AUSTRONESIAN PEOPLE

The term Austronesian peoples refers to a population group present in Southeast Asia or
Oceania who speak, or had ancestors who spoke, one of the Austronesian languages.
Apart from the Polynesian people of Oceania, the Austronesian people include:
Taiwanese Aborigines, the majority ethnic groups of East Timor, Indonesia and
Malaysia.

Western scholars believe the Austronesian people originated on the island of Taiwan
following the migration of pre-Austronesian-speaking peoples from continental Asia
approximately 10,000-6000 B.C. Due to a lengthy split from the Pre-Austronesian
populations, the Proto-Austronesian language; the cultures and ethnic groups of the
Austronesian peoples began on Taiwan approximately 6,000 years ago.

The Austronesian people themselves have a variety of different traditions and history of
their origins. According to most Western scholars, however, the Austronesian people
originated in the island of Taiwan, and are spread as far away as Madagascar in the
Indian Ocean and the Polynesian islands of the Pacific Ocean

According to mainstream Western studies, a large scale Austronesian expansion began

around 5000-2500 B.C. Population growth primarily fuelled this migration. These first
settlers may have landed in northern Luzon in the island of the Philippines
intermingling with the earlier Austral-Melanesian population who had inhabited the
islands about 23,000 years earlier. Over the next thousand years, the Austronesian
people migrated south-east to the rest of the Philippine Islands, and into the islands of
the Celebes Sea, Borneo, and Indonesia. The Austronesian people of Maritime Southeast
Asia sailed eastward, and spread to the islands of Melanesia and Micronesia between
1200 BE.CO., and 500 A.DO. respectively. The Austronesian inhabitants that spread
westward through Maritime Southeast Asia had reached some parts of mainland
Southeast Asia, and later on to Madagascar.
The Philippine Islands - 1899

Sailing from Melanesia and Micronesia, the Austronesian people discovered Polynesia
by 1000 BE.CO. These people settled most of the Pacific Islands. In the Indian Ocean,
sailing west from Maritime Southeast Asia. the Austronesian people reached
Madagascar by 200 A.D.

Similar results by recent studies by Stanford University, in the United States, support
the idea that there is a wide variety of paternal ancestry among the Austronesian
people, aside from European introgression found in Maritime Southeast Asia, Oceania
and Madagascar. They constitute the dominant ethnic group in Maritime Southeast
Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and Madagascar. An estimated figure of around
380,000,000 people living in these regions are of Austronesian descent

The early Austronesian peoples considered the sea as the basic tenet of their life.
Following their diaspora to Southeast Asia and Oceania, they used boats to migrate 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 particularly restricted to the highlands as a result

of warfare. Mummification is only found among the highland Austronesian Filipinos, as
well as in some Indonesian groups in the Celebes and Sumatra.
The Philippine Islands - 1899

By the beginning of the first millennium A.D., most of the Austronesian inhabitants in
Maritime Southeast Asia began trading with India and China, allowing the
establishment of Hinduism and Buddhism. Muslim traders from the Arabian peninsula
were thought to have brought Islam by the 10th century. Islam was established as the
dominant religion in the Indonesian archipelago by the 16th century. Christianity is
normally found in the islands of the Philippines, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, most
of the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar. The Austronesian
inhabitants of Polynesia were, to a large degree, unaffected by this cultural trade, and
were able to retain their indigenous culture in the Pacific region.

The Austronesian music in Maritime Southeast Asia had a mixture of Chinese, Indian
and Islamic musical styles and sounds that had fused together with the indigenous
Austronesian culture and music. In Indonesia, Gamelan, a type of orchestra that
incorporates Xylophone and Metallophone elements, is widely used in its Islamic
cultural tradition. In some parts of the southern and northern Philippine Islands, an
Islamic gong-drum known as Kulintang, and a gong-chime known as Gangsa, are also
used. The Austronesian music of Oceania have retained their indigenous Austronesian
sounds. The Slit drum is an indigenous Austronesian musical instrument that was
invented and used by the Southeast Asian-Austronesian and Oceanic-Austronesian
ethnic groups.
The Philippine Islands - 1899

Europeans in search of spices later colonized most of the Austronesian-speaking

countries of the Asia-Pacific region, beginning from the 16th century with the
Portuguese and Spanish colonization of some parts of Indonesia (present-day East
Timor), the Philippines, Palau, Guam and the Mariana Islands; the Dutch colonization
of the Indonesian archipelago; the British colonization of Malaysia and Oceania; the
French colonization of French Polynesia; and later, the American governance of the
Pacific.

Meanwhile, the British, Germans, French, Americans and Japanese began establishing
spheres of influence within the Pacific Islands during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Japanese later invaded most of Southeast Asia and some parts of the Pacific during
World War II. The latter half of the 20th century initiated independence of modern-day
Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippine Islands, and many of the Pacific Island nations.