Taiwan dispersal theory backed

[dArKeR]

Noted Australian academic Peter Bellwood yesterday backed his theory that the Austronesian-speaking peoples across the Asia-Pacific region originated from Taiwan with the results of new research.

In a lecture at the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung, Professor Bellwood, the director of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University, said archeological evidence indicated that ancestors of today's Austronesian-speaking peoples, numbering about 300 million, dispersed from Taiwan to the Pacific Rim.

Bellwood said that he had collected new evidence for the theory during recent fieldwork in the Batan Islands, the northernmost part of the Philippines, and the Yer Bac prehistoric site in northern Vietnam, where he found pieces of penannular jade rings and earthenware related to the people who lived in prehistoric Taiwan.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/04/26/2003252035