Posted on 07/05/2005 6:34:19 AM PDT by Pharmboy
A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swathe of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported on Monday.
Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan.
Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes -- who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese -- show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported.
Indigenous Taiwanese, Melanesian and Polynesian populations share three specific mutations in their mitochondrial DNA that are not found in mainland east Asian populations, they report in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.
Their findings suggest that Taiwanese aboriginal populations have been genetically isolated from mainland Chinese for between 10,000 and 20,000 years, and that the original Polynesian migrants originated from people identical to the aboriginal Taiwanese.
Earlier studies have looked at the Y chromosome, which men pass along from father to son.
No Y chromosome link has been found between the early residents of the island of Formosa and the Polynesians, which could suggest early Oceanic societies organized around wives and mothers, the researchers, who included a team at Estonian Biocenterin Tartu, Estonia, said.
The following letter to Mark Steyn touches on your question...
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=30
DANGERS OF GETTING SOFT
One of the things that caught my eye in your recent piece, "One day, Germany will have had enough" was the following line explaining how American military umbrella influenced European thinking. Absolving wealthy nations of the need to maintain credible armies softens them: they decay, almost inevitably, into a semi-non-aligned status.
History seems to support your observation. Following is an excerpt from Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" that I happen to be now reading. Here the author describes what happened when the Maori from New Zealand went to check out the Moriori who have been living on Chatham Islands for some 500 years in peaceful isolation.
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"On the Chatham Islands, 500 miles east of New Zealand, centuries of independence came to a brutal end for the Moriori people in December 1835. On November 19 of that year a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs and axes arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements, announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still then have defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided in a council meeting not to fight back but offer peace, friendship, and division of resources.
"Before Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en masse. Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and enslaved all the others, killing most of them too over the next few years as it suited their whim.
"A Maori conqueror [later] explained, 'We took possession...in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed, and others were killed - but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom.'"
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I cannot tell what a multiculturalist might conclude from this self-explanatory story (and there are many more stories). Maybe the Maori warriors were from broken families and spent too much time watching violent TV shows. I have a better idea though of what a realist would learn from it. Cultural customs that are beyond what we understand as rational are most likely beyond our negotiation capabilities. I've been telling (soft-on-enemies and hard-on-friends) people for years my instinctive observation that they've had it too easy for too long and that they lost their ability to distinguish between friends and enemies - they, as you have pointed out, have decayed.
I only worry that if the appeasers win the upper hand in today's clash with Islamofascist terrorism we all (including many of us non-appeasers) will have to pay a much higher price later - in accordance with terrorist custom.
Jan Vrana
Montreal
Human beings follow a similar pattern, and even warring tribes may well end up swapping females as part of a peace settlement.
Recall that young girl on our One Dollar Coin? Sacajawea? She was a female in transition from one tribe to another.
The swaps were not always peaceful, but healthy young females have always been considered desirable.
Or do I hear disagreement out there on that question ~ somebody doesn't like girls?! Hmmmmmm.
Seems to me there ought to be some East African groups that would be both matrilineal and Moslem. A roommate of mine in college was Shone, and they are matrilineal, and some of them are Moslem. I don't know if they give it up when they convert ~
Hmmm. You really think the Chicoms want to fight the Samoans for Taiwan?
Are you referring to me? Surely you are not suggesting that I questioned your statement about females being traded, because I do not like girls?
Now, if you're simply saying that anyone who disputes your contention ("Human beings, whether they follow matrilinealism or paternalism, trade females") may be doubting it because they find females sexually unappealing---that is still no substitute for a source.
From an economic perspective, anything of value may be regarded as a commodity, and therefore, when an exchange takes place, it is "traded." However, this hardly proves that women have always and everywhere been traded like commodities. It merely proves that some observers play fast and loose with economic terms, and perhaps some observers also consider women to be little more than commodities. "Hmmmmmm."
Now, you were saying that a band of chimpanzees is based on a group of brothers, and that they acquire females from other groups. I presume you are saying, also, that they give their own females to other chimpanzee groups? And it is a simultaneous trade, female for female? Or not? Where did you come by this knowledge? I have tried to verify it, and I cannot.
