Out of Taiwan Theory Vs Out of Sundaland Theory in Malaysia

Out of Taiwan Theory Vs Out of Sundaland Theory in Malaysia

Out of Taiwan model

An element in the ancestry of Austronesian-speaking peoples, the one which carried their ancestral language, originated on the island of Taiwan following the migration of pre-Austronesian-speaking peoples from continental Asia between approximately 10,000–6,000 BC.[6][15] Other research has suggested that, according to radiocarbon dates, Austronesians may have migrated from mainland China to Taiwan as late as 4000 BC.[16]


According to the mainstream "out-of-Taiwan model", a large-scale Austronesian expansion began around 5000–2500 BC. Population growth primarily fuelled this migration. These first settlers may have landed in northern Luzon in the archipelago of the Philippines, intermingling with the earlier Australo-Melanesian population who had inhabited the islands since about 23,000 years earlier. Over the next thousand years, Austronesian peoples migrated southeast to the rest of the Philippines, and into the islands of the Celebes Sea, Borneo, and Indonesia. The Austronesian peoples of Maritime Southeast Asia sailed eastward, and spread to the islands of Melanesia and Micronesia between 1200 BC and 500 AD respectively. The Austronesian inhabitants that spread westward through Maritime Southeast Asia had reached some parts of mainland Southeast Asia, and later on Madagascar.[15][17]


Sailing from Melanesia, and Micronesia, the Austronesian peoples discovered Polynesia by 1000 BC. These people settled most of the Pacific Islands. They had settled Easter Island by 300 AD, Hawaii by 400 AD, and into New Zealand by about 1280 AD. There is evidence, based in the spreading of the sweet potato, that they reached South America where they traded with the Native Americans.[18][19]


In the Indian Ocean they sailed west from Maritime Southeast Asia; the Austronesian peoples reached Madagascar by ca. 50–500 AD.[20][21]

Out of Sundaland model


This "out of Taiwan model" has been recently challenged by a 2008 study from Leeds University and published in Molecular Biology and Evolution. Examination of mitochondrial DNA lineages shows that they have been evolving within Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) for a longer period than previously believed. Population dispersals occurred at the same time as sea levels rose, which may have resulted in migrations from the Philippines to as far north as Taiwan within the last 10,000 years.[22] The population migrations were most likely to have been driven by climate change — the effects of the drowning of a huge ancient peninsula called ‘Sundaland’ (that extended the Asian landmass as far as Borneo and Java). This happened during the period 15,000 to 7,000 years ago following the last Ice Age. Oppenheimer outlines how rising sea levels in three massive pulses caused flooding and the submergence of the Sunda Peninsula, creating the Java and South China Seas and the thousands of islands that make up Indonesia and the Philippines today.[12]


The new findings from HUGO (Human Genome Organization) also shows that Asia was populated primarily through a single migration event from the south.[23] They found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes. Although the Chinese population is very large, it has less variation than the smaller number of individuals living in South East Asia, because the Chinese expansion occurred very recently, following the development of rice agriculture — within only the last 10,000 years.