Ancient “Bai Yue” (百越) and “Austronesian” are indigenous peoples with very close relationship, distributing from south China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands.

“Bai Yue”, meaning “Hundreds of Yue” in Chinese language, were the ancient “barbarian” Man (蛮) or Yi (夷) ethnicities living in the south of China and Southeast Asia, being recorded in the Chinese historical literatures in the vision of Huaxia and Han people in Central Plain. They varied as Wu (吴), Yue (越), Yue (粤), Ou (瓯) and Min (闽) in Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, Yu Yue (于越), Eastern Ou (东瓯), Min Yue (闽越), Southern Yue (南越), Western Ou (西瓯), Luo Yue (骆越), Gang Yue (干越), Yang Yue (扬越), Dian Yue (滇越) and other ethnic groups in Eastern Zhou and Han dynasties, and their minority descendants of Zhuang (壮), Dong (侗), Miao (苗), Yao (瑶) from Tang and Song dynasties to the modern period. They were hetero-cultures successively encountered by Huaxia and Han nationality along with their expansion and migration from Central Plain to peripheral states and from the North to South.

Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian language family, are the indigenous societies living in the Southeast Asia and Pacific archipelagos, originally cognized in the vision of Euro-American linguistics since the seventeenth century. They were hetero-cultures encountered by Euro-Americans along the process of their “Geographical Discovery” in the Pacific, varying with the ethnic groups of Malays, Micronesian, Melanesian, and Polynesian.

The relationship between Bai Yue and Proto-Austronesian has long been studied in both Chinese and Euro-American academies. During most of the twentieth century, Chinese historians and archaeologists mainly discussed the origins of Malay ethnics as one branch of Austronesian within the academic framework of the ethno-history of Bai Yue centering on the southeast coast of China, while western academic peers mainly based on the linguistic investigation of modern Austronesian and carried out multi-disciplines’ research on the origin of Proto-Austronesian.

1 The Exploration of the Origin of Malays in the Vision of Research to Ancient Bai Yue

In twentieth century, Chinese ethno-historians and archaeologists were fully aware of the unification of prehistoric and ancient indigenous cultures in the southeast of China, focusing on the systematic restoration of the origin and development of Bai Yue ethnicities, which had been different from the Huaxia system in Central Plain from prehistory to the Zhou and Han dynasties (Lin, H.X. 1936; Chen, G.Q. et al. 1999). The early researchers including Lin Huixiang, Ling Chunsheng  and Xu Songshi, put forward the viewpoint that the Malays had originated from Bai Yue cultures in southeast of China. Their works were actually the earliest efforts of Chinese scholars in study the origin of Austronesian.

Since the 1930s, professor Lin Huixiang of Xiamen University first paid attention to the close relationship between the Neolithic cultures of southern China and those of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Archipelagos, suggesting that the culture of “Maritime Region of Southeastern Asia” represented by prehistoric “Wuping (武平) Type” was different from that of northern China. He said that “being connected with the southern neighboring peninsulas and islands viz. Malaysia or even Polynesian islands, the prehistoric culture of southeast China was different from that of northern China…The stone stepped adzes are characteristic of Neolithic Taiwan, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang in the southeast of the mainland.” “From the southeast region of China, the stepped adze migrated…to the southeast, the islands of South China Sea and Polynesia” (Lin, H.X. 1937, 1956, 1958b). He also extended his vision to the origin of the Malays, pointing out that Bai Yue people in the south of China were in fact the ancient Malayan who resided on the southeast of mainland China, that is, the so-called “Proto-Malaysian”, and comprehensively expounded this viewpoint by the evidences of physique features, cultural customs, archaeological remains, and so on. In terms of prehistoric cultural relics, stone stepped adzes, stone shouldered axe, stone arrowheads, stamped pattern pottery, and other prehistoric cultural characteristics in south China were also commonly seen in the Southeast Asia and Pacific islands. He considered that the Malays of the Southeast Asia were the half-blooded product of Oceanic branch of Mongolian, primitive Indonesians of the Caucasian and the much older pygmy Negrito mixed in the region from Indochina to south China, and gradually migrated southward to the islands of Southeast Asia in the Neolithic period. He drew two southward migrating routes of these Proto-Malaysian, namely, the western route from Indochina peninsula to Sumatra, Java islands, and the eastern route from the coast of Fujian and Guangdong to Taiwan, the Philippines, Sulawesi, Sulu, and Borneo (Lin, H.X. 1938, 1947, 1958a).