There was a recent report that the male gorillas that dominate an area are also brothers.
Human beings kind of fall in between chimps and gorillas in so many things, there's no reason for us to be different in this where both chimps and gorillas are so similar.
You do know, of course, that girls are born with "socialization" hardwired in. Boys are flexible and must be "socialized" by the alpha males in the group. That means the girls are already prepared to "fit in" wherever they might go, but the boys aren't.
There are the Luguru in Tanzania, but I am no expert on the success of Islam at assimilating African tribes. That is, I know the Luguru are traditionally matrilineal; I do not know to what extent they are considered orthodox Muslims. They might be politically dominated by Muslims, or in some stage of assimilation, or both.
No, I do not know that. Girls are born socialized, whereas boys are flexible---but girls don't have to be taught to fit in? Sounds to me like the girls are the flexible ones, if they fit in without "preparation."
No matter, I deny all of that. I won't even ask you for a source of those views. I know where you got them. ;)
Sharpton is on his way!! LOL!!
Doesn't do anything to Heyerdahl.He posited that at least part of the Polynesians are the same people as the Ainu who may well be out of the Taiwanese stock also. Just extend migration routes back a tad farther.
Mostly entertaining speculation, but some good pics here and discussion of Lapita pottery and the Melanesians and Polynesians.
http://users.on.net/~mkfenn/page6.htm
(There is also a page1, etc., on the topic; page6 has the pic of bearded man on Lapita pottery.)
Now if we REALLY wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the ChiCom's lust for global power, we would generate a liddle news item about how all the Indonesian peoples were originally from Taiwan, even mainland China itself.
Yeah, I want to see Beijing inform the biggest Muslim population on the planet that they must be "reunited" with Communist China.
Well, it makes for a nice daydream, anyway. ;)
Thanks...nice site.
Thanks Graymatter! Hey Blam, here's a snip from GM's link:
"Mr Tim Denham of adelaide University, excavated the Kuk Swamp, in the Upper Wahgi Valley in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, during 1998 and 1999 and uncovered circular mounds of earth, dated to 7,000 years ago. They were designed to aerate soggy soil so that it could be used for planting in areas that were poorly drained. At a locality nearby there are more advanced and highly planned drainage canals, covering an extensive area as seen in the aerial photo below that are even older. Carbon dating of sediments put the channels at over 9,000 years old."
There's no reasoning to explain. The men moved around by sea, and plunked down their families. The differences could be explained by amplification due to isolation as well as by waves of conquest.
mtDNA studies are GIGO.
July 14 2005 at 09:52AM
Suva - Archaeologists think they have unearthed the first human settlement on the South Pacific island of Fiji, a find believed to be about 3 000 years old, the researchers said on Thursday.
The archaeologists found 16 human skeletons at a burial site at Bourewa, on the south-west of the main island of Viti Levu, said Patrick Nunn, professor of geography at the University of the South Pacific, located in the Fiji capital, Suva.
He said abundant evident at the site suggested that Bourewa was the first human settlement on the 340-island archipelago.
Pottery deliberately buried with or underneath the human remains was of the so-called Lapita style and dated from around 1050 BC, he noted.
'This represents an extraordinarily long ocean journey by the people that carried it' Nunn said the Lapita pottery fragments bear designs typical of the early Lapita period of about 1250 BC in Papua New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands to north-west of Fiji.
Since it was unusual to find such designs on Lapita pottery in Fiji, the suggestions was that the Bourewa settlers were probably a new settlement from the Santa Cruz island group in Solomon Islands chain rather than from another part of Fiji.
The finding throws into question a popular local myth that modern Fijians first landed on the west side of Viti Levu after voyaging from Africa's Tanganyika region, which borders modern-day Tanzania.
Nunn said an unexpected find in the burial site was a piece of obsidian almost certainly from a mine on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea.
"It was carried at least 4 500 kilometres to Bourewa, probably as a talisman. This represents an extraordinarily long ocean journey by the people that carried it," he said.
Obsidian is formed by molten volcanic lava coming in contact with water. Obsidian was used by ancient people as a cutting tool, for weapons, and for ceremonial purposes. It is sometimes found by archaeologists in excavations. - Sapa-AP
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