Akar Nusa
A long wooden boat with an outrigger leaves a beach. On board: seed, a few dogs, and a family. Nobody knows where the journey will end. Some such boats will reach a place we now call Borneo, others will reach Hawaii or Madagascar.
The story
The Austronesian languages are one of the great language families of the world. They include Malay and Indonesian, Tagalog, Hawaiian, Maori, Malagasy and the languages of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples. Scholars of language have long argued that they began in Taiwan. A big 2009 study built a family tree of 400 languages and placed the origin in Taiwan about 5,230 years ago, followed by pauses and bursts of expansion linked to new skills and ideas, such as better boats.
Genetic work adds detail. A 2014 study of the mother-line DNA of a skeleton about 8,000 years old from Liang Island, and of 550 mother-line sequences from Taiwan, suggests early Austronesians arrived in northern Taiwan about 6,000 years ago, spread to the south, and about 4,000 years ago left Taiwan for island Southeast Asia, Madagascar and Oceania. A second 2014 study of genome-wide data from 56 populations found that all sampled Austronesian groups carry ancestry closer to Taiwan's Indigenous peoples than to any present mainland people. It also found that western island groups carry ancestry from a source related to Austroasiatic speakers, which hints at a mainland connection.
But scientists still disagree about how big the movement was. A 2016 study combined mother lines, father lines and whole-genome data and concluded that most common ancestry between Taiwan and the islands is older than the Neolithic, with two small later migrations. It suggests small-scale migration and language shift, not a huge wave. Another 2016 study estimated that about 20 percent of island mother lines come from the out-of-Taiwan journey, with most of the rest from earlier processes, mostly the rising seas after the Ice Age.
What does this mean for Malaysia? The Malay Peninsula and Borneo lie on the western edge of the Austronesian world. Austronesian languages are spoken across Malaysia, from Malay to the languages of Sabah and Sarawak. Their speakers include people with many different ancestries, because languages can spread without everybody's ancestors moving.
Where you can still see it today
- In words. Many basic words are alike across the Austronesian world, which is how language scholars first drew the family tree.
- In boats. The Bajau Laut of Sabah, with their lepa boats, belong to the sea-going tradition. See their story on this shelf.
- In festivals on the water. Regatta Lepa in Semporna, with its parade of decorated lepa, is a modern echo.
- In the languages of Sabah and Sarawak. Many Austronesian languages are spoken there.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
Some mother lines, such as B4 and E, are common among Austronesian speakers and may mark parts of the journey. Our free family lines pages describe them. Father lines and region estimates may show links to Taiwan, the Philippines and the islands.
DNA cannot tell you that your family is "Austronesian" in the language sense, because language and ancestry are different things. A family can speak an Austronesian language and have many ancestries, or the other way around. DNA cannot decide race, religion or bumiputera status.