In the same time, professor Ling Chunsheng put forward the hypothesis of “Asian Mediterranean” cultural circle around the South China Sea and described the indigenous community among the southern China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. He insisted that the distribution of Indonesian cultural circle suggested by the western anthropologists should be extended to the mainland of southern China. He made a macroscopic comparison on the ancient cultural stratifications respectively in the southern China, Indochina Peninsula, and Southeast Asian Archipelago. His theory revealed the co-exiting indigenous cultural foundation among the mainland, peninsula, and archipelago around the South China Sea prior to the immigration of Indian, Sino-Tibetan, Arabian and European peoples. He also divided the ancient cultures of East Asia regionally into Mainland Culture of Huaxia and Han nationality in the central plains and northwestern inland, and Maritime Culture of Island Yi and Bai Yue ethnicities in the southeastern region. He considered the indigenous maritime ethnics in the islands of Southeast Asia, namely the Austronesian, as the result of the long voyages of Island Yi and Bai Yue migration from the mainland of southeast coast of China to islands since prehistory (Ling, C.S. 1950, 1954a, b, 1961).

Professor Xu Songshi also focused on the ancient ethnic interaction between south China and Southeast Asia, emphasizing the cultural origin of Malays from the ancient indigene of southern China. He argued that “the ancestors of Malays were the Great Yue (大越) who originally lived in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Fujian. The minorities of Miao, Yao and Dan today are most closely related to the ancestors of Malays.” He also expounded the relationship between the Wu, Yue, Min Yue, Miao, Yao people in mainland of southern China and Malays of Southeast Asia according to their shared common cultures of language, custom, physique, material implement and so on. Specifically, he took the original land of Wu, Yue and Min Yue as the largest birthplaces of ancient Malay ethnic groups (Xu, S.S. 1939, 1946, 1959).

Since the 1950s, the study of Chinese scholars on the indigenous cultural relationship between southern China and Southeast Asia and Pacific basically followed the historical vision of Bai Yue cultural history taken by these predecessors. The History of Bai Yue Ethnicities of Xiamen University as the representative works, was in fact the inheritance and extension of professor Lin Huixiang’s researches. They hold that “as early as the late Neolithic period, there were close cultural interactions between ancestor of ancient Bai Yue people and the prehistoric cultures of Southeast Asia. Later, the Bai Yue people, especially those in the southeastern coast of China, moved southward several times from the mainland to the Philippines through Taiwan, and those in the southwestern and southern regions migrated southward to Indochina and other places. The migrated Bai Yue people assimilated with the local indigenous peoples and developed into what are now the ethnicities of Southeast Asia.” They also listed the archaeological and ethnographic evidences to support their argument of the immigration and assimilation of Bai Yue (Chen, G.Q. et al. 1999).

In general, in the past twentieth century, in studying the indigenous cultures in the maritime region of Asia-Pacific, Chinese scholars mainly focused on the Malays as a branch of Austronesian, rather than concerning the diverse and other widely distributing Austronesian cultures in Oceania. In exploring the origins of Malays of Southeast Asia, almost all of them started from the vision of Bai Yue history, regarding the Malays people as the result of migration of ancient Bai Yue across the South China Sea.

2 The Multidiscipline Researches on the Origin of Proto-Austronesian in the Vision of Modern Linguistics

Since the very beginning of the research, “Austronesian” was a linguistic identification and originally recognized as a linguistic community. The linguistic approach had been the breakthrough point and the basis for the multidiscipline explorations on the origin of Austronesian since the nineteenth century.

The indigenous peoples on the islands of Southeast Asia and Oceania were respectively considered as independent “Indonesian” and “Oceanian” in early Euro-American academy. On the one hand, Spanish, French, British had long discovered the unification and intrinsic connection of more than 1200 different native languages on the islands in the Great South Sea of Oceania. Except the Papuans on the island of New Guinea and the indigenous people of the Australian continent, the native languages of three archipelagos of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia are highly unified and have correlation with distinctive physique, religions, cultures and folklores. This unified indigenous segment of cultural history is termed “Oceanian” or “Austronesian” (Kirch, P.V. 2002: 4–10, 305–307). On the other hand, European referred to the Southeast Asian archipelagos as “India” and termed the indigenous peoples there as “Oost indie”, “Indonesian” or “Malaysian” in the Dutch and English literatures. German anthropologist A. Bastian and American anthropologist A. L. Kroeber respectively outlined the identity of the indigenous community centered on the Southeast Asian islands, the Indonesian or “Southeast Asiatic” culture in which mainland and islands shared alike (Kroeber, A.L. 1974: 225–228).

