluster of occupation more like a nucleated village also occurred. This settlement pattern continued in similar form during the next period—Early Muisca (800–1200 CE)—during which the region witnessed quite substantial population growth. During the last prehispanic period—Late Muisca (1200–1550 CE)—a combination of dispersed farmsteads and nucleated villages persisted, but in sharp contrast to the implications of the sixteenth-century accounts, population actually decreased somewhat, making the Tena region extremely unusual among the demographic patterns for the Muisca area at this time.” ref
“The region’s inhabitants, like those of earlier periods, were Muisca farmers living there year-round, and practicing relatively extensive agriculture. There is no sign of a major influx of seasonal occupation by people whose permanent residences were in the higher-elevation Bogotá Savannah. Nor is there indication of more intensive agricultural production. These results question literal interpretations of sixteenth-century written accounts of late Muisca expansion beyond the Altiplano Cundiboyacense and of the intensive and organized exploitation of the agricultural resources of adjacent lower-elevation zones as a source of chiefly wealth and power. They thus add to our knowledge of the variety of pathways followed in the development of very early complex societies, in which the foundations of much modern human social organization were constructed.” ref
Chiefdoms in northern South America
“Abstract: The multiple and varied trajectories of chiefdom development in northern South America (and adjacent Central America) offer a rich opportunity for evaluating generalizations about the processes of chiefdom development. Sequences of the south coast of Ecuador, the Alto Magdalena, Calima, the Muisca region, Barinas, and the Tairona region are well enough documented to attempt to use in this way. Although centralized, hierarchical societies develop in all these regions, there are many differences in the character of centralization and hierarchy and in the pacing of the development, and none of the traditionally proposed forces of social change is entirely adequate to account for these cases. Attention to the role played by competition between aspiring chiefs and their factions offers promise for more satisfactory generalizations that could be evaluated through further comparative study.” ref
Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquís
“The property includes four archaeological sites located in the Diquís Delta in southern Costa Rica, which are considered unique examples of the complex social, economic, and political systems of the period CE 500–1500. They contain artificial mounds, paved areas, burial sites, and, most significantly, a collection of stone spheres between 0.7 m and 2.57 m in diameter, whose meaning, use, and production remain largely a mystery. The spheres are distinctive for their perfection, number, size and density, and placement in original locations. Their preservation from the looting that befell the vast majority of archaeological sites in Costa Rica has been attributed to the thick layers of sediment that kept them buried for centuries.” ref
“Four archaeological sites (Finca 6, Batambal, El Silencio, and Grijalba-2) located in the Diquís Delta in southern Costa Rica illustrates a collection of unique stone spheres located in chiefdom settlement structures of the Precolumbian period. The four sites represent different settlement structures of chiefdom societies (500-1500 CE) containing artificial mounds, paved areas, and burial sites. Special objects of wonder and admiration are the distinctive Diquís stone spheres, which are rare in their perfection of large-sized (up to 2.57m diameter) spherical structures but are also distinct for their number and location in their original positions within residential areas.” ref
“The Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquís illustrate the physical evidence of the complex political, social, and productive structures of the Precolumbian hierarchical societies. The chiefdoms which inhabited the Diquís Delta created hierarchical settlements expressing the division of different levels of power centers, presented by the different serial components. Likewise, the exceptional stone spheres, which continue to leave researchers speculating about the method and tools of their production, represent an exceptional testimony to the artistic traditions and craft capabilities of these Precolumbian societies.” ref
https://sites.santafe.edu/~bowles/SimpleChiefdoms.ppt
Elite Status and Gender: Women Leaders in Chiefdom Societies of the Southeastern U.S.
“ABSTRACT: This dissertation presents an ethnohistorical study of women chiefs in the Southeastern United States. Women chiefs were a recurring feature of Southeastern chiefdom societies at and following European contact. Knowledge of how and why women filled these public roles helps explain how chiefdom societies were organized, their political structure, and how gender roles were defined. Chiefdom structure, political economy, and chiefly succession are examined to provided a framework for understanding how chiefdoms operate and how chiefs come to power. Ethnohistoric data are presented and analyzed, supporting the conclusion that women chiefs were present at the very dawn of European contact, even when there were high ranking men available to fill the office. Women sometimes served as regents, usually for an immature child, but some of the women identified as regents were actually chiefs. Women chiefs are present because their elite status takes precedence over their gender. Chiefly offices may not necessarily be gendered male or female, since women accessed them regularly. This analysis shows that elite status, personal ability, and strong support from a faction are needed for both women and men to become chiefs, regardless of gender. Women chiefs were present in both matrilineal and patrilineal societies, so the form of kinship reckoning is not a critical or limiting variable for determining the likelihood of women chiefs being present. The most salient variable is the presence of ascribed, elite statuses that women can access. Therefore, the innate structure of chiefdom societies themselves makes it likely that women chiefs will be present. Baseline comparative data from chiefdom societies having women chiefs from outside the U.S.–Tonga and Taíno –are used to generate a hypothesis about the presence of women chiefs.” ref
Paramount Chief
“A paramount chief is the English-language designation for the highest-level political leader in a regional or local polity or country administered politically with a chief-based system. This term is used occasionally in anthropological and archaeological theory to refer to the rulers of multiple chiefdoms or the rulers of exceptionally powerful chiefdoms that have subordinated others. Paramount chiefs were identified by English-speakers as existing in Native American confederacies and regional chiefdoms, such as the Powhatan Confederacy and Piscataway Native Americans encountered by European colonists in the Chesapeake Bay region of North America. During the Victoria era, paramount chief was a formal title created by British colonial administrators in the British Empire and applied in Britain’s colonies in Asia and Africa. They used it as a substitute for the word “king” to ensure that only the British monarch held that title. Since the title “chief” was already used in terms of district and town administrators, the addition of “paramount” was made so as to distinguish between the ruling monarch and the local aristocracy.” ref
In Asia
“Khan, alternately spelled lowercase as khan and sometimes spelled as Han, Xan, Ke-Han, Turkic: khān, Mongolian: qāān, Chinese: 可汗 or 汗, kehan or han) is an originally Central Asian title for a sovereign or military ruler, first used by medieval Turko-Mongol nomadic tribes living to the north of China. ‘Khan’ is first seen as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289 and was used as a state title by the Rouran confederation. It was subsequently adopted by the Göktürks before Turkic peoples and the Mongols brought it to the rest of Asia. In the middle of the sixth century it was known as “Kagan – King of the Turks” to the Persians. It now has many equivalent meanings such as commander, leader, or ruler. The most famous khan was the Great Khan of Mongols: Genghis Khan. Another famous Manchu khan was Nurhachi.” ref
“Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, Huguan Siou is the paramount leader for the Kadazandusun Murut indigenous community in Sabah. The current and the second Huguan Siou is Joseph Pairin Kitingan. The office is near sacred and can be left vacant if no one is deemed worthy to hold the title.” ref
In Oceania
“New Zealand, Ariki Nui of Ngati Tuwharetoa, a Māori tribe in the central North Island – a hereditary chieftainship which still has great influence. In the 1850s the Māori King Movement resulted in the election of a Waikato chief as Māori King.” ref
“Cook Islands, the paramount chief of the Cook Islands was an ariki of the Makea Nui dynasty, a chiefdom of the Te Au O Tonga tribe in Rarotonga, the Kingdom of Rarotonga was established in 1858 and ended in 1888.” ref
