East and West Ask丨Chen Jianyue: How do the ancient footprints across the strait show where Taiwan's roots lie?

　　China News Agency, Beijing, December 5th. Question: How do the ancient footprints across the strait show where Taiwan's roots lie?

　　Author Chen Jianyue Director of Ethnic Theory Research Office, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

　　Taiwan Island was connected to the mainland for a long time before the sea level rose in the Holocene (before 10,000 years ago). Even the strait formed after that did not stop the ancient people and their culture from continuing to spread.

Archaeological research has restored to us the history of ancient cultures on both sides of the Taiwan Strait since the Neolithic Age.

　　As early as 1929, Chinese ethnologist Lin Huixiang discovered after investigating the ethnic minorities in Taiwan that "a kind of stone adze among stone tools is very similar to the one found in Shanxi, China" unearthed in Taiwan, which may prove that "people who did not enter Taiwan The relationship between the "Fan clan" and the mainland.

During archaeological excavations in Taiwan during the 1930s and 1940s, Japanese scholars discovered a large number of archaeological artifacts unearthed in Taiwan, such as shoulder stone axes, boot-shaped stone tools, black pottery, painted pottery, etc., all of which have cultural elements from the northern part of the mainland.

In 1943, the famous historian Jian Bozan proposed in his "Compendium of Chinese History" that the cultural characteristics of the Stone Age archaeological remains discovered in southern China are completely different from those in the north, and they form a separate system, representing the later "Baiyue" In the article "Taiwan Fan Clan Research" (1947), Jian Bozan cited archaeological, folklore and physical evidence, and affirmed: "Taiwan's Fan Clan is the 'Baiyue Clan' offspring."

A stone spear unearthed at the Guishan site.

Photo by Chen Jianyue

　　In the 1950s, Zhang Guangzhi, a famous archaeologist and anthropologist, inspected the Yuanshan site in Taipei (3,500 to 2,000 years ago), and concluded after summarizing a large amount of evidence: "The prehistoric inhabitants of Taiwan (including the Yuanshan people) , Most of them moved into Taiwan from mainland China, which has become common knowledge in Taiwanese archaeology." At the same time, Lin Huixiang wrote the article "Study on the Relics of the Stone Age in Taiwan" through the study of Nanyang people and Taiwanese archaeological materials. : "In Taiwan, in the Neolithic Age, a group of humans drifted from the coastal areas of mainland China and brought Neolithic culture, that is, grinding stone tools and technologies such as printed pottery, painted pottery, and black pottery, into Taiwan. This kind of people from the mainland People from the Neolithic Age became the source of the later Gaoshan people.” Since then, with the advancement of archaeological work on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the conclusion of ethnic and cultural consistency between Taiwan and the mainland in ancient times has been supported by more and more evidence .

Pottery spindle wheel unearthed in Yuanshan, Taiwan.

　　Continuing the research of Lin Huixiang, Jian Bozan and others on shouldered stone axes and segmented stone adzes, through the investigation of Yuanshan culture, ruins in coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong, and related archaeological discoveries in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and Southeast Asia, archaeologists believe that , the Neolithic stone cultures of Taiwan and Luzon Island in Southeast Asia all originated from the southern Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong regions of mainland China.

Combining the archaeological discoveries in the Yangtze River Delta and Southeast Asia, we also discovered the process of the spread of bark cloth stone clapping technology from the southeast coast of China to the Indochina Peninsula, the Philippines and Taiwan.

There is a stone adze.

　　Compared with stone tools and bone tools, pottery is more important when studying prehistoric cultures.

Zhang Guangzhi compared the characteristics of pottery earlier, and compared the Dadikeng culture (5000 to 4000 years ago) and the Fengbitou culture (3500 to 2000 years ago) of the Neolithic Age in Taiwan with the Fuguodun culture on the coast of Fujian and Guangdong respectively. (6,000 to 5,500 years ago) and Tanshishan culture (5,500 to 3,500 years ago).

　　Since the 1980s, through the efforts of archaeologists on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to excavate and research, many archaeological remains on the southeast coast of the mainland and Taiwan have initially formed a development sequence of Neolithic culture from 6,500 years ago to about 3,500 years ago: from southern Zhejiang As far as the coastal areas of northeastern Guangdong, the representative Neolithic cultural sites include Keqiutou Culture, Tanshishan Culture, Damaoshan Culture and Cucumbershan Culture, etc.; in Taiwan at the same time, there are Dadikeng Culture, Fushan Culture, Yuanyuan Culture, etc. Mountain culture, bull scolding culture, etc.

The establishment of the development series of these cultural sites provides a solid foundation for more accurate archaeological cultural comparison and type determination.

Pottery unearthed at the Tanshishan site.

Photo by Wang Dongming

　　In the early Neolithic period, the Keqiutou culture and the early Dadikeng culture were very similar in pottery decoration style.

The pottery at the Damaoshan site in Fujian in the mid-Neolithic period is similar to that at the Shangzhengang site in the Penghu Islands. The pottery at both sites is mainly red pottery and reddish-brown pottery, most of which are beans, pots and kettles, and the decorations are mainly Jomon, inscribed and zigzag patterns belong to a cultural tradition, which shows that the ancestors of the two places have mastered the navigation technology to and from the two places.

In addition, the Shangshalun site in Taiwan is not only similar in age to the Damaoshan culture, but also the pottery pots and pottery bean circle feet with sawtooth rims found are almost the same as the Damaoshan artifacts.

Fujian coastal cultural sites such as Huangguashan in the late New Era, Yuanshan culture and Fengbitou culture, which are contemporary with Taiwan, have the same characteristics of painted pottery culture despite their diversity, indicating that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have also maintained a close cultural relationship during this period. comminicate.

Distribution map of ruins on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Photo by Chen Jianyue

　　Further studies have shown that in ancient China's southeastern coast, including Taiwan, since the early Neolithic age, there has been a stable system of imprinted pottery with a stable combination of round-bottomed and ring-footed utensils.

Through the study of the continuous spread and development of this cultural system on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, a more convincing explanation can be given for the consistency of the characteristics of Neolithic archaeological culture on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

For example, the mid-Neolithic pottery culture in Taiwan’s Fengbitou and other places is very similar to the cultural characteristics of the lower layer of Tanshi Mountain, but the age lags behind the coastal areas of Fujian and Guangdong by two or three thousand years; the Yuanshan and Niu Chouzi cultures are represented by gray and black pottery. The late culture is similar to the middle layer of Tanshi Mountain and Shixia culture, and its age lags behind by more than a thousand years. It is the result of multiple migrations of cultures from the southeast coast of the mainland to the sea in prehistoric times.

　　In short, the archaeological cultural characteristics of the Neolithic Age show a high degree of consistency between the ancient cultures of Taiwan and the southeastern coastal areas of the mainland, which has been generally recognized by the archaeological community.

(Finish)

　　About the Author:

　　Chen Jianyue, graduated from the Department of International Politics of Peking University and the Department of Political Science of the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is currently the director of the Ethnic Theory Research Office of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a researcher, and a doctoral supervisor. , Executive Vice President of the Chinese Society for Ethnic Theory, and Vice President of the Taiwan Minority Research Association.