Экспансия австронезийцев: Как древние мореплаватели заселили Тихий океан

The term “Austronesian” refers to a family of languages spoken throughout the vast oceanic region stretching from the western Indian Ocean to the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Although the designation is primarily linguistic, there is considerable archaeological and ethnographic evidence for a common origin and range of similar cultural features among descendant Austronesian language groups.

Though one should not conceive of all Austronesian peoples and societies as part of an unchanging ethnic or even genetic unity, they have been referred to as belonging to a “phylogenetic unit,” which refers to a common origin, shared or similar patterns of language and cultural organization, and shared genetic configurations among Austronesian groups. The Austronesian language family is among the largest in the world, with around 1,200 languages and approximately 270 million speakers. Given the immensity of the spread of Austronesian languages, the migration and settlement of Austronesian-speaking peoples throughout Oceania between c. 3000 BCE and 1250 CE has been called one of the most incredible feats of migration in human history.

The name “Austronesian” derives from a combination of the Latin australis, meaning “southern,” and the Greek nesos, which means “island.” Based on a reconstruction of the proto-Austronesian language, it is now generally accepted that the ultimate common origin of the Austronesian languages is in southern China, likely Taiwan, dating to at least 5,000 years ago. From there, Austronesians began a series of deliberate migrations southward and eastward between 3000 and 1500 BCE, with some groups moving into the Philippines, eastern Indonesia, and the northern reaches of the island of Borneo. Around roughly the same period, a similar dispersal took place to the west, where Austronesian speakers populated the islands of Java and Sumatra in the western Indonesian archipelago, the Malay Peninsula, and eventually (possibly by 700 CE) the island of Madagascar.

Between 1500 and 1200 BCE, Austronesians dispersed farther eastward and settled areas of western Micronesia and the islands of Melanesia, such as the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and Fiji. By 950 BCE, Austronesians had crossed larger ocean gaps to settle the islands of western Polynesia, namely Tonga and Samoa. From there, sometime near the end of the first millennium CE, Austronesian groups embarked on their last and probably most challenging phase of expansion. Sailing the first double-hulled outrigger canoes, the Austronesians navigated the open ocean over long distances using a complex system of celestial navigation combined with a deep familiarity with the sea that enabled them to discover and settle numerous islands of the Eastern Pacific.

Likely the first islands of eastern Polynesia to be settled were those of the Society Islands, including Tahiti, along with subsequent expansion into the Cook Islands, Marquesas, and the Hawaiian Islands, all taking place roughly between 300 and 900 CE. By 1100 CE, Austronesian groups had settled as far as Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and by 1250 CE, they settled the islands of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Although there is evidence to suggest that Austronesians briefly made contact with the coast of South America, Rapa Nui and Aotearoa are the farthest known extent of Austronesian eastward settlement.

Explanations as to why Austronesian peoples and societies were immensely successful in their dispersal focus on an early adoption of agriculture and the development of sophisticated maritime technology and knowledge. It is argued that some Austronesians in the southern China and Taiwan region, their place of ultimate common origin, adopted agriculture early on when most neighboring societies remained hunter-gatherers. The adoption of agriculture and the attendant increase in population are believed to have been stimuli for an outward expansion of Austronesian agriculturalists into areas inhabited previously by foraging societies. The cultivation of rice and millet were particularly important developments in this process.

This systematic agricultural economy enabled expansion farther into Southeast Asia and beyond. Equally important, early Austronesians developed sophisticated sailing technology, which enabled expansion along coastal routes and, eventually, across the open ocean. The development of canoes using lashed-lug construction, sewn planks, and a hollowed-out log base with outrigger and triangular sail provided the means for coastal and shorter intra-island movements, and the later development (c. 500 BCE) of the double-hulled canoe enabled Austronesians to make long-distance, open-ocean voyages. Using these technologies, Austronesian navigators, or “wayfinders,” carried the people and cargos necessary to settle the numerous islands of the Pacific, bringing with them dogs, chickens, pigs, banana, taro, plant-based medicines, and a variety of other plants and foods.