“Fiji, during the October–December 1987 secession agitation on one island, known as the Republic of Rotuma, led by Henry Gibson (remained in New Zealand), his style was Gagaj Sau Lagfatmaro, rendered as Paramount chief or King of the Molmahao Clan. NB: This title was not recognized by the Rotuma Island Council as the titles Gagaja and Sau have never been used together. The closest thing to a paramount chief is the position of Fakpure, currently belonging to the district chief (gagaj ‘es itu’u) of Noa’tau. The British Sovereign was recognized as “Paramount Chief“, even after the country became a republic on 7 October 1987; however, this was not an office of state.” ref
“Polynesia, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) paramount chief or king, the ariki henua or ariki mau*. Samoa, paramount titles in the fa’amatai chiefly system include; Malietoa, Mata’afa, Tupua Tamasese, and Tuimaleali’ifano. American Samoa, paramount chief titles in the fa’amatai chiefly system include; Tui Manu’a, Le’iato.” ref
In Africa
“Eastern African paramount chieftainships and titles, Kenya: Title since 1904 of the former laibon of all the Maasai in Kenya (not in Tanzania), Kenya: Title held by supreme ruler Lago Ogom, after the advent of British colonial rule in Northern Kenya. Sudan: In South Sudan, the title of the chief responsible for a payam (district) elected by the chiefs of each buma (village). The Paramount Chief works with the government-appointed Payam Director, both of whom report to a county Commissioner.” ref
“West African paramount chieftains and their countries, Cameroon: Charles Atangana, Nigeria: Ladapo Ademola, Sierra Leone: Bai Bureh, and Ghana: Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II.” ref
“Southern African paramount chieftainships and titles,
- Kgôsi
- In present Lesotho since it emerged as a polity in 1822, a British protectorate as Basutoland since 12 March 1868 (11 August 1871 – 18 March 1884 Annexed to Cape Colony as Basutoland territory, then as a separate colony, as one of the High Commission Territories). The title changed to king on 4 October 1966, which was the date of the country’s independence from the British Empire.
- In Namibia
- In Swaziland the term paramount chief was imposed by the British government over Swazi royal objections in 1903, was never recognized by the Swazi royalty, and was changed to “king” in English upon independence in 1968. The SiSwati name for the office is Ngwenyama, a ceremonial term for “lion.”
- In South Africa
- Khosikulu of the vhaVenda; after the people’s split, (only?) of the haMphaphuli
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the Xhosa people’s following polities: amaGcaleka, amaMbalu, amaRharhabe, amaNdlambe, imiDushane, imiQhayi, amaGasela, amaGwali, amaHleke, imiDange, amaNtinde, amaGqunukhwebe
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the amaBhaca (until 1830 called abakwaZelemu)
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the amaKhonjwayo (currently ruled by Dumisani Gwadiso)
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the amaMpondo, currently ruled by Ndamase NDAMASE (West) and Jongilanga Sigcau (East) .
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the amaMpondomise
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the abaThembu, currently ruled by Buyelekhaya Zwelinbanzi Dalindyebo.
- title Inkosi Enkhulu of the Nhlangwini, currently ruled by Melizwe Dlamini” ref
Former chiefdoms in North America
“A Chiefdom of Ameca, C Cahokia polity, Casqui, Chiefdoms of Hispaniola, and Coosa chiefdom, G Guale, J Jaega, M Mocoso, O Ocute, P Pohoy, S Saturiwa, T Tacatacuru, Tocobaga, U Utinahica, Uzita (Florida).”
Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas
“Much has been learned about the ways chiefdoms were organized, their origins, and their ultimate fates from poring over historical accounts, sifting through archaeological sites, and observing contemporary peoples. This book, which focuses on the Americas, includes general statements on the development of chiefdoms (Elsa Redmond, Robert Carniero, and Pita Kelekna) and case studies of groups in South America (Elsa Redmond, Charles Spencer, William Sturtevant, Neil Whitehead, and Doris Kurella), the Caribbean (William Keegan and coauthors), and the United States (Winifred Creamer and Jonathan Haas, Helen Rountree and Randolph Turner, and Jerald Milanich).” ref
“These authors concentrate on the societies that gave rise to chiefdoms and the process of chiefdom formation. Redmond introduces chieftaincy to cover short-term leadership achieved by especially capable and charismatic people within the context of essentially autonomous villages. A chieftain is like a Melanesian big man, but without the latter’s geographical and cultural connotations. Chieftains exercise some control over their fellow villagers, the scope and duration of their authority are determined by the exigencies of various situations, and their reputation and influence extend to neighboring settlements. A chieftaincy is thus a society with recognized leaders, but their influence is short-lived, limited, and tied to particular circumstances. In contrast, chiefdoms are kin-based societies with social hierarchies headed by permanent chiefs, who inherit their positions of authority over the inhabitants of multiple villages. Chieftaincies came and went over time; only some of them developed into full-blown chiefdoms.” ref
“Whatever the merits of new sociopolitical categories, classification systems reveal nothing about the processes behind cultural change. What is really of interest are the circumstances that led to the crystallization of situationally advantageous leadership positions and intervillage alliances to form institutionalized social hierarchies, including chiefs, and permanent ties among dominant and subordinate villages. Carneiro refers to this transformation as the “flashpoint,” which is appropriate considering its likely suddenness. It makes considerable sense to argue that under the right conditions politically autonomous villages with presumptive leadership positions—Redmond’s chieftaincies—developed into multicommunity societies with fixed chiefly positions embedded within kin-based social hierarchies. But just what combination of circumstances gave rise to chiefdoms? Carneiro argues that whatever factors were behind chiefdom formation, they were few in number. Separate explanations are not needed in all of the many places where these societies arose. His position is arguably the most important and provocative point in this book. It is a challenge to look for ultimate causes, rather than being content with an uninterpretable hotchpotch of context-specific details.” ref
“Simplifying greatly, most scenarios for chiefdom origins invoke either warfare or economic relations, especially the role of chiefs as managers of critical resources or as major players in exchanges of highly coveted prestige goods. Contributors to this book emphasize the part played by warfare in chiefdom development. These societies arose in places where there was little chance of flight to escape severe endemic warfare. This position is argued strongly by Carneiro in an elaboration of his thirty-year-old environmental circumscription and warfare model. In short, the first chief was a highly successful and influential war leader who was determined to hold onto his position of dominance in the affairs of multiple villages located in places where the pressure on resources and harrassment by enemies could not be relieved by movement elsewhere.” ref
The Origin of State Societies in South America
“Abstract: The earliest states developed in the central Andean highlands and along the central Pacific coast of western South America. The consensus in the archaeological literature is that state societies first developed in the central Andes in the early part of the first millennium CE. A minority opinion holds that first-generation states developed as early as the late second millennium BCE in the same area. The Andean region constitutes one of a few areas of first-generation state development in the world. This area, therefore, represents an important case study for the comparative analysis of state formation. This article outlines the arguments for state formation in South America, presents the evidence, analyzes the underlying assumptions about these arguments, and assesses the South American data in terms of contemporary anthropological theory of state evolution.” ref
MATRILINY AND PATRILINY BETWEEN COHABITATION EQUILIBRIUM AND MODERNITY IN THE CAMEROON GRASSFIELDS
“ABSTRACT: The paper explores the principles in the kinship structure of the cluster of speakers of the Ring Group of Grassfield Bantu, who are at once matrilineal and patrilineal, living in the south-western edge of the western Cameroon highlands. Although operating in an inverted mirror image, the seemingly opposed kinship structures have a common logic where the basic kinship unit is residential (household). There is an attempt to strike a balance between descent groups without constituting double descent, and women occupy positions that stress symmetry rather than subordination, although there is patriarchy. The impact of modernity on matriliny in a context of generalized patriliny is also examined with the conclusion that the drift towards “patrilineal” practices does not imply a change of system but implies adaptations that leave the system unmodified.” ref
Traditional leaders in Zambia shift gender norms and strengthen women’s land rights
How community-level dialogues uprooted harmful gender norms that hinder women’s rights to land.
