Posted by Kohe on July 24, 2006 at 14:09:15:
Research to track Polynesian ancestors to China
STUFF NEWS 25 July 2006
An American museum is tracing back to mainland China the ancestors of the voyagers thought to have become New Zealand's Maori.
The chairman of anthropology at Hawaii's Bishop Museum, Tianlong Jiao, says he has excavated solid evidence that the first voyages of the ancestors of Polynesians were made between the South China Coast across open ocean to the Penghu Islands, 160km away in the Strait of Taiwan.
It is the first direct archaeological link established for the beginnings of the prehistoric Pacific Ocean voyaging, the Honolulu Advertiser reported yesterday.
The people who made the initial voyages were early members of the Austronesian language group, ancestors of Polynesians, Dr Jiao said. The evidence was stone tools excavated at a ancient fishing village called Damaoshan on the small, island of Dongshan on the South China coast.
'We compared stone tools with local materials,' Dr Jiao told the newspaper. 'Lab analysis indicated that none of the stone tools was made of local materials. They must have been imported.' MESSAGE TRUNCATED
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3742809a8153,00.html
There are huge natural reasons why Asia should unite with the Pacific. Its vast region is strategically ideal to any super powers, it holds a significant number of national votes in international bodies, and now we are claimed to be long lost cousins.
A Pacific Asia Party has more valid reasons to be a natural party than any party ever.
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