| Response to Peter Bellwood's review[1]
of “Eden in the East” (Oppenheimer,
S. 1998 Weidenfeld & Nicolson London)
Stephen Oppenheimer (Independent Scholar,
Oxford, UK)
stephen.oppenheimer@ntlworld.com
The question of the origins of the Polynesians
has, for over 200 years, been the subject
of adventure science. Since Captain Cook’s
first speculations on these isolated Pacific
islanders, their language affiliations have
been seen by many, in particular migrationist
scholars, as the solution. The geographic
and numeric centre of gravity of the Austronesian
language family is in island Southeast Asia,
which was therefore originally seen as their
dispersal homeland. However, another view
has held sway for fifteen years, the ‘out
of Taiwan’ model, popularly known as the
‘express train to Polynesia’. This model,
based on the combined evidence of archaeology
and linguistics, proposes a common origin
for all Austronesian-speaking populations,
in an expansion of rice agriculturalists
from south China/Taiwan beginning around
6,000 years ago. However, it is becoming
clear that there is in fact rather little
supporting evidence in favour of this view.
Alternative models suggest that the ancestors
of the Polynesians achieved their maritime
skills and horticultural Neolithic somewhere
between island Southeast Asia and Melanesia,
at an earlier date. Recent advances in human
genetics now allow for an independent test
of these models, lending support to the
latter view rather than the former. Although
local gene flow occurring between the two
bio-geographic regions may have been the
means for the dramatic cultural spread out
to the Pacific, the immediate genetic substrate
for the Polynesian expansion came not from
Taiwan, but from east of the Wallace line,
probably in Wallacea itself.
____________________
Like most authors I look forward to constructive
criticism. I recently received an offprint
of a review, written by Peter Bellwood,
of my book Eden in the East. The
book was published three years ago in 1998
and the review in 2000. Had I seen the review
before it went to press, I would have been
glad to correct the numerous mis-readings
of my text and bibliography that it contained.
I hope to set the record straight here.
Bellwood’s book review was given as part
of a lecture to the Japanese Society for
Oceanic Studies meeting in Japan 1999 and
then published as a paper. The paper starts
with a three page re-statement of Bellwood’s
own particular view of Oceanic and in particular
Austronesian prehistory, set as eight questions
and answers. There is then a bridge. This
first compares various scholarly approaches
to Oceanic prehistory - grand-scale interpretive
versus small-scale detailed investigation
of a few islands; cultural phylogeny seen
as an extension of migrationism versus analysis
of cultural evolution as a result of interchange
between reticulated spheres of interaction.
Bellwood states his preference, at least
in the case of Pacific prehistory, for the
former approach in each of these two comparisons.
Having admitted to perhaps unfashionable
tendencies himself, Bellwood then draws
a line between such scholarly revisionism
and the use, in other peoples’ grand interpretations,
of what he implies to be poor data. It becomes
clear later that some of these ‘data’ may
include publications by archaeologists with
whom he does not agree (e.g. Pookajorn,
Meacham, Chazine, Chia and Solheim).
He then introduces “Eden in the East” as
an example of such mis-use with an explicit
link to Atlantis books: “...claims from
the archaeological literature to postulate
the presence of an Atlantis-like culture...
with an...agricultural economy” The
introduction of Atlantis claims sets the
tone of the review.
As author of Eden in the East I chose to
avoid making any such claims (location of
the mythical Atlantis or the presence of
a super-culture) in order, vainly as I now
see, to escape such ‘critical’ tactics.
As far as horticulture is concerned
I did question the assumption that absence
of evidence for root-crop domestication
in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA)
before Bellwood’s hypothetical date
of agriculture movement out of China into
Taiwan (and thence to ISEA) was evidence
for its absence. Work on phytoliths of taro
and of other root crops may resolve this
question soon for ISEA. The reviewer himself
acknowledges the difficulty of finding such
evidence (end p.10). I also cite Solheim
with a similar view of early root-crop horticulture
on Mainland Southeast Asia, and also Solheim’s
view that rice spread from Borneo to the
Philippines rather than the other way
round.[2]
I mention this also in view of the argument
for early root-crop horticulture in Papua
New Guinea from 9,000 BP (Eden p.71).