“Across much of Africa, land is not allocated and inherited under statutory law but through customary practices rooted in kinship. In patrilineal systems, land belongs to men’s families and is inherited through the paternal line. In Zambia, many ethnic groups follow a matrilineal system, where women own land and pass it down the maternal line. But ownership does not necessarily translate into access, use and control of land. Even in matrilineal societies, social and gender norms undermine women’s decision-making power. Traditionally – regardless of patrilineal or matrilineal systems − men have authority over household resources, including land − so when it comes to land rights, women are left out.In Zambia’s customary systems chiefs and their advisors – known as indunas – and village headpersons allocate land. These customary leaders are usually men and, as custodians of tradition and culture, heavily influence whether harmful gender norms and practices persist or change.” ref
“A woman headperson in the Nyamphande chiefdom addressed a pressing form of gender-based violence related to land: the use of traditional funeral rites to deny widows’ access to their deceased spouse’s land. Indunas and village headpersons who participated in the dialogues encouraged men in their communities to include their wives in land documentation. And the indunas led by example, committing to share their own land with their wives and children, both boys and girls. Induna Jacob Phiri, from Mnukwa chiefdom, was the first to share his land after the first dialogue session, saying “My wife had access to my land and planted crops of her own choice, but I never thought about what could happen to her if I died. I knew I needed to act while I was still alive, so I gave her a portion of land to be her own. After that, I felt empowered to tell people in my village to do the same.” ref
“Not all indunas embrace change. Despite promising shifts in behaviors and gender norms, many indunas did not support change − taking a backseat or even attempting to block and discourage those willing to drive it forward. Although bringing together indunas from different chiefdoms intended to foster collaboration, the pilot initiative found that individual action by the indunas was much more successful than collective action. Some of the indunas resisted changes in social norms, and it is important to invest more time in supporting the indunas and headpersons to have a deeper understanding of existing gender norms that should be changed before moving to planning and implementation. Change starts with community. The pilot showed that shifting harmful gender norms at the community level is crucial in supporting women to access land rights. Given their role in regulating local culture and advising the traditional authority on land administration, customary leaders like indunas and village headpersons are a key entry point for that shift. Change can be slow. But spaces for dialogue, critical reflection, and support for action-planning enabled the indunas to not only change their own beliefs, but also begin to see their role and their communities in a different light.” ref
Powhatan Complex paramount chiefdom (male) or, more rarely, a (female)
“The Powhatan were a matrilineal society, so his right to be chief was inherited from his mother.” ref
“The Powhatan people are Native Americans who belong to member tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, or Tsenacommacah. They are Algonquian peoples whose historic territories were in eastern Virginia, and their Powhatan language is an Eastern Algonquian language. All of Virginia’s Native peoples practiced agriculture. Powhatans made offerings and prayed at sunrise. Although, they also prayed and made offerings to specific gods, who were believed to be in control of the harvest. They used the land differently, and their religion was a Native one. Significantly, one of the major duties of Powhatan priests was controlling the weather. Various tribes each held some individual powers locally, and each had a chief known as a weroance (male) or, more rarely, a weroansqua (female), meaning “commander. As early as the era of John Smith, the individual tribes of this grouping were recognized by English colonists as falling under the greater authority of the centralized power led by the chiefdom of Powhatan (c. 1545 – c. 1618), whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh or (in 17th century English spelling) Wahunsunacock.” ref
“In 1607, when the first permanent English colonial settlement in North America was founded at Jamestown, he ruled primarily from Werowocomoco, which was located on the northern shore of the York River. This site of Werowocomoco was rediscovered in the early 21st century; it was central to the tribes of the Confederacy. The improvements discovered at the site during archaeological research have confirmed that Powhatan had a paramount chiefdom over the other tribes in the power hierarchy. Anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro in his The Chiefdom: Precursor of the State. The Transition to Statehood in the New World (1981), deeply explores the political structure of the chiefdom and confederacy. Powhatan (and his several successors) ruled what is called a complex chiefdom, referred to by scholars as the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom. Research work continues at Werowocomoco and elsewhere that deepens understanding of the Powhatan world. Wahunsenacawh had inherited control over six tribes but dominated more than 30 by 1607 when the English settlers established their Virginia Colony at Jamestown. The original six tribes under Wahunsenacawh were: the Powhatan (proper), the Arrohateck, the Appamattuck, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, and the Chiskiack.” ref
“He added the Kecoughtan to his fold by 1598. Some other affiliated groups included the Rappahannock, Moraughtacund, Weyanoak, Paspahegh, Quiyoughcohannock, Warraskoyack, and Nansemond. Another closely related tribe of the same language group was the Chickahominy, but they managed to preserve their autonomy from the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom. The Accawmacke, located on the Eastern Shore across the Chesapeake Bay, were nominally tributary to the Powhatan Chiefdom but enjoyed autonomy under their own Paramount Chief or “Emperor”, Debedeavon (aka “The Laughing King”). Half a million Native Americans were living in the Allegheny Mountains around the year 1600. 30,000 of those 500,000 lived in the Chesapeake region under Powhatan’s rule, by 1677 only five percent of his population remained. The huge jump in deaths was caused by exposure and contact with Europeans. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781–82), Thomas Jefferson estimated that the Powhatan Confederacy occupied about 8,000 square miles (20,000 km2) of territory, with a population of about 8,000 people, of whom 2400 were warriors. Later scholars estimated the total population of the paramountcy as 15,000.” ref
“Powhatan (died April 1618, Virginia [U.S.]) was a North American Indian leader, father of Pocahontas. He presided over the Powhatan empire at the time the English established the Jamestown Colony (1607). Powhatan had inherited rulership of an empire of six tribes from his father. After succeeding his father, Powhatan brought about two dozen other tribes into the empire that was named for him; at the peak of his power, he is estimated to have ruled between 13,000 and 34,000 people. Powhatan was an astute and energetic ruler, but he was also noted as being strict and occasionally cruel toward his subjects. In the Algonquian language of his people, his title as emperor was mamanatowick, and his territory was known as Tsenacommacah. Each tribe within the Powhatan empire had its own chief, or weroance, and Powhatan ruled as the chief of these chiefs.” ref
