Heinz-Murray 2E.book

50 Part I: Land and Language

who went to Taiwan began their linguistic differentiation, and about a thou-

sand years later, possibly around 3500 B.C.E., began moving southward into the

Philippines. Here Malayo-Polynesian began to develop. Eventually a western

branch moved into the Indonesian Islands of Borneo, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Java,

and Bali, while an eastern branch headed out into the Pacific where they

became the Polynesian peoples (Bellwood 1992).

The reconstructed protolanguages of Austro-Tai and Malayo-Polynesian

provide interesting evidence for the changes in the economies of peoples adapt-

ing to an equatorial environment. In the Proto-Austro-Tai lexicon are words

for a wet-rice adaptation: field, wet field, garden, plow, rice, sugarcane, the

betel nut complex, cattle, water buffalo, ax, canoe. A new set of terms appears

in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian indicating their new adaptation in the equatorial

Figure 2.3 Members of the Austro-Tai language family.

Austro-Tai*

Tai-Kadai Austronesian**

Malayo-Polynesian**

Western Oceanic

Thai Lao Shan Formosan Malay Iban Javanese Balinese Fijian Samoan Hawaiian etc.

*The Austro-Tai lived in South China prior to 4500 B.C.E. where they developed an economy based

on rice cultivation. Their reconstructed lexicon contains words indicating a wet-rice adaptation:

field, wet field, garden, plow, rice, sugarcane, the betel nut complex, cattle, water buffalo, axe, and

canoe. As populations grew, a group of these Austro-Tai speakers migrated across the Formosa

Strait to Taiwan. Others stayed behind, and their languages became the Tai group, now reduced to

areas of Southern China near the Laos and Vietnamese border. In historic times some of these Tai

began moving into Laos, Burma, and Thailand.

**On Taiwan, over the next thousand years new variants of the language emerged. This became the

parent language known as Proto-Austronesian.

***Around 3500 B.C.E. some of these Taiwanese set out for Luzon and settled the other Philippine

Islands. The Malayo-Polynesian family began to emerge. As they then spread westward into the

Indonesian Islands of Borneo, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Java, and Bali, and eastward into the Pacific,

the economy of many of the groups again changed to suit equatorial conditions, and this is

reflected in a new vocabulary: taro, breadfruit, banana, yam, sago, coconut. When they entered

the Pacific, rice disappeared from their economy and from their language.