In the early exploration of the origin of Austronesian of Oceania since the nineteenth century, anthropologists have come up with various theories of locally Oceanian, Southeast Asian, or even American origin (Howard, A. 1967). The theory of local origin of Oceania was based mainly on the false geological tectonic assumption that Oceanian archipelagos had been the remains of the lost continent and the center of Austronesian. They asserted the Malays in Southeast Asia were offspring of the Austronesian blown westward from Polynesia by prevailing winds (Moereenhout. J.A.1837, 1942). The advocators of the theory of American origin based on the similarities in languages, physiques, customs and mores, evil spirits, human sacrifices, cannibalism, decorative arts, writing symbols, megalithic architectures, agricultures, caste, and property systems between the Polynesian and the South American Indians, as well as factors such as monsoons and ocean currents, arguing that the indigenous Oceanian originated from the American Indians who spread westward (Garnier, J. 1870; Howard. A. 1967; Heyerdahl, T. 1952: 177–178).

As the basic and key methodology in exploring the origin and diffusion of Austronesian, linguistics involves different ways of comparative linguistics, linguistic paleontology, and historical linguistics summarized by M. Swadesh (1964). The comparative linguistics was pioneered by E. Sapir in the study of American Indians (1916), which identifying the region with the highest degree of linguistic variability and complexity as the common origin of the subsequent separating ethnic groups according to the lexicostatistical classification of the languages. Regarding the Austronesian, I. Dyen used Swadesh’s “Basic Vocabulary” for the comparative study of language divergence of modern Austronesian, and found that the language variation and complexity of the three regions are the highest, namely Taiwan, Sumatra, and the Bismarck Islands in the eastern part of New Guinea, thus identifying them as the origins of Austronesian (Dyen, I. 1962). By the same way, through the comparative study of the lexical classification, grammars of different dialects, and sub-regional languages, American linguist Horatio Haley deduced the chronological genealogies of Austronesian languages, combining monsoon and cultural data, expounded the path of the migration and spreading of the Proto-Austronesian from the East Indies of Southeast Asia to the Pacific islands (Howard, A. 1967). In another linguistics study, R. Blust assumed the “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian”, establishing the “Family Tree for Austronesian” basing on the cognate of different linguistic branches, and concluding that the Proto-Austronesian was initially split in Taiwan, and then gradually spread to the Philippines, Kepulauan Maluku, and Lesser Sunda Islands, New Guinea and three archipelagos in Pacific (Blust, R. 1985, 1995).

The method of linguistic paleontology and historical linguistics are based on the lexical analysis of modern ethnic groups to “discover” its ecological and cultural content of historical period. The historical features of flora and fauna concealed in the modern vocabulary reflect the environment of possible original land of the ethnics before migration. Dutch scholar H. A. Kern discovered the flora and fauna features of tropical coast and assumed that the most likely region of the Proto-Austronesian is on the coast of the Indochina peninsula (Kern, H.A. 1889). R. Blust reconstructed that the region of the proto-Austronesian was in the west of the Huxley’s line, namely between Taiwan or Sunda Islands (Blust, R. 1976, 1982).