“English colonists established a settlement, known as Jamestown, on an uninhabited peninsula within his territory in 1607. The Powhatan empire at the time of the colonists’ arrival essentially covered present-day eastern Virginia, extending from the Potomac River to the Great Dismal Swamp, and its capital was at the village of Werowocomoco. Powhatan initially acted ambivalently toward the English settlement, sometimes ordering or permitting attacks against the colonists while at other times trading tribal food for sought-after English goods such as metal tools. During the colony’s early years, he appears to have viewed the English as potential allies against his own enemies—namely, the Monacan, Mannahoac, and Massawomeck tribes to the north and west. In his trading and negotiation with the colony in those years, the English were generally represented by John Smith, with whom Powhatan played a cat-and-mouse game as each side assessed the other’s capabilities and intentions.” ref
“Among the Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians, succession to the status of chief, or weroance, was matrilineal, meaning that Wahunsonacock must have been the son of a sister of a Powhatan weroance, taking his place as chief on the death of his uncle. Despite his status, Wahunsonacock’s childhood likely was no different from other boys; until he was about five, he went to the gardens, marshes, and forests with his mother, probably practicing archery, with her encouragement, on any creature that moved there. As an adolescent, having proved himself a proficient hunter, he endured the huskanaw ritual initiating him into manhood, after which he returned to his family and joined the ranks of the tribe’s warriors and hunters. His status as an heir to the rank of chief probably made him a cockarouse, or member of his uncle’s council.” ref
“Powhatan’s given name was Wahunsenacawh, also spelled Wahunsunacock. Little of his early life is known apart from what we can assume. We know that he came to power in the town of Powhatan, which was located near present-day Richmond. As a boy he would have aided his mother in tasks like farming and gathering useful plants. As a teenager, he would undergo a coming-of-age ritual called a huskanaw. Now considered an adult, he would have joined the other men in hunting, and might have also served as a member of the chief’s council due to his high rank. At an unknown age, he became the weroance, or chief, of Powhatan. In order to become a weroance in a matrilineal, or female-based system of inheritance, he could have been the son of the previous weroance’s sister. The new weroance of the Powhatan people would expand his political influence using several methods. One such method was force. Warfare was an expected and frequent reality of life in Powhatan’s time, and all men would have been trained as warriors.” ref
Proto-Oceanic Society was Matrilineal
“This article considers the distribution of matrilineality in the daughters of Proto Oceanic (POc) society and asserts that this distribution is most conveniently explained by Per Hage’s (1998) suggestion that POc society/Ancestral Lapita society may have been matrilineal. Proto Oceanic was the Austronesian interstage ancestral to all the Austronesian languages in Oceania with the exception of two—the Western Micronesian languages Palauan (Palau Island) and Chamorro (Mariana Islands). POc speakers were the bearers of Early Western Lapita culture which appears in the archaeological record in the Bismarck Archipelago between 3400 and 3300 years ago.” ref
Matrilineality and the Melanesian Origin of Polynesian Y Chromosomes
“Linguists and archaeologists are in general agreement that the Austronesian languages originated in Southeast Asia on or near Taiwan around 3000 b.c. and that Austronesian-speakers dispersed through Island Southeast Asia, reaching Melanesia by 1450 b.c. and Western Polynesia by 950 BCE. This model is supported by genetic data showing a predominantly Asian origin of Polynesian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Recently, however, Kayser et al. (2000) have shown a Melanesian origin of Polynesian Y chromosomes favoring a Slow Boat to Polynesia model with substantial population interaction components in relation to indigenous non-Austronesian (Papuan) populations in Melanesia. Our hypothesis is that the predominance of maternally transmitted mtDNA of Asian origin and the significant presence of paternally transmitted Y chromosomes of Melanesian origin in Polynesian ancestry can be accounted for as an effect of matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent in ProtoOceanic society.” ref
“For present purposes matrilineal descent groups are lineages or clans in which membership is traced exclusively through female links to a founding ancestor. In matrilocal residence a married couple lives “with or near the female matrilineal kinsmen of the wife”. In a matrilineal chiefdom, as hypothesized for Proto-Oceanic, a man is succeeded by his sister’s son. In a patrilineal descent, group membership is traced exclusively through male links to a founding ancestor, and a man is succeeded by his son. In patrilocal residence a married couple lives “with or near the male patrilineal kinsmen of the husband.” In a cognatic descent group membership is traced through either male or female links. Double descent (not to be confused with cognatic descent) refers to the presence of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent groups in the same society.” ref
There are three lineages of Polynesian mtDNA. The predominant lineage, accounting for 90–95% of Polynesian mtDNA, is a haplotype possessing a 9-base-pair intergenic deletion shared with Asian populations. The greater diversity of this haplotype in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan implies an Asian origin and an eastward expansion of Austronesian-speakers into Polynesia. A second haplotype, accounting for 3.5% of Polynesian mtDNA, is also found in Melanesia, in Vanuatu and in coastal New Guinea. Kayser et al. (2000) have discovered three haplotypes (lineages) of Polynesian Y chromosomes. The dominant haplotype, DYS 390.3del/RPS4Y711T, accounts for 82% of Cook Island, 70% of Western Samoan, 26% of Coastal Papua New Guinean, and 9–12% of Indonesian Y chromosomes. This haplotype is not found in any other Southeast Asian or Asian population.” ref
“It originated in Melanesia an estimated 11,500 years ago, long before the intrusion of Austronesian-speakers into Melanesia about 3,500 years ago. A second haplotype, M122C/M9G, is infrequent in Polynesia, accounting for 7.1–10.7% of Polynesian Y chromosomes, but frequent in East and Southeast Asia. It probably originated in Asia on the order of 11,000 years ago. Kayser et al. conclude from the Y-chromosome data that the express-train model should be replaced by a slow-boat model in which the Austronesian-speaking (Oceanic) ancestors of the Polynesians moved slowly across Melanesia, “mixing extensively” with indigenous non-Austronesian-speaking (Papuan) populations, leaving behind their genes and “incorporating” many Melanesian non-Austronesian genes. This model is consistent with cultural and archaeological evidence of Austronesian–non-Austronesian interaction and with the linguistic “pause” in the spread of the Austronesian languages between the arrival of the Lapita archaeological culture in 1450 BCE and about 1100 BCE.” ref