As an aside on the issue of data quality,
I gather that, unlike Bellwood, not all
archaeologists even accept the evidence
for the latter at Kuk in the New Guinea
highlands.
While on the lack agricultural evidence,
I am not clear quite why Bellwood feels
that I am using Surin Pookajorn’s evidence
for early rice use on mainland Southeast
Asia as the major archaeological weapon
for my own thesis. On the contrary, I devote
considerable space to questioning the relevance
of rice agriculture to the bulk of the Austronesian
language expansions. The point I am trying
to make with the Sakai cave evidence and
with the pre-Philippines rice dates from
Sarawak caves is that the existing evidence
is not strong enough to pin down the date
of introduction of rice domestication in
Southeast Asia to only 4000 BP and via the
Philippines. Such evidence would be a necessary
proof for the Bellwood hypothesis that a
rice-growing people invaded from the Philippines
and swamped a purely hunter-gatherer population
in ISEA.
Putting aside the opinions of other archaeologists,
with whom he does not agree, the reviewer
flatters me with more archaeological re-interpretation
than I suggest on my own part. Far from
trying to claim a firm archaeological reconstruction
of ISEA prehistory I repeatedly point out
the very paucity of material cultural remains
of any description on the rump Sunda shelf
before 5500 BP, which was the high-water
point of the post-glacial sea-level rise
(e.g. see p.80). Maybe that is why post-glacial
early Holocene ISEA prehistory is so poorly
characterised; but the same limitation of
cultural remains applies to any archaeological
reconstruction of this period, including
Bellwood’s. For this reason, much of the
book deals with other sources of evidence
of cultural and demic dispersals in the
region including that most direct measure
of human migration: genetics.
Following the ‘Atlantis’ shot, the reviewer
states “I do not wish here to argue in detail
against Oppenheimer’s linguistic and genetic
hypothesis; I am neither a linguist nor
a geneticist and would prefer to leave these
issues to those of my colleagues who are
better equipped in these disciplines than
me.” This humble protestation seems disingenuous
in view of Bellwood’s huge published output
over the past 30 years using evidence from
both of these as well as many other disciplines.
He has shown no such coyness to discuss
other disciplinary evidence, from what I
have read of his work. I would certainly
not challenge his right to cross into other
people’s turf, carefully assess their arguments
(rather than technique) and then make his
synthesis. On that basis, I do not believe
he should object to others treading that
same contentious grass.
I find Bellwood’s unwillingness to confront
my specific criticisms of his own model
rather frustrating and puzzling. In my book
I state my sincere admiration for his massive
contribution to Austronesian studies, but
register specific and extensive disagreement
with his own grand interpretation. As a
foremost authority on Southeast Asian prehistory,
Bellwood has done me a great honour in devoting
most of one published paper and an international
address, to critically reviewing a book,
explicitly written for a general audience,
as if it were an academic text. This implies
that he takes the challenge seriously. But
you cannot review a film on the basis of
the credits at the end. He seems more concerned
to pick up perceived details of factual
inaccuracy in archaeological citation than
to defend his own grand interpretive synthesis
against my specific criticisms. These concerns
are also shared by academics far more versed
in this field than I am. I cite a number
of other critics in the endnotes to my book.
The reviewer speculates on page 12 whether
he would ever change his views and register
any agreement with the thesis presented
in Eden in the East. There is now
substantial academic rejection of his own
theory of a rice-driven demic expansion
out of Taiwan to occupy and swamp the islands
of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, popularly
labelled “the express train to Polynesia”.
Such is clear from a recent review in
Science,3 for which both
of us, and a number of linguists, geneticists,
anthropologists and archaeologists were
interviewed. I quote several excerpts:
‘“I have to write a review myself of the
spread of early farmers, and it’s very difficult,”
says archaeologist Peter Bellwood of the
Australian National University in Canberra.
