Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, Taiwan.

Despite everything I believe about the origins of the Polynesian people, in the name of keeping an open mind I was willing to give "The Express Train from Formosa" Model a look-in, thus have long wanted to see for myself what sort of evidence Taiwan has on offer for their claims that they are the Polynesian Mythical Birthplace, the Islands of Hawaii-iki.

And what they have is this:

The Shung Ye Museum
of Formosan Aborigines.

I first heard about Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines in that gorgeous New Zealand film "Made in Taiwan: Oscar and Nathan's Excellent Adventure"; a film in which two Polynesian-Kiwi comedians search for the Origins of the Polynesian People; a film I loved and found hilarious but which was based on a premise that was so wrong it made me rankle so much I immediately posted my reply "Made in Indonesia: My Excellent Adventures".

In fact, I've done many posts on this subject, which, if you're interested, you can find here: posts.

Now, if you've seen "Made in Taiwan.", you'll recall that the climax of these extremely funny guys' quest for their roots was in the lobby of this very Museum, standing in front of a montage of photographs and Nathan saying "Look, Oscar, it's your Aunty Lily." or words to that effect, therein making out that the Polynesians did indeed descend from "Formosan Aborigines."

Like hell they did!

Honestly, I found this entire Museum insulting to the extreme. Can you blame me? "Formosan Aborigine" here is a blanket term that actually covers 13 entirely different races, with entirely different origins, histories, faces, cultures, backgrounds etc, etc, yet this museum doesn't distinguish one from another. 13 different tribes, who never interbred (apart from the odd Rukai and Paiwan, which, since both tribes have very different inheritance customs, nearly always, further down the line, ended in bloodshed.), yet in Shung Ye Museum they are all seen as one indistinguishable people.

However, to be fair, there was a plaque saying they will be attempting in future to do more research to sort out the different threads, and the latest exhibit is an interactive touch screen thingy that tells you about each of these 13 individual tribes; so far only about a paragraph on each ... but it's a start.

Oh, and there's also been a recent erection of 13 relief sculptures of a representative of each of these tribes in the park across the road:



However, apart from these recent additions, the rest of it is simply a lot of "Like, WHATEVER, Dude!" exhibition rooms.

For instance, there's an entire floor devoted to "Aboriginal Pottery" and - oh, boy - did it make me cross. Hundreds of pots, all in different styles and coming from different technologies, and here they are all placed together as though produced by the same people. As you know, I was in this museum to keep an open mind, exploring the possibility that maybe the Polynesians did descend from "Formosan Aborigines", and so, mostly, I just stalked through these pots going "Nope! Not a chance! Nah! Not even remotely." until I came across one single pot and went "YES!" because it was exactly the type of pot made throughout Polynesia ... but then there was no indication which of the 13 tribes produced it. Wrong, huh!

However, what makes this so importantly WRONG is the claim this museum makes. In the lobby, there's this massive map of the world that shows the extent of the "Formosan Aborigines" global colonisation and domination, and it goes all the way from Taiwan down to Madagascar and up to Hawaii and over to Easter Islands, and including Indonesia, the Philippines, Borneo etc, etc. All this for a bunch of different tribes who were nearly all jungle hunters and small scale farmers?

Nope, sorry! Sooo didn't happen, folks!

Just look at the facts:

The only 'Formosan Aborigines" who had/have a sea-based culture are the fisherman clans called the Tau, and I went over every inch of:

1) their faces, in modern and old photographs, looking for something which said "Polynesian".

2) their dragon boats, including all the old photographs, looking for anything to connect them with Polynesia's mighty sailing vessels - a line, or piece of technology, or a way of doing something, or even an idea or object that related in some way - and came away with zilch!


Conquering a quarter of the world in boats like this?



I mean, just look at that dragon boat. We all know what Polynesian vessels looked like and it definitely wasn't this! In fact, just looking at it, you can see that these exceptionally Hakka-Chinese-looking Tau People NEVER came in contact with a Polynesian takia EVER.

 A tiny little 'personal use' takia

in Fiji.

Photo stolen from Johnson

Just compare the two boats.  Clearly you can see that the Tau never ever came across a takia. Never saw one. Never sailed one. Never built one. These fat oar-powered dragon boats were all fine vessels in their own right, sure, with wonderful dragon heads and tails, but in connection with the claims the museum makes, their having the capability to go out and colonise nearly a quarter of the world? NOT A CHANCE.