“On general comparative grounds, some century or centuries of change would seem to be required to account for the common linguistic innovations that mark all Austronesian Oceanic languages (and no other [living] Austronesian languages) matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent in proto-oceanic society Kayser et al.’s model does not specify the type of “intermixing” between Austronesian- and non-Austronesian-speaking populations in Melanesia, but we suggest that it took place in the framework of matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent in Proto-Oceanic society. By “Proto-Oceanic” we mean the language at the end point of its common development in the Bismarcks before the various incremental and abrupt dispersals that led to more localized varieties of speech. By “Proto-Oceanic society” we mean, formally, what can be reconstructed, linguistically, about the social vocabulary of Proto-Oceanic-speakers and what we infer from that about their society.” ref
By “Lapita society” the archaeologists mean what was surely the same community and what can be inferred about it through archaeology, comparative ethnography, and comparative linguistics. Proto-Oceanic (Lapita) society was a sophisticated maritime and horticultural society of Austronesian origin that developed in the region of the Bismarck Archipelago in western Melanesia around 1500 BCE. The society was based on an extensive voyaging and exchange network. By 1100 to 1200 BCE daughter societies were expanding eastward, arriving in the Fiji-Tonga-Samoa area by 950 BCE. After a “long pause” in Western Polynesia of as much as 1,000 years, as evidenced by numerous innovations in ProtoPolynesian, colonization resumed, reaching all islands in Eastern Polynesia by 1000 BCE.” ref
Trobriander people
“Trobriander, any of the Melanesian people of the Kiriwina (Trobriand) Islands, lying off eastern New Guinea. Subsistence is based on yams and other vegetables, domesticated pigs, and fish. Storage houses for yams and the chief’s house stand in the middle of the village, surrounded by dwellings arranged in circles. Each hut is occupied by a single family. Trobrianders are divided into totemic clans, the members of which trace their descent matrilineally (i.e., from a common ancestor through the female line). The village is the major social unit; members make their gardens together under the guidance of a garden magician, perform ceremonies, and travel together on trading expeditions. Each village has a headman, and high-ranking headmen, or chiefs, may have authority over several villages.” ref
“Wealth is extremely important as a sign of power and the means of exercising it. The Trobrianders are noted for their elaborate intertribal trading system, the kula (q.v.), which was described in the anthropological classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) by Bronisław Malinowski. Red shell necklaces are traded between permanent trading partners in a clockwise direction around a ring of islands; white shell bracelets are traded counterclockwise. Large seagoing dugout canoes are constructed for the interisland trading expeditions.” ref
Daughter Preference and Contraceptive-use in Matrilineal Tribal Societies in Meghalaya, India
“Abstract: Although son preference in patrilineal society is an established fact, daughter preference in matrilineal society is not thoroughly examined. Very few studies have been carried out on the issue. This paper attempts to explore the daughter preference and contraceptive-use in matrilineal tribal societies in Meghalaya, India. Data from the National Family Health Survey 1998-1999 have been used in this study because, among the large-scale surveys, only this dataset allows identification of matrilineal sample. Mean, percentage, and standard deviation are computed in the present study. Further, the data have been cross-tabulated, and logistic regression has been run through SPSS (version 15). Among the ever-married matrilineal women, 17% desired more sons than daughters but 18.2% desired more daughters than sons. About 11% of ever-married women could achieve their desired sex composition of children. However, a very striking finding suggests that, even after achieving desired sex composition of children, as high as 61.8% of women were still not using contraception mainly because of programme factors while one-fourth were still depending on temporary methods. The rest 13.2% adopted terminal method of contraception, which calls for immediate attention of planners. With the increase in the number of sons but without daughter, contraceptive-use drastically decreased. The most desired sex composition of children seems to be two daughters and a son. Absence of daughter with increase in the total number of sons increased the desire for additional children. Every woman with two or more sons but without daughter wanted the next child to be a daughter. Thus, there are ample evidences to draw the conclusion that there is, in fact, a daughter preference in the matrilineal tribal societies in Meghalaya, India. Policy-makers may, thus, target the women who have achieved fertility and should ensure that daughter preference does not lead to the negligence to sons.” ref
The Need for Social Justice is nothing new.
“Nanshe (Sumerian c. 4,000 to 3,100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) was a Mesopotamian goddess in various contexts associated with social justice and social welfare.” ref
Damien does not make art to demonstrate Damien’s highest skill as an artist. No, Damien’s art is Damien’s favorite way to do activism. Damien makes art for reason and evidence, not if Damien thinks people will think it is trying to just be artistic. Damien wants to help make a difference in the world, and Damien’s art helps in this.
But is Atlantis real?
No. Atlantis (an allegory: “face story” interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning) can’t be found any more than one can locate the Jolly Green Giant that is said to watch over frozen vegetables. Lol
May Reason Set You Free
There are a lot of truly great things said by anarchists in history, and also some deeply vile things, too, from not supporting Women’s rights to Anti-Semitism. There are those who also reject those supporting women’s rights as well as fight anti-Semitism. This is why I push reason as my only master, not anarchist thinking, though anarchism, to me, should see all humans everywhere as equal in dignity and rights.
We—Cory and Damien—are following the greatness that can be found in anarchist thinking.
As an Anarchist Educator, Damien strives to teach the plain truth. Damien does not support violence as my method to change. Rather, I choose education that builds Enlightenment and Empowerment. I champion Dignity and Equality. We rise by helping each other. What is the price of a tear? What is the cost of a smile? How can we see clearly when others pay the cost of our indifference and fear? We should help people in need. Why is that so hard for some people? Rich Ghouls must End. Damien wants “billionaires” to stop being a thing. Tax then into equality. To Damien, there is no debate, Capitalism is unethical. Moreover, as an Anarchist Educator, Damien knows violence is not the way to inspire lasting positive change. But we are not limited to violence, we have education, one of the most lasting and powerful ways to improve the world. We empower the world by championing Truth and its supporters.