The physical anthropology and anthropometrics were another important discipline in classification and identification of the indigenous people in Southeast Asia and Oceania and searching for evidences of their origin and migration. As early as 1914, Georg Friederici identified three basic racial elements concerned the indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia and Pacific, namely Negrito in the Malay Peninsula, Melanesia Islands, and Australian, Papuans mainly living in New Guinea, and Malayo-Polynesian or Austronesian previously migrating from the Indochina peninsula to the archipelagos. This early classification preliminary revealed the diverse peopling of indigenes before Hinduization and Sino-Tibetan migration (Friederici, G. 1914; Howard, A. 1967). More scholars have noted the complexity of the ethnicities of the region on perspective of diachronic series showing the history of migration and change of ancient people. For example, Roland Dixon reconstructed the five stages of migration of indigenous peoples, namely the oldest Negrito of Southeast Asia, indigenous Australians who moved southward from Southeast Asia, and the Negroids who migrated from Southeast Asia to the Oceanic islands, Indonesians who migrated from the Indochina peninsula or the coast of southern China to Southeast Asia and the Pacific with possibly interracial Caucasians, as well as Mongolians who spread from continent Asia to oceans (Dixon, R. 1920, 1929). Further human biological investigation revealed regional hereditary genetic connection and diachronic continuity of the indigenous ethnics around South China Sea since the late Pleistocene to the early and mid-Holocene, forming the viewpoint of “Regional Continuity Model” or “Local Evolution Hypothesis”. Specifically, the human being of “Ancient South China Type” in Neolithic and Bronze ages had been close to Indonesians and Melanesians, who could even be traced back to the late Paleolithic Liujiang Man (柳江人) (Wu, X.Z. 1987; Zhu, H. 2002). Dental morphological researches also have confirmed the ethnic continuing of indigenous people in south China and Southeast Asia since the late Pleistocene, reflected in the formation of the Sundadonty type (Turner II. C.G. 1990). The molecular biology supported the general consensus of cross-border unity and at least the early Neolithic origin of the ancient Bai Yue and Proto-Austronesian in southern China and Southeast Asia (Merriweather, D.A. et al. 1999; Huang, Y. et al. 2003; Chiu, H.L. 2015; Yang, M.A. et al. 2020).

The cognition of the origin of indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia and Oceania was deepened by the investigations of ethnology and archaeology (Dixon, R. 1920, 1929, 1932, 1934; Heine-Geldern, R. 1932; Skinner, H.D. 1934, 1957; Beyer, H.O. 1948; Suggs, R. 1960a, b). Of these works, Heine-Geldern summarized eight successive cultural stages mainly through the typological research on the stone adzes, showing the Neolithic cultures’ diffusion and mixture in south of China, Southeast Asia, and Pacific, setting the foundation for understanding the integrated and changing history of indigenous cultures in this maritime region (Heine-Geldern, R. 1932). The discovery and study of Lapita Culture was the representative exploration to the Neolithic development of Austronesian, which was represented by a series of distinctive material cultures, such as the settlement pattern of the beach terraces or shallow lagoons with stilt house, utilizing of tree crops, animal domesticating and sophisticated fishing, earthenware vessels with red slipped plain or dentate stamped pattern wares varying of round, flat bottom, ring foot pots, jars, plates, basins, and bowls. The culture dated about 3500–2500 years ago and distributed west from Mussau Island of Papua New Guinea and east to Samoa, showing the gradual spread of Austronesian ancestors from west to east in the Pacific (Kirch, P.V. 1997, 2002). The investigation on the origin of Lapita Culture provides an important entry point for searching the earliest homeland of Proto-Austronesian.

Of investigation to the origin of the Austronesian and Lapita Culture, the hypothesis of “Out of Taiwan” and “Neolithic Rice Farming” were the most influential reconstructions. Both of them were not the achievement of purely archaeological discovery, but the archaeological deduction and annotation to the premise of linguistic model. The hypothesis “Out of Taiwan” was in fact based on the “generally accepted conclusions” of “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian” of comparative linguistic discovery, and then prejudicially identified the oldest Neolithic Tapengkeng (大坌坑) Culture in Taiwan as the heritage of oldest Proto-Austronesian. Archaeologists linked the cultural remains of corded pattern pottery in Tapengkeng Culture and the adjacent Fuguodun (富国墩) Type on the coast of Fujian with the ancestors of Austronesian (Chang, K.C. et al. 1964; Chang, K.C. 1987). Professor Peter Bellwood and other scholars also emphasized Taiwan as the main focus of the source of Lapita Culture, constructing the model of “Out of Taiwan” as history of expansion of Proto-Austronesian, which starting 5000 years ago from the southeastern coast of China centered on Fujian and Taiwan, expanding to Southeast Asian Islands in 5000–3000 BP, and then spread to Pacific Islands in 3000–1000 BP (Bellwood, P. 1997; Kirch, P.V. 1997). So the reason for Fujian and Taiwan having long been focused in the search for the homeland of Proto-Austronesian was in fact the linguistic “discovery” of “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian”, rather than the archaeological discovery of the oldest Austronesian. However, the latest linguistic investigation and research in south of China proved that the hypothesis of “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian” was uncertain and not all inclusive (Deng, X.H. 1992, 1994; Deng, X.H. et al. 2011). So we queried that the oldest Neolithic Tapengkeng Culture in Taiwan might be the origin of local Austronesian, it couldn’t be inter-attestation and the archaeological evidence of linguistic “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian” hypothesis.