The Multiple Roles of the Coconut Palm Tree in the Pacific. The cluster of islands (around 20,000) that are spread throughout the Pacific Ocean presented challenges for the first settlers who ventured into the largest of the Earth’s oceans thousands of years ago. A steady supply of food was one of these challenges. The coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) proved helpful in this regard. Carrying fruits year-round for as long as twenty years, coconut trees also doubled as a storage facility because coconuts only have to be harvested when needed. Coconuts provide water, food, and fiber for rope and have thus been called the plant equivalent of the “Swiss army knife.” Furthermore, coconuts do not sink in the ocean and can serve as flotation devices.

As Austronesian settlers headed east into the Pacific, coconuts were trusted companions on voyaging canoes. Coconut palm trees are also flexible and durable and, in a worst-case scenario, provide shelter to human beings, as they can lash themselves to one of the trees during a powerful tropical storm. More recently, during the Pacific Island campaigns of the Second World War, Japanese troops relied on the coconut tree for the construction of fortifications. Suffering from a chronic shortage of steel and concrete, the Japanese defenders used coconut logs to reinforce their bunkers. Coconut trunks, soft and fibrous in the interior, absorbed the impact of a shell or bomb and were not prone to splinters. Rainer F. Buschmann.

Although Pacific Islander communities retain oral traditions that recount in part the history of voyaging and settlement of the islands, most scholars prior to the 1970s argued that the settlement of the Pacific Islands was the result of drift or accidental voyages. These theories, such as that advanced by Thor Heyerdahl, began from the premise that ancient Polynesian sailors lacked the knowledge or technology to navigate vast stretches of open ocean between islands. However, later research on the history and ethnography of Pacific Islanders helped confirm key elements of indigenous oral tradition regarding the eastward Austronesian expansion into Tahiti, the Marquesas, Hawai‘i, and Aotearoa from a homeland known as “Hawaiki” that lay to the west in the Tonga-Samoa region.

In 1976, the Polynesian Voyaging Society built the Hokule‘a, a replica of an ancient Hawaiian voyaging canoe, and sailed 2,700 miles from Hawai‘i to Tahiti using ancient techniques of “wayfinding,” the sophisticated art of celestial navigation and reading signs present in the natural world to cross open-ocean passages. The voyage of the Hokule‘a, which has since circumnavigated the globe, proved that the ancestors of today’s Austronesian-speaking peoples throughout Polynesia had invented and sailed sophisticated canoes to purposefully settle the islands of the Pacific. The voyages also fueled a cultural renaissance in Hawai‘i and elsewhere in the Pacific. Lance Nolde

FURTHER READING:Bellwood, Peter, James Fox, and Darrell Tryon, eds. 1995. The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Canberra: The Australian National University Press.

Howe, Kerry H. 2003. The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled the Pacific Islands? Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Kirch, Patrick V 2012. A Shark Going Inland is My Chief: The Island Civilization of Ancient Hawai‘i. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lewis, David. 1972. We the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific. Canberra: The Australian National University.

Tryon, Darrell T., ed. 1994. Comparative Austronesian Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

BEACHCOMBERS (TRANSCULTURITES)

Although the term is popularly associated with “beach bums,” persons who hang around particular beaches or a popular hotel chain, beachcombers have a deep and prominent history associated with European overseas expansion. On the most basic level, beachcombers are generally European men who opt to join a particular indigenous society and who serve as mediators between the two cultures. They frequently reside near or on the beach, which is often regarded as a dividing line between indigenous and European societies. Beachcombers emerged through voluntary or involuntary actions.

Shipwrecks and indigenous kidnapping result in involuntary beachcombers, whereas individuals who desert from their particular ship crews are referred to as voluntary beachcombers. The survival of a beachcomber depended on two major aspects: their ability and willingness, generally through marriage, to blend into indigenous society; and second, their mastery of European skills, frequently associated with firearms, that were desired by the indigenous host society. The Beachcomber period varies from region to region, but generally follows European first contact and ended with the emergence of colonial or indigenous states.