Anarchism and Education
“Various alternatives to education and their problems have been proposed by anarchists which have gone from alternative education systems and environments, self-education, advocacy of youth and children rights, and freethought activism.” ref
“Historical accounts of anarchist educational experiments to explore how their pedagogical practices, organization, and content constituted a radical alternative to mainstream forms of educational provision in different historical periods.” ref
“The Ferrer school was an early 20th century libertarian school inspired by the anarchist pedagogy of Francisco Ferrer. He was a proponent of rationalist, secular education that emphasized reason, dignity, self-reliance, and scientific observation. The Ferrer movement’s philosophy had two distinct tendencies: non-didactic freedom from dogma and the more didactic fostering of counter-hegemonic beliefs. Towards non-didactic freedom from dogma, and fulfilled the child-centered tradition.” ref
Teach Real History: all our lives depend on it.
Damien sees lies about history as crimes against humanity. And we all must help humanity by addressing “any and all” who make harmful lies about history.
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My favorite “Graham Hancock” Quote?
“In what archaeologists have studied, yes, we can say there is NO Evidence of an advanced civilization.” – (Time 1:27) Joe Rogan Experience #2136 – Graham Hancock & Flint Dibble
People don’t commonly teach religious history, even that of their own claimed religion. No, rather they teach a limited “pro their religion” history of their religion from a religious perspective favorable to the religion of choice.
Do you truly think “Religious Belief” is only a matter of some personal choice?
Do you not see how coercive one’s world of choice is limited to the obvious hereditary belief, in most religious choices available to the child of religious parents or caregivers? Religion is more commonly like a family, culture, society, etc. available belief that limits the belief choices of the child and that is when “Religious Belief” is not only a matter of some personal choice and when it becomes hereditary faith, not because of the quality of its alleged facts or proposed truths but because everyone else important to the child believes similarly so they do as well simply mimicking authority beliefs handed to them. Because children are raised in religion rather than being presented all possible choices but rather one limited dogmatic brand of “Religious Belief” where children only have a choice of following the belief as instructed, and then personally claim the faith hereditary belief seen in the confirming to the belief they have held themselves all their lives. This is obvious in statements asked and answered by children claiming a faith they barely understand but they do understand that their family believes “this or that” faith, so they feel obligated to believe it too. While I do agree that “Religious Belief” should only be a matter of some personal choice, it rarely is… End Hereditary Religion!
Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey
“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref
We are like believing machines we vacuum up ideas, like Velcro sticks to almost everything. We accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives, often without realizing it. Our willingness must be to alter skewed beliefs that impend our balance or reason, which allows us to achieve new positive thinking and accurate outcomes.
My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:
- (Pre-Animism Africa mainly, but also Europe, and Asia at least 300,000 years ago), (Pre-Animism – Oxford Dictionaries)
- (Animism Africa around 100,000 years ago), (Animism – Britannica.com)
- (Totemism Europe around 50,000 years ago), (Totemism – Anthropology)
- (Shamanism Siberia around 30,000 years ago), (Shamanism – Britannica.com)
- (Paganism Turkey around 12,000 years ago), (Paganism – BBC Religion)
- (Progressed Organized Religion “Institutional Religion” Egypt around 5,000 years ago), (Ancient Egyptian Religion – Britannica.com)
- (CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS after 4,000 years ago) (Origin of Major Religions – Sacred Texts)
- (Early Atheistic Doubting at least by 2,600 years ago) (History of Atheism – Wikipedia)
“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…
Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.
Understanding Religion Evolution:
- Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago)
- Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago)
- Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago)
- Shamanism (Siberia: 30,000 years ago)
- Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago)
- Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago), (Egypt, the First Dynasty 5,150 years ago)
- CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago)
- Early Atheistic Doubting (at least by 2,600 years ago)
“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”
It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.
Quick Evolution of Religion?
Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago) with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).
Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.
Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.
I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.
Here are several of my blog posts on history:
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- (Magdalenian/Iberomaurusian) Connections to the First Paganists of the early Neolithic Near East Dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 Years Ago
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- Possible Clan Leader/Special “MALE” Ancestor Totem Poles At Least 13,500 years ago?
- Jewish People with DNA at least 13,200 years old, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- Baltic Reindeer Hunters: Swiderian, Lyngby, Ahrensburgian, and Krasnosillya cultures 12,020 to 11,020 years ago are evidence of powerful migratory waves during the last 13,000 years and a genetic link to Saami and the Finno-Ugric peoples.
- The Rise of Inequality: patriarchy and state hierarchy inequality
- Fertile Crescent 12,500 – 9,500 Years Ago: fertility and death cult belief system?
- 12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
- Ritualistic Bird Symbolism at Gobekli Tepe and its “Ancestor Cult”
- Male-Homosexual (female-like) / Trans-woman (female) Seated Figurine from Gobekli Tepe
- Could a 12,000-year-old Bull Geoglyph at Göbekli Tepe relate to older Bull and Female Art 25,000 years ago and Later Goddess and the Bull cults like Catal Huyuk?
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- Alcohol, where Agriculture and Religion Become one? Such as Gobekli Tepe’s Ritualistic use of Grain as Food and Ritual Drink
- Neolithic Ritual Sites with T-Pillars and other Cultic Pillars
- Paganism: Goddesses around 12,000 years ago then Male Gods after 7,000 years ago
- First Patriarchy: Split of Women’s Status around 12,000 years ago & First Hierarchy: fall of Women’s Status around 5,000 years ago.
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
- Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system
- Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism)
- Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and the Shamanism Phenomena
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
- 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
- Norse did not wear helmets with horns?
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
- 10,400 – 10,100 Years Ago, in Turkey the Nevail Cori Religious Settlement
- 9,000-6,500 Years Old Submerged Pre-Pottery/Pottery Neolithic Ritual Settlements off Israel’s Coast
- Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)
- Cultic Hunting at Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”
- Special Items and Art as well as Special Elite Burials at Catal Huyuk
- New Rituals and Violence with the appearance of Pottery and People?
- Haplogroup N and its related Uralic Languages and Cultures
- Ainu people, Sámi people, Native Americans, the Ancient North Eurasians, and Paganistic-Shamanism with Totemism
- Ideas, Technology and People from Turkey, Europe, to China and Back again 9,000 to 5,000 years ago?
- First Pottery of Europe and the Related Cultures
- 9,000 years old Neolithic Artifacts Judean Desert and Hills Israel
- 9,000-7,000 years-old Sex and Death Rituals: Cult Sites in Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai
- 9,000-8500 year old Horned Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Neolithic Jewelry and the Spread of Farming in Europe Emerging out of West Turkey
- 8,600-year-old Tortoise Shells in Neolithic graves in central China have Early Writing and Shamanism
- Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?