Another fashionable work on the origin and dispersal of Austronesian was the hypothesis of “Neolithic Rice Farming”, which was based on another premise of the linguistic “Language-Farming Model” advocating that the Proto-Austronesian had been a group of “farming” and “Neolithic” people. A lot of archaeologists considered that the “Neolithic” “farming” and migrating Austronesian were different from the indigenous gathering-hunting and non-Neolithic groups in Asia–Pacific region, putting forward the “Two-Layer Model” to explain the prehistoric cultural and ethnic changes. They argued that Austronesian had brought a full agricultural economy and introduced pottery, stone adzes into the Indo-Malaysian archipelago while indigenous people continued the hunting and gathering there (Gorman, C.F. 1971; Bellwood, P. 1997: 201–202). In fact, over the past ten thousand years, indigenous cultures, including the Proto-Austronesian, was generally suited in the cultural margin of Neolithic cereal farming zone of East Asia centered in the middle and lower reaches of Yellow and Yangtze rivers, and their food economy remained in the foraging pattern of hunting-gathering for a long period of time. The rice cultivation agriculture was not the inherent subsistent pattern of early Proto-Austronesian and was just gradually accepted by them in the late stage of prehistory, much later than their foraging and maritime history. No remains of cultivated rice have been found in the prehistoric Pacific Islands including Lapita Culture, showing that it was not the essential cultural connotation of the Proto-Austronesian before they spread to the Pacific. So the “Neolithic Rice Farming” was not identified with Proto-Austronesian, and the southward track of the dissemination of rice farming was by no means circumstantial evidence of the migration route of Austronesian.

In short, since the “Austronesian” was originally identified as a linguistic community, the linguistics had been methodologically the theoretical accordance for the multidiscipline researches of Euro-American anthropologists in last century. They generally explored the origin of Proto-Austronesian under the premise of the linguistic investigation in the Southeast Asia and the Pacific Archipelagos, reconstructing the theories of “Out of Taiwan” and “Two-Layer Model” of Austronesian history. However, the “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian” as the most important “discovery” of comparative linguistics was uncertain for the reason of excluding the potential Proto-Austronesian language heritages in the south of mainland China, in which the abundant language elements of Proto-Austronesian have been investigated in the lower layer of Zhuang-Dong (壮侗, Kam-Tai) language family or even Han dialects of southeast China. They are indispensable for systematic lexicostatistics in reconstructing of “family tree” of Austronesian languages. This systematic deficiency of modern comparative linguistic investigation of Austronesian made their “generally accepted conclusions” of “Taiwan Homeland of Austronesian” and the related archaeological reconstruction of “Out of Taiwan” unconvincing. The hypothesis of “Two-Layer Model” and the “Neolithic Rice Farming” of Austronesian are open to dispute too, which is not consistent with the continuous and inherited indigenous history of hunting and gathering in the most time of Neolithic age in south coast of China and Southeast Asia until the acceptance of rice cultivation in the late Neolithic age.

3 The Archaeological Perspective on the Prehistoric Cultural Interaction Between Ancient Bai Yue and Proto-Austronesian

For more than one century, Chinese and Euro-American scholars have respectively concentrated on the cultural origins of the indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia and Pacific Archipelagos. Western anthropologists mainly based on the linguistic standpoint of the modern Austronesian, exploring the original homeland of Proto-Austronesian, while the Chinese scholars have constructed the history of oceanic dispersal of Proto-Malaysian based on the history of ancient Bai Yue indigenes of southern China. The different perspectives and academic estrangement of Bai Yue history in the East and Austronesian anthropology in the West caused the awkward situation of different focuses, restricting the mutual understanding on the origin of the indigenous ethnics in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

In fact, the preliminary investigations of multidiscipline show that there were a series of basic cultural commonness between ancient Bai Yue and Proto-Austronesian (Malaysian), indicating that there existed a certain degree of prehistoric and indigenous cultural community in the vast Asia–Pacific maritime region around the South China Sea. The investigation of this macroscopic history of “Bai Yue-Proto-Austronesian” through the further comparative studies of archaeology, physical anthropology, ethnology, and ethno-linguistics in the cross-border region of Asia–Pacific is still with considerable academic potentiality (Wu, C.M. 2003).