“It’s the genetics that is causing headaches”’
and:
‘“I don’t think there’s any question that
the Austronesian expansion comes out of
island Southeast Asia,” says archaeologist
Patrick Kirch of the University of California,
Berkeley. “The danger is getting too specific
about Taiwan when we don’t know enough archaeologically
about the coastal China area, Taiwan, or
the Philippines’”
and:
‘At this point, it’s hard to find
any archaeologist who admits to riding the
express train, including Bellwood, whose
name is tied most often to that model. ...
“I don’t believe in express trains,” says
Bellwood’ (Gibbons 2001)[3].
Notes on Bellwood's review
For the record, I attach below some responses
to points raised at the end of the review:
P.11 Para 4. Quote: “It is not
possible, using available evidence, to push
Proto-Austronesian back to 8000 BP and to
locate it on the equatorial Sunda shelf.”
My view is that it is equally impossible
to disprove it, language dating
being as imprecise as it is (Dixon 1997)[4].
P11. Para 5. Bellwood makes it clear in
this paragraph and in the phrase “...movement
of native speakers...” that, in spite of
genetic evidence to the contrary given in
Eden in the East (and extensively
augmented subsequently[5],[6],[7]),
he still believes this was a mass migration
spreading from Taiwan to Polynesia, with
little biological mixing, rather than a
mainly cultural spread with local acculturation.
P12. Last sentence before ‘Notes’. Bellwood’s
point that:
“pots don’t speak or carry genes. If they
did, we probably wouldn’t have very much
to argue about, at least not in terms of
ethnolinguistic history” seems a strange
concluding remark for someone who lays such
store by a marriage of archaeology and historical
linguistics. It is strangely similar to
my own statement in Chapter 2 of Eden
in the East, except that it misses the
point that such a marriage is in danger
of incest:
Because pots cannot talk and language
splits are difficult to place and date,
much of the argument relating to Austronesian
origins depends on mutual underpinning by
linguistics and archaeology. It is very
important, therefore, that each piece of
evidence in the structure be independent
and not reciprocally linked to the other
discipline as Blust himself has pointed
out (Eden in the East p. 66).
P12. Note 5: Note 5 contains a number
of bulleted sub-notes nearly all related
to details on citations given in Eden
in the East as endnotes. I answer them
all below, in note-form, with pagination,
in order of bullet points. The first four
of these sub-notes complain of lack of references
yet they refer to sections in my Prologue
and Introduction. A glance at the endnotes
would have revealed that these two introductory
sections (pp. 1-21) have no endnotes. This
was at the request of my scientific editor,
since introductions, like abstracts, are
not generally referenced. In most cases
where the reviewer fails to find a reference,
the reference is there. My editor was (probably
rightly) horrified at the number of references
(originally 100 pages) and they were cut
by 30% generally by merging multiple citations
to the same text. Other academic authors
writing in the same non-academic genre have
been more radical, some even dispensing
with a bibliography altogether.[8]
·
P.4 Wild taro in Indonesia. The quotation
was in the Prologue, which was an unreferenced
section.
·
P.5 Ban Chiang dates, and bronze. I make
my differing interpretation quite clear
here and in the later reference below. I
do not mis-cite Joyce White.
·
P.18 Pottery appears in China from 9th
Mill. BC and in the Spirit Cave in Thailand
from 8th Mill. BC Again in this
introductory section there are no references,
but an easily accessible summary of early
East Asian pottery dates may be found.[9]
·
P.19 No reference was given for Solomon
Island grindstones with wild cereal
starch residues for the reason given above.
In any case, Bellwood should know the original
paper on the cave, occupied during the Pleistocene
on Buka Island, since it was co-authored
by Professor Matthew Spriggs who checked
his review and is in the same department.
The reference was in fact given later in
the book - see below.
·
P.67 Bellwood, betel nuts and Austronesians:
see Bellwood, P. (1997) pp. 108, 111, 135,
152.
[10]
·
Sakai cave rice dates: see above.
·
P.69 Ban Chiang & Joyce White: see above
·
P.69 Bellwood and Hemudu. I did not say
that Bellwood states that Austronesian
cultures originated in Hemudu. The word
I used was believed. Having re-read
the relevant section in his book (1997:
208-214 ), I still feel anyone could be
forgiven for thinking Bellwood believed
Hemudu rice cultures to be the original
proximate source of his reconstructed AN
rice culture in Taiwan. He bemoans the lack
of references here. Again, my editor reduced
the total number of references to Bellwood’s
own book alone, since it was the most commonly
cited source in this section.