- Migrations and Changing Europeans Beginning around 8,000 Years Ago
- My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 8,000/7,000 years ago
- Around 8,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Mistress of Animals, “Ritual” Motif
- Pre-Columbian Red-Paint (red ochre) Maritime Archaic Culture 8,000-3,000 years ago
- 7,522-6,522 years ago Linear Pottery culture which I think relates to Arcane Capitalism’s origins
- Arcane Capitalism: Primitive socialism, Primitive capital, Private ownership, Means of production, Market capitalism, Class discrimination, and Petite bourgeoisie (smaller capitalists)
- 7,500-4,750 years old Ritualistic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine
- Roots of a changing early society 7,200-6,700 years ago Jordan and Israel
- Agriculture religion (Paganism) with farming reached Britain between about 7,000 to 6,500 or so years ago and seemingly expressed in things like Western Europe’s Long Barrows
- My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?
- “Millet” Spreading from China 7,022 years ago to Europe and related Language may have Spread with it leading to Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology
- The Dnieper–Donets culture and Asian varieties of Millet from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 7,022 years ago
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- 7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion
- Ancient Megaliths: Kurgan, Ziggurat, Pyramid, Menhir, Trilithon, Dolman, Kromlech, and Kromlech of Trilithons
- The Mytheme of Ancient North Eurasian Sacred-Dog belief and similar motifs are found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian comparative mythology
- Elite Power Accumulation: Ancient Trade, Tokens, Writing, Wealth, Merchants, and Priest-Kings
- Sacred Mounds, Mountains, Kurgans, and Pyramids may hold deep connections?
- Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status
- Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite & their slaves
- Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
- The First Expression of the Male God around 7,000 years ago?
- White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
- Around 7,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Divine Bird (Tutelary and/or Trickster spirit/deity), “Ritual” Motif
- Nekhbet an Ancient Egyptian Vulture Goddess and Tutelary Deity
- 6,720 to 4,920 years old Ritualistic Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia with 5,000-year-old Pyramid Mounds and Temples
- First proto-king in the Balkans, Varna culture around 6,500 years ago?
- 6,500–5,800 years ago in Israel Late Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Period in the Southern Levant Seems to Express Northern Levant Migrations, Cultural and Religious Transfer
- KING OF BEASTS: Master of Animals “Ritual” Motif, around 6,000 years old or older…
- Around 6000-year-old Shared Idea of the Solid Wheel & the Spoked Wheel-Shaped Ritual Motif
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan; a Proto-Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna or Star of Venus?
- Religious/Ritual Ideas, including goddesses and gods as well as ritual mounds or pyramids from Northeastern Asia at least 6,000 years old, seemingly filtering to Iran, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Egypt, and the Americas?
- Maykop (5,720–5,020 years ago) Caucasus region Bronze Age culture-related to Copper Age farmers from the south, influenced by the Ubaid period and Leyla-Tepe culture, as well as influencing the Kura-Araxes culture
- 5-600-year-old Tomb, Mummy, and First Bearded Male Figurine in a Grave
- Kura-Araxes Cultural 5,520 to 4,470 years old DNA traces to the Canaanites, Arabs, and Jews
- Minoan/Cretan (Keftiu) Civilization and Religion around 5,520 to 3,120 years ago
- Evolution Of Science at least by 5,500 years ago
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago and the History of Iran
- Stonehenge: Paganistic Burial and Astrological Ritual Complex, England (5,100-3,600 years ago)
- Around 5,000-year-old Shared Idea of the “Tree of Life” Ritual Motif
- Complex rituals for elite, seen from China to Egypt, at least by 5,000 years ago
- Around 5,000 years ago: “Birth of the State” where Religion gets Military Power and Influence
- The Center of the World “Axis Mundi” and/or “Sacred Mountains” Mythology Could Relate to the Altai Mountains, Heart of the Steppe
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- China’s Civilization between 5,000-3,000 years ago, was a time of war and class struggle, violent transition from free clans to a Slave or Elite society
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- Did a 4,520–4,420-year-old Volcano In Turkey Inspire the Bible God?
- Finland’s Horned Shaman and Pre-Horned-God at least 4,500 years ago?
- 4,000-year-Old Dolmens in Israel: A Connected Dolmen Religious Phenomenon?
- Creation myths: From chaos, Ex nihilo, Earth-diver, Emergence, World egg, and World parent
- Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions
- Low Gods (Earth/ Tutelary deity), High Gods (Sky/Supreme deity), and Moralistic Gods (Deity enforcement/divine order)
- The exchange of people, ideas, and material-culture including, to me, the new god (Sky Father) and goddess (Earth Mother) religion between the Cucuteni-Trypillians and others which is then spread far and wide
- Koryaks: Indigenous People of the Russian Far East and Big Raven myths also found in Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Indigenous People of North America
- 42 Principles Of Maat (Egyptian Goddess of the justice) around 4,400 years ago, 2000 Years Before Ten Commandments
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,320-3,820 years old “Shimao” (North China) site with Totemistic-Shamanistic Paganism and a Stepped Pyramid
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- 4,100-year-old beaker with medicinal & flowering plants in a grave of a woman in Scotland
- Early European Farmer ancestry, Kelif el Boroud people with the Cardial Ware culture, and the Bell Beaker culture Paganists too, spread into North Africa, then to the Canary Islands off West Africa
- Flood Accounts: Gilgamesh epic (4,100 years ago) Noah in Genesis (2,600 years ago)
- Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Early Religions Thought to Express Proto-Monotheistic Systems around 4,000 years ago
- Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- Single God Religions (Monotheism) = “Man-o-theism” started around 4,000 years ago with the Great Sky Spirit/God Tiān (天)?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- Mythology, a Lunar Deity is a Goddess or God of the Moon
- Sacred Land, Hills, and Mountains: Sami Mythology (Paganistic Shamanism)
- Horse Worship/Sacrifice: mythical union of Ruling Elite/Kingship and the Horse
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Bronze Age Exotic Trade Routes Spread Quite Far as well as Spread Religious Ideas with Them
- Sami and the Northern Indigenous Peoples Landscape, Language, and its Connection to Religion
- Prototype of Ancient Analemmatic Sundials around 3,900-3,150 years ago and a Possible Solar Connection to gods?
- Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
- The Weakening of Ancient Trade and the Strengthening of Religions around 3000 years ago?
- Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods, explain now religion tears women down?
- Animistic, Totemistic, and Paganistic Superstition Origins of bible god and the bible’s Religion.
- Myths and Folklore: “Trickster gods and goddesses”
- Jews, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
- Dating the BIBLE: naming names and telling times (written less than 3,000 years ago, provable to 2,200 years ago)
- Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
- Dené–Yeniseian language, Old Copper Complex, and Pre-Columbian Mound Builders?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Sacred Shit and Sacred Animals?
- Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?
- Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble
- The Jericho Conquest lie?
- Canaanites and Israelites?
- Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?
- Let’s talk about Christianity.
- So the 10 commandments isn’t anything to go by either right?