Beachcombers Around the World.The first examples of beachcombers come to us from the Americas. The most prominent case is that of Gonzalo Guerrero, a common Spanish sailor who in the early sixteenth century became a castaway along the Yucatan Peninsula, located in the current nation of Mexico. Captured by the local Maya society, he was initially held as a slave. Marrying the daughter of a prominent chief, Guerrero integrated into Maya society and became a prominent warrior. When confronted by fellow Spaniards to return to his society, he refused and offered his expertise and knowledge of Spanish society to the Maya to ward off European invasion. Guerrero would end his life fighting the Spaniards and is best remembered for fathering with his high-ranking wife Zazil Ha the first three mixed children, who were regarded as mestizos in the Spanish context.

The transculturite phase in the Caribbean was relatively brief, however, less due to the Spanish imperial reach and more to the massive decline of the indigenous population in the area. Individuals deserting their crew or abandoning their post were able to join pirates or, in the case of African slaves, join maroon societies. In the Indian Ocean, beachcombers can be encountered as well. The best example of such individuals is the extension of a Portuguese “shadow” empire into the islands of Southeast Asia, which was driven by mixed indigenous-Portuguese offspring. The best-known region for beachcombers is in Oceania, in the Pacific Islands, where such transculturites became commonplace following the voyages of exploration in the eighteenth century.

Beachcomber “Golden” Age.The eighteenth-century voyages to the Pacific were widely published and read in Europe and provided a very romanticized image of the region, which enticed many to desert or otherwise jump ship to make a living in the imagined island paradises. Examples of these individuals include James Morrison (died in 1807), who was one of sixteen Bounty mutineers. Following the rebellion on this famous ship, he decided to settle on the island of Tahiti in 1789. Morrison and others used their skills with fire weapons to assist the rise of high chief Tu (Pomare) and his son. Although the mutineers were ultimately captured and deported by the Royal Navy, Morrison and others paved the way for the unification of Tahiti under the Pomare dynasty.

Two other examples come to us from the Hawaiian Islands. In 1790, Hawaiians captured John Young (died in 1835) and Isaac Davis (died in 1810) and handed them over to the ambitious young chief Kamehameha, who employed their skills to unify the islands under his command. Although both attempted to escape unsuccessfully, their assistance to Chief Kamehameha led to increased standing in Hawaiian society. Young, for instance, became governor of the island of Hawai‘i, the largest in the archipelago by the same name.

Perhaps the strangest case of beachcombing was that of George Vason (1773-1838), who arrived in the Tongan archipelago as a missionary to convert the local population in 1797. Increasingly frustrated with his initial purpose, Vason decided to join Tongan society by cohabiting with a local woman and offering his services to a number of chiefs. Eventually fearing for his life in an increasing civil war over the Tongan islands, he returned to England and published a popular account about his escapades. Missionary societies highlighted his case to order that only married couples could travel to the Pacific to support the conversion efforts.

Implications.Although brief, the Beachcomber period following European maritime expansion explored a prominent attempt by indigenous societies to acquire European skills by enlisting (and sometimes kidnapping) individuals in order to cope with the increasing threat. In some cases, especially in the Pacific Islands, beachcombers served to pave the way for the emergence of centralized indigenous states. Transculturites were instrumental in providing assistance with the manufacture or handling of fire weapons, reading and writing, and, in some cases, the distilling of strong spirits. They, too, were instrumental in creating a first generation of mixed offspring who would sometimes rise to prominent positions in their indigenous host society. Rainer F. Buschmann

FURTHER READING:
Campbell, Ian. 1998. “Going Native” in Polynesia: Captivity Narratives and Experiences from the South Pacific. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Clendinnen, Inga. 1987. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dening, Greg. 1980. Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774-1880. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.