Pre-Austronesian origins of seafaring in Insular Southeast Asia (original) (raw)

The double canoe which was brought by ancestors of present-day Negritos to Southeast China and Taiwan served as original watercraft of the Malayo-Polynesian dispersal, the first waves of which were carried out by people with equatorial (dark) complexion. A tradition of maritime communication and trade seems to have developed in the South China Sea, with exchange of material culture between indochina and the Philippines, leading up to a metal-age Sahuynh-Kulanay complex. A boat-burial rite seems to likewise have developed, transmitted as far east as Hawaii, bt also into the mainland up the Mekong as mell as Salween, Irrawady, and Brahmaoutra. A further development, already in the metal age, was apparently the ship-of-the-dead cult. Meanwhile Negrito (and Papuan) westward shipping, already since before the Malayo-Polynesian dispersal, apparently brought the banana and the coconut to India. Negrito seafarers who, like also subsequently arrived Malayo-Polynesians, settled on the Bay of Bengal coast, may have been referred to in early Indian literature as Nagas.