Data links early settlers to African diaspora - Formosa

[dArKeR]

By Wang Hsiao-wen
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Aug 29, 2004,Page 2

Long before Portuguese sailors put "Formosa" on the world map, and long before Chinese people crossed the dark current to set up home here, this land was inhabited by Austronesian Aborigines for thousands of years. Multigenetic analysis reveals that Austronesian tribes arrived as early as 14,000 years ago.

According to Marie Lin (???), who conducted the research as director of the immunohematory reference laboratory at Mackay Memorial Hospital, the gene typology of Taiwan's twelve indigenous peoples suggests a close kinship with Southeast Asian islanders, another subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Lin also deduced that the central mountain tribes and east coast tribes might have different origins due to separate waves of immigration from Africa between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago.

"Even before Taiwan became an island, forefathers of Taiwan's indigenous peoples arrived in Taiwan in the late pleistocene ice age," Lin said after a conference at Mackay Memorial Hospital yesterday.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/08/29/2003200689

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Geography rules!