- Misinformed christian
- Debunking Jesus?
- Paulism vs Jesus
- Ok, you seem confused so let’s talk about Buddhism.
- Unacknowledged Buddhism: Gods, Savior, Demons, Rebirth, Heavens, Hells, and Terrorism
- His Foolishness The Dalai Lama
- Yin and Yang is sexist with an ORIGIN around 2,300 years ago?
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Aquatic Ape Theory/Hypothesis? As Always, Just Pseudoscience.
- Ancient Aliens Conspiracy Theorists are Pseudohistorians
- The Pseudohistoric and Pseudoscientific claims about “Bakoni Ruins” of South Africa
- Why do people think Religion is much more than supernaturalism and superstitionism?
- Religion is an Evolved Product
- Was the Value of Ancient Women Different?
- 1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
- Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s?
- Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity
- Screw All Religions and Their Toxic lies, they are all fraud
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
- Religion Dispersal throughout the World
- I Hate Religion Just as I Hate all Pseudoscience
- Exposing Scientology, Eckankar, Wicca and Other Nonsense?
- Main deity or religious belief systems
- Quit Trying to Invent Your God From the Scraps of Science.
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists: Misunderstanding, Rhetoric, Misinformation, Fabrications, and Lies
- Misinformation, Distortion, and Pseudoscience in Talking with a Christian Creationist
- Judging the Lack of Goodness in Gods, Even the Norse God Odin
- Challenging the Belief in God-like Aliens and Gods in General
- A Challenge to Christian use of Torture Devices?
- Yes, Hinduism is a Religion
- Trump is One of the Most Reactionary Forces of Far-right Christian Extremism
- Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!
- Primate Death Rituals
- Christian – “God and Christianity are objectively true”
- Australopithecus afarensis Death Ritual?
- You Claim Global Warming is a Hoax?
- Doubter of Science and Defamer of Atheists?
- I think that sounds like the Bible?
- History of the Antifa (“anti-fascist”) Movements
- Indianapolis Anti-Blasphemy Laws #Free Soheil Rally
- Damien, you repeat the golden rule in so many forms then you say religion is dogmatic?
- Science is a Trustable Methodology whereas Faith is not Trustable at all!
- Was I ever a believer, before I was an atheist?
- Atheists rise in reason
- Mistrust of science?
- Open to Talking About the Definition of ‘God’? But first, we address Faith.
- ‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – Saul, David, and Solomon? Most likely not.
- Is there EXODUS ARCHAEOLOGY? The short answer is “no.”
- Lacking Proof of Bigfoots, Unicorns, and Gods is Just a Lack of Research?
- Religion and Politics: Faith Beliefs vs. Rational Thinking
- Hammer of Truth that lying pig RELIGION: challenged by an archaeologist
- “The Hammer of Truth” -ontology question- What do You Mean by That?
- Navigation of a bad argument: Ad Hominem vs. Attack
- Why is it Often Claimed that Gods have a Gender?
- Why are basically all monotheistic religions ones that have a male god?
- Shifting through the Claims in support of Faith
- Dear Mr. AtHope, The 20th Century is an Indictment of Secularism and a Failed Atheist Century
- An Understanding of the Worldwide Statistics and Dynamics of Terrorist Incidents and Suicide Attacks
- Intoxication and Evolution? Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey” Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution
- Sacred Menstrual cloth? Inanna’s knot, Isis knot, and maybe Ma’at’s feather?
- Damien, why don’t the Hebrews accept the bible stories?
- Dealing with a Troll and Arguing Over Word Meaning
- Knowledge without Belief? Justified beliefs or disbeliefs worthy of Knowledge?
- Afrocentrism and African Religions
- Crecganford @crecganford offers history & stories of the people, places, gods, & culture
- Empiricism-Denier?
I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education.
To me, Animism starts in Southern Africa, then to West Europe, and becomes Totemism. Another split goes near the Russia and Siberia border becoming Shamanism, which heads into Central Europe meeting up with Totemism, which also had moved there, mixing the two which then heads to Lake Baikal in Siberia. From there this Shamanism-Totemism heads to Turkey where it becomes Paganism.
Not all “Religions” or “Religious Persuasions” have a god(s) but
All can be said to believe in some imaginary beings or imaginary things like spirits, afterlives, etc.
Paganism 12,000-4,000 years old
12,000-7,000 years old: related to (Pre-Capitalism)
7,000-5,000 years old: related to (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
5,000 years old: related to (Kings and the Rise of the State)
4,000 years old: related to (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity
“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref
“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref
“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref
“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref
Tutelary deity
“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States
“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref
“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref
“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:
You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref
“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref
“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref
“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref
Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)
“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref
“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref
“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref
“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:
- Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
- Domovoy (Slavic)
- Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
- Húsvættir (Norse)” ref
“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref
“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref
“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref
“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:
The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref
“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:
It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …
In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref
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“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”
I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more.
Sky Father/Sky God?
“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)
Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*
Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*
New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*
Proto-Indo-European: (Dyḗus/Dyḗus ph₂tḗr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Pleth₂wih₁) Earth Mother
Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*
Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*
Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*
Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*
Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*
Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*
Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*
China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*
Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother
Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*
Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*
Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother
Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*
Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*
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Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref
Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref
Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref
“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref
“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref
Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref
Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref
Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref
Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref
Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref
Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref
Knowledge to Ponder:
Stars/Astrology:
- Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
- The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
- Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
- Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.
“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref
Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref
Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref
Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref
Hinduism:
- 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
- 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Judaism:
- around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
- around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed
Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths
- Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
- Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
- Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
- Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
- The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
- The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
- The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
- The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
- Henotheism:
- Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
- Polytheism:
- Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
- 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
- Monotheism:
- Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.
Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:
- Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
- Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
- Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
- Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
- Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
- Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref
This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.
“Theists, there has to be a god, as something can not come from nothing.”
Well, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something. This does not tell us what the something that may have been involved with something coming from nothing. A supposed first cause, thus something (unknown) happened and then there was something is not an open invitation to claim it as known, neither is it justified to call or label such an unknown as anything, especially an unsubstantiated magical thinking belief born of mythology and religious storytelling.
While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.
The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:
Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO
Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO
Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO
Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO
Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO
I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.
The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.
An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”
My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?
I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.
I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.
This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO
Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“
Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)
Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)
Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)
Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)
Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)
Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)
Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)
The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.
Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?
Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.
I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.
Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.
At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.
Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)
Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft
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Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie
Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.
Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”
I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist.
To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so.
My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?
Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago.
To me, animal gods were likely first related to totemism animals around 13,000 to 12,000 years ago or older. Female as goddesses was next to me, 11,000 to 10,000 years ago or so with the emergence of agriculture. Then male gods come about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago with clan wars. Many monotheism-themed religions started in henotheism, emerging out of polytheism/paganism.
Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):
Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism
My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com