As for the other tribes of non-Tau "Aborigines"? Marine-based culture? Not at all! Mountain folk, all! Hunters, small-scale Neolithic-style farmers, slash-and-burn agriculturalists! Is it just me, or do you too think that these sorts of folk DO NOT end up building enormous flotillas of sailing vessels, develop extraordinary sailing skills, come up with astral navigation, and then go whizzing off into the wild blue yonder to conquer the unknown?

No, Taiwan is NOT the origin of the Polynesian people. This claim is wrong. In fact, it's wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!!

However, there is one tribe called The Rukai who made me go "Mmmm!" And it's a woman from this very tribe that had Nathan going "Look, it's your Aunty Lily!" The Rukai ARE Polynesian-looking! In fact, VERY Polynesian looking!

RukaiJust look at that cloak
and how he's wearing it!

And their story - the Rukai's single paragraph on the touch-screen - says that they say they sailed up from the south looking for land, reached the East Coast of these shores, were driven inland by "the Aborigines", crossed over the mountains, found themselves vast stretches of vacant land in the Central Mountain region of Pingtung, and slashed-and-burned the jungle to set up their farms.

It also says the Rukai are Patriarchal with a strong warrior culture, a rigid social hierarchy and facial tattoos.

Sounds like Polynesians to you? Yup? You too think we've got them?

The Rukai HAD a sailing tradition and lost it! Were sailors, became farmers!

Gosh, I do love being right. If you read my post "Made in Indonesia", you'll know that I believe the Polynesians were "Adam and Eve-d" in the Molucca Islands in Indonesia, and that these "Formosan Aborigines" were just an off-shoot; a flotilla of sailing vessels full of Polynesian folk looking for land to settle. And, hey, this is the Rukai story ... and they say they sailed from the South ... and the Molucca Island are sooo in the South! Go Me! Go Me! Go Me!

But the other "Aborigine Tribes". Let's give them some consideration too.

Damn, sorry. I lost the piece of paper where I wrote down the order for the photographs of the reliefs of each tribes' tradional dress. I've tried to put them in the right place from memory, but you know what that's like:

The Paiwan are sooo Tibetan. From their photos, they look Tibetan and their singing sounds like it comes straight from some Tibetan monastery; all throaty, monotonal and chant-ish. However, I don't know enough about Tibetan material culture to comment any further on this connection, except to say that these Paiwan guys could smelt bronze and frequently did because most of their knives, pots etc, etc, are made from Taiwanese tin and copper and are almost sophisticated in structure.







Oh, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that the Yami tribes - who didn't smelt - are descended from a different migration of Tibetans, who took a different route, thereby absorbing a whole range of different influences, before also ending up in Taiwan.









The Pingpu Tribes? These are definitely the original inhabitants of Taiwan. Taiwanese archaeologists went digging into an ancient Ice Age culture they called Changbin, and it turned out to be Pingpu, so undoubtedly these are an old, old, old people. They are even in the Chinese historical records from the Hias Dynasty, over 3000 years ago, because they traded with Chinese merchants, swapping deerskins, sulphur, rattan and blocks of agate for fine agate beads and jewelry.




Hey, here's a thought. Maybe the Chinese thought they were "trading with the natives", but, meanwhile, the Pingpu thought they were simply paying these guys to take their agate and turn it into beads and other fine agate items so they could have all these high-status objects without the effort needed to do it themselves. Total win-win, huh!

And here's another thought: the Pingpu even had their own breed of domesticated hunting dog from wayyyy back, pre-Changbin, which I reckon was the dingo because I actually SAW a dingo in the Park right next to this museum. Honestly, it was definitely a dingo. Let me see if I can find a photo:


I've been stalked by a pack of dingoes in Outback Australia, so they're burned into the deepest part of my brain and therefore I KNOW what a dingo looks like, and this WAS the same type of dog as the Australian dingoes that had me climbing up an old windmill and staying there for hours ... until they saw a distant kangaroo and went sprinting off after it.

Thank god for dingo ADHD, huh!

But are the Pingpu the same people as the Australian Aborigines? From the photos I'd say definitely not, although they did look very much like the tribe of non-Aboriginal-looking Australian Aborigines called The Kalkadoons. (I tell you