The essential unity of indigenous cultures from prehistoric ancestors of Bai Yue to the Proto-Austronesian in the Asia–Pacific region had been deeply based on the commonness and inheritance of the Paleolithic pebble stone tool tradition over hundreds of thousands of years. The pebble stone tool culture since the middle Pleistocene represented the mainstream of Paleolithic culture broadly in southern China and Southeast Asia, which was basically different from the flake stone implements in north China and northeast Asia, presenting the earliest evidence with far distant origin and continuous development of indigenous culture in the Maritime Region of Southeastern Asia (Wu, X.Z. 1987; Wu, R.K. et al. 1989; Wu, C.M. 1999c:41-60; Wang, Y.P. 1997: 142–158).

At about ten thousand years ago when the global Mesolithic upheaval and Neolithization happened, the unity of prehistoric cultures between south China and Southeast Asia continued and became more prominent. The subject cultural connotation of Hoabinian period inherited the tradition of pebble stone tools of Paleolithic age and developed a lot of new elements of local Neolithization. Specifically, the Mesolithic and early Neolithic cultures generally presented the foraging pattern of hunting, gathering, and fishing, continued chopped pebble tool, innovated Sumatralith style discoid pebble tool, and improved pebble tools with chiseled perforation, concaved surface, ground edge, as well as quasi “Neolithic” of embryonic axes and adzes, coexisting a group of Microlithic remains. These common features during Hoabinian period across the borders of southern coast of China and Southeast Asia, inherited hundreds of thousands of years’ local Paleolithic tradition and gave birth to the native Neolithic cultures, demonstrating the regional continuity of the prehistoric indigenous cultures.

Eight or nine thousand to two or three thousand years ago, the prehistoric cultures in maritime region of Southeastern Asia respectively evolved into the Neolithic, Bronze, and Early Iron Ages. In the mainland of the southeast of China, the indigenous cultures developed and varied as a series of regional and temporal types of material remains characterized by stone stepped adzes, shouldered stone axes and adzes, and stamped pattern pottery wares mostly with round bottom and ring foot, which were basically different from the Huaxia cultural system characterized by tripod and pouch-shaped leg pottery vessels centered in the lower reaches of the Yellow River. These indigenous cultural heritages reflect the distribution and variants of ancient Bai Yue ethnicities, the North-South cultural interaction and Huaxia-Bai Yue assimilation in prehistory and early history of China. For the reason of environmental restraint of Wuyi-Nanling mountainous watershed, and the differential locations in the geopolitical order of “Central Nation-Peripheral Barbarian States” of ancient Chinese civilization, these indigenous cultures varied in three sub-regions and multi-districts, showing differentiated enhancing of indigenous characteristics from north to south, from inland to ocean. In the plain region lying to the south of the lower reaches of Yangtze River, to the west and north of Wuyi-Nanling watershed, “Relying on Huaxia Nationality” and territorially connecting to the Central Plains, the indigenous cultures were more deeply assimilated by the Huaxia culture, coexisting a lot of tripod and pouch-shaped leg pottery vessels of northern system. In the hilly and mountainous coast of southeast China, lying to the east and south of Wuyi-Nanling, locating far away from the Central Plains, “Facing Maritime Barbarians of Austronesian”. the indigenous cultures developed in the semi-enclosed geographical environment. In the oceanic region of Taiwan, Hainan and other continental islands, locating far beyond the range of Huaxia influence during prehistoric age, indigenous cultures were more strongly and persistently characterized by pottery wares of round bottom and ring foot of southern system, almost no tripod and pouch-shaped leg pottery vessels discovered in prehistory (Wu, C.M. 1999c: 63–81). Even the modern heritage of the primitive pottery making of Taiwan Aboriginals continued in line with the Neolithic cultural tradition represented by stamped geometric pattern pottery wares (Wu, C.M. 1994b). The indigenous culture of the stamped pottery of mainland of southeastern China extended in fact to the prehistoric cultures of Southeast Asia, such as Kalanay, Tabon, and Novaliches sites in the Philippines, in which the majority potteries were the round bottom and some ring foot wares with geometric patterns (Jocano, F.L. 1975: 23–33; Wu, C.M. 2008b). The carved and stamped geometric patterns of pottery pots and bowls were also the characteristic vessels in the Neolithic culture of the Indonesian archipelagos. In Neolithic Lapita Culture of Oceania, a group of potteries of round and flat bottom or ring foot, with polished in red slip, stamped and carved geometric patterns (Kirch, P.V. 1982, 1997, 2002: 101–106), also shared similar indigenous features with those in the southeast coast of mainland China. This indigenous cultural commonness among the mainland and islands in south China, Southeast Asia, and Oceania since the Neolithic Age, reflect the assimilation of prehistoric and early historic cultures of ancient Bai Yue-Proto-Austronesian as a continuous cultural system.

It should be noted that the exterior elements from the North such as the tripod and pouch-shaped leg pottery vessels of Huaxia system respectively discovered in Shixia (石峡) and Tanshishan (昙石山) cultures on the southeast coast of China had been regarded as the southward dispersal “Sino-Tibetan Language Family” of Lungshanoid (Longshan) period (Chang, K.C. 1987a, 1989). This hypothesis made the date of sinicization of the Indigenous of Bai Yue and Proto-Austronesian back to the late Neolithic age of China, which was an illusion of archaeological discovery and typological research and not in line with the continuing development of indigenous cultures along the Neolithic, Bronze, and early Iron ages in the southeast coast of China. The indigenous vessels in Shixia Culture represented by the potteries of round bottom Fu (釜) cauldrons, pots and ring foot jars, pots, and plates were the constant core content and were inherited in the Middle Layer Type of Shixia in the Xia and Shang dynasties. The exterior Longshan elements indirectly from north of China in Shixia Culture were just the short-lived “interruption” and did not continue by the way of linking in the cultural series. It was similar in the coast of Fujian centered at the lower reaches of the Minjiang River. In the Neolithic cultural sequence of the Kechutou (壳丘头), Tanshishan (lower, middle and upper layers), and Huangtulun (黄土仑) cultures dating 6000–3000 years ago, the main potteries of round bottom and ring foot formed a continuing indigenous compound. A very small amount of Longshan elements in Tanshishan Culture neither represented the migration of “Sino-Tibetan Language Family”, nor passed on to the following Upper Layer Type of Tanshishan and Huangtulun Culture. The earliest archaeological evidence of the direct migration of “Sino-Tibetan Language Family” in this region was the burial remains of Chu-Han people at Zhuangbianshan (庄边山) site in Minhou (闽侯) about 2000 years ago. Since the Six Dynasties, the systematically cultural supersession of “Sino-Tibetan Language Family” finally began (Wu, C.M. 1995).

Because of the successively multicultural assimilations of the migrated Han nationality, Arabian, Indian, and modern European which resulted in the deep cultural changes in the “Maritime Region of Southeastern Asia”, the indigenous cultural connotation of Bai Yue-Proto-Austronesian continued and were integrated into their minority descendants of Zhuang-Dong (Kam-tai) language family and the indigenized group of Han nationality in southern China and were accumulated in modern cultures of southern China and Southeast Asia. As far as linguistics is concerned, scholars made in-depth investigations on the southern Zhuang-Dong (Kam-tai) language family, comparing them with the language of modern Austronesian, discovering that the language of Li, Shui, Dong, Zhuang and other minorities’ descendants of Bai Yue share much lexicostatistical commonness with that of the Taiwan aboriginals and indigenous population in the Philippines and Malaysia. The same connotation even exists in southern Chinese Han dialects of Min (Fujian), Yue (粤 Guangdong) and Hakka (客家). These lexicostatistics investigations on the genetic affinity between Southern Chinese and Austronesian present the new and indispensable linguistic perspective on searching for the origin of Austronesian (Deng, X.H. 1992, 1994; Deng, X.H. et al. 2011).

Ethnographically, there are also a great amount of indigenous cultural heritages of ancient Miao, Man and Bai Yue, which were accumulated in modern societies of southeast coast of China and Southeast Asia. The most distinctive feature of indigenous inheritance was the prosperous maritime culture and rising of Maritime Silk Road along the southeast coast of China during the Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, which had been identified as the continuation of the prehistoric and early seafaring practices of Bai Yue people who were “good at using boats” (Huang, S.P. 1999; Gong, B.H. 1999; Wu, C.M. 2004, 2007, 2011b, 2017). The maritime culture has been the result of cross-cultural assimilation of both sinicization of native Bai Yue and indigenization of immigrated Han nationality, recalling the important cultural memories of indigenous community of Bai Yue and Proto-Austronesian in Asia-Pacific region.