·
P.70 The Yangtze and optimal regions for
rice growing. I was quoting from the map
printed in Bellwood’s own book (1997:243
Fig 7.17) and making the point that the
natural homeland areas for rice cultivation
are centred around Indo-China not the Yangtze
valley. Incidentally, the period Bellwood
has chosen in his review (6-8,000 BC) is
not the period I referred to in this paragraph.
·
P. 77 Prehistoric cultural contact between
Ur and East Asia. This last page of a chapter
is explicitly interpretive and speculative
and not a statement of fact or observation.
It is misleading for the reviewer to imply
otherwise.
·
P.86 The abandonment of Madai cave around
7,000BP. First of all in spite of Bellwood’s
denial I did give a reference for the inexplicable
abandonment of the cave - from his own book.
I did not give one for the ‘cause of abandonment’
since this was explicitly my own speculation.
Several other points should be noted. Bellwood
may be unaware of research into the destructive
nature of giant tsunamis which can (and
have been recorded to) ascend to some altitude
(500m) up mountains and to penetrate far
inland (discussed in chapter 1 of Eden
in the East). In Bellwood’s book, the
people who used the Madai caves were also
“...visiting the encroaching coast fairly
frequently.” Unless they were all perched
on the limestone massif there is every chance
they could have been in trouble from such
tidal waves.
·
P.88 In spite of Bellwood’s denial, a reference
was given for cord-marked pottery in East
Kalimantan dated to 5500 BP - Chapter 3,
endnotes 22 & 23. I did and do not claim
the same date for the Kain Hitam paintings
in spite of the reviewer’s claim that I
did.
·
P.89 Sanskrit, Chams and Austronesian. The
citation is, nearly verbatim from the introductory
sentence of Ian Glover et al.:
‘a number of stone inscriptions written
in Sanskrit and in an Austronesian language
ancestral to that used by the Cham people’[11][12]
Bellwood was the editor of this publication.
It is possible that the literal meaning
could have changed in my transcription from
the original by the omission of 'and';
but this is not relevant to, and does not
alter the point being made in my text.
·
P. 96 Pig bones in the New Guinea Highlands
between 5000-8000 BP. I actually cited 5000BP
(Kirch, 1997; p.43),[13]
not the upper margin. In any case, the fact
that as Bellwood states, he personally disagrees
with such claims in the archaeological literature
and published his disagreement at the same
time my book was published, hardly seems
to warrant an inclusion in this litany of
supposed errors and distortions. The same
applies to the other archaeologists whom
I cite and he disputes.
·
P.96 Matenkupkum pottery. The reference
was in fact given.
·
P.97 Pre-Lapita pottery in northern New
Guinea. I cite Pamela Swadling for this
in my book.. Presumably here is yet another
archaeologist Bellwood disagrees with.
·
P.91 Date of Austronesian settlement of
southern Vietnam. I referred specifically
to the linguistic and not the archaeological
chronology here. This is as given in Blust
(1985)[14].
Bellwood’s own archaeological timeline and
detail of events for Southeast Asian prehistory
is, I realise different in a number of respects
from Blust’s linguistic one. In any case
Bellwood’s 1997 edition of his Indo-Malaysian
book was unavailable to me at the time of
writing10.
·
P.91 Bukit Tengkorak in Sabah and the date
of obsidian imported from Melanesia. I do
realise that Bellwood was the original excavator
of the site and that he disagrees with a
subsequent report by Malaysian archaeologist
Stephen Chia on fresh excavations from the
same site. I was, however, citing Service
(Science, vol. 274, 1996, pp. 2012-3)
on Chia’s unpublished findings correctly
and in good faith. At the time of writing,
Service’s secondary report was the only
one available to me.
·
P.94 Settlement of the North Solomons from
New Caledonia. As Bellwood suggests there
is a typo. New Caledonia should read New
Ireland. In spite of Bellwood’s repeated
incredulity for such an early colonisation
of the North Solomons, reference was however
already made on P.92 (in full in endnote
34). Since the reviewer has already complained
earlier (see above) that this finding was
unreferenced I give it again here.[15]
·
P.96 Jomon pottery in Vanuatu. It is not
clear what Bellwood is trying to say here,
unless it is that I am citing an unpublished
rumour. He is wrong saying that I am citing
a paper published in 1999 a year after my
book was published. I wish, but like the
most of us I do not have the power of foresight;
I was instead correctly quoting from a paper
given at a conference in Vanuatu in 1996.[16]
In any case I can hardly see why my citation
should be regarded as ‘in error’.
·
P.130 The reviewer attributes me with the
remark that “Most Laotians speak Austro-Asiatic
languages”, whereas I say “Austro-Asiatic
languages are spoken by most Vietnamese
and ...” The ‘most’ refers to Vietnamese.
It is difficult to see the motive for
such highly-spun and detailed objections
to my bibliography, when my objections to
Bellwood’s own synthesis received no comment.
I do hope the reason was not that my book
was perceived as a personal attack, with
the review being returned in the same vein.
This would be sad; because if he had read
my endnote 46 in Chapter 2 the reviewer
would have seen that this was expressly
not my intention.
[1] Bellwood, P. 2000 Some Thoughts
on Understanding the Human Colonisation
of the Pacific People and Culture
in Oceania 16: 5-17
[2]See Solheim, W. 1994 Southeast
Asia and Korea: from the beginnings
of food production to the first states,
in UNESCO The History of Humanity:
Scientific and Cultural Development,
vol. 1: Prehistory and the Beginnings
of Civilisation, Routledge, London,
pp. 468-481
[3] Gibbons, A. 2001 The Peopling
of the Pacific Science 291: 1735-7
[4] Dixon R.M.W 1997 The rise
and fall of languages CUP, pp.46-9
[5] Richards, M., Oppenheimer, S.
and B. Sykes 1998 mtDNA suggests Polynesian
origins in eastern Indonesia. American
Journal of Human Genetics 63:1234-6
[6] Oppenheimer S.J. and M. Richards
2001 Polynesian Origins: Slow boat to
Melanesia? Nature 410: 166-7
[7] Oppenheimer, S.J. and M. Richards
2001 Fast trains, slow boats, and the
ancestry of the Polynesian islanders.
Science Progress 84 (3):157-181
[8] e.g.Sykes, B. 2001The Seven
Daughters of Eve. Bantam, London
[9] Scarre, C. (ed.) 1995 The
Times Atlas of Archaeology. Times
Books, London, pp. 12, 101
[10] Bellwood, P. 1997 Prehistory
of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago
(rev ed.), University of Hawai'i Press,
Honolulu
[12] Glover I.C., Yamagata,
M. and W. Southworth 1993 The Cham,
Sa Huynh and Han in early Vietnam: Excavations
at Buu Chau Hill, Tra Kieu. Bulletin
of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association
15:166-76
[13]Kirch, P.V. 1997 The Lapita
Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World,
Blackwell, Oxford
[14]Blust, R.1985 The Austronesian
Homeland: A Linguistic Perspective
Asian Perspectives, 26(1):85
[15] Loy T.H. et al.
1992 Direct evidence for human use of
plants 28,000 years ago: starch residues
on stone artefacts from the northern
Solomon Islands Antiquity 66:898-912.;
see also original report on the cave
on Buka Island: Wickler S., and M. Spriggs
1988 Pleistocene Human Occupation of
the Solomon Islands, Melanesia.
Antiquity 62:703-6
[16]Was There a Pre‑Lapita,
Japanese Jomon, Cord‑marked Pottery
Occupation in Vanuatu? Sinoto, Y.H.,
Shutler, R. Jr., Dickinson, W.R., Shutler,
M.E., Garanger, J. and T.M. Teska. paper
presented to The Vanuatu National Museum
ANU Conference: The Western Pacific,
5000-2000 BP; Colonisations and Transformations”,
Vanuatu National Museum, Port Vila,
August 1996
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