Abstract
BackgroundGenetic data for traditional Taiwanese (Formosan) agriculture is essential for tracing the origins on the East Asian mainland of the Austronesian language family, whose homeland is generally placed in Taiwan. Three main models for the origins of the Taiwanese Neolithic have been proposed: origins in coastal north China (Shandong); in coastal central China (Yangtze Valley), and in coastal south China. A combination of linguistic and agricultural evidence helps resolve this controversial issue.ResultsWe report on botanically informed linguistic fieldwork of the agricultural vocabulary of Formosan aborigines, which converges with earlier findings in archaeology, genetics and historical linguistics to assign a lesser role for rice than was earlier thought, and a more important one for the millets. We next present the results of an investigation of domestication genes in a collection of traditional rice landraces maintained by the Formosan aborigines over a hundred years ago. The genes controlling awn length, shattering, caryopsis color, plant and panicle shapes contain the same mutated sequences as modern rice varieties everywhere else in the world, arguing against an independent domestication in south China or Taiwan. Early and traditional Formosan agriculture was based on foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and rice. We trace this suite of cereals to northeastern China in the period 6000–5000 BCE and argue, following earlier proposals, that the precursors of the Austronesians, expanded south along the coast from Shandong after c. 5000 BCE to reach northwest Taiwan in the second half of the 4th millennium BCE. This expansion introduced to Taiwan a mixed farming, fishing and intertidal foraging subsistence strategy; domesticated foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and japonica rice; a belief in the sacredness of foxtail millet; ritual ablation of the upper incisors in adolescents of both sexes; domesticated dogs; and a technological package including inter alia houses, nautical technology, and loom weaving.ConclusionWe suggest that the pre-Austronesians expanded south along the coast from that region after c. 5000 BCE to reach northwest Taiwan in the second half of the 4th millennium BCE.
Highlights
Genetic data for traditional Taiwanese (Formosan) agriculture is essential for tracing the origins on the East Asian mainland of the Austronesian language family, whose homeland is generally placed in Taiwan
In this paper we investigate the contribution of early Austronesian agriculture, especially rice cultivation, to the question of Austronesian origins
In a significant number of cases, informants' responses to our questions on the native words for ‘cooked foxtail’, ‘dehusked foxtail grains’, ‘chaff of foxtail’, ‘mortar used for foxtail millet’, ‘germinated grain of foxtail’, ‘foxtail seed for planting’, ‘flour of foxtail’, and ‘to pound foxtail grains’ (Table 2) were the same words as those presented as referring only to rice since the earliest Austronesian times
Summary
Genetic data for traditional Taiwanese (Formosan) agriculture is essential for tracing the origins on the East Asian mainland of the Austronesian language family, whose homeland is generally placed in Taiwan. The main traditional cereals cultivated by the modern Austronesians in Taiwan, an island thought to be the Austronesian language family homeland, are upland rice, foxtail millet and broomcorn millet. Before the seventeenth century the millets are archaeologically present almost continuously from 1400 CE to 2800 BCE (Table 1) Due to their tiny size as compared to rice, millet grains can barely be detected unless flotation techniques are used; when detected, they are difficult to determine without microscopy. The earliest and most compelling evidence for co-cultivation of the three cereals is from Nan Kuan Li East (NKLE), a neolithic site on the southwest coast of Taiwan dated to 3000–2300 BCE: there, grains of all three cereals occur together in large quantities (Tsang et al 2017). That is, farming only represented one aspect of early Formosan subsistence strategy, as hunting, fishing and coastal foraging are well evident (Li 2013)
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