Readers 读者
Discussion: The discovery of Liangdao man and its implications for the pre-Austronesian homeland
讨论： 亮岛人的发现跟南岛民族的来源
Paul Jenkuei Li 李壬癸
Abstract 摘要
The discovery of Liangdao man ca. 8,000 BP is academically significant. It may provide some clue for the Austronesian origin relating Taiwan and the southeast coast of China. We need interdisciplinary knowledge of archaeology, genetics and linguistics to make any meaningful study of such a case. The most recent genetic study indicates that the Liangdao man seems to be more closely related to modern Formosan natives than to the other peoples in South China and Southeast Asia. Ancient South China was almost exclusively populated by non-Chinese. There is linguistic evidence that the Austroasiatics inhabited the Yangtze delta and parts of the southeast coast during the first half of the first millennium B.C. Some of the Austroasiatic loanwords currently in Chinese in general and in Min are part of the basic vocabulary. This indicates the Chinese and Austroasiatics must have been in close contact for a long period of time before the first millennium B.C. The linguistic evidence for the genetic relationship between Austronesian and Austroasiatics is not very strong, but nevertheless exists. We can postulate that pre-Austronesian split apart from Austroasiatics in the southeast coast of China about 6,000 BP and dispersed to Taiwan to become proto-Austronesians.
八千多年前亮島人的發現，在學術研究上具有重大的意義。本文從考古學、遺傳學跟語言學跨領域的觀點來討論。亮島人的基因跟現代的台灣南島民族很類似，其次是菲律賓和印尼。史前時代在華南居住的都非漢人。語言學的證據顯示：公元前一世紀或更早南亞民族已經居住在長江三角洲一帶了。本文推測南島民族跟南亞民族的前身大約在六千年前才在華南沿海一帶分化，遷移到台灣以後才成為古南島民族。要證明南島民族跟南亞民族的親屬關係，大概不是傳統的比較方法（the comparative method）就可以達成的，構詞學可以提供必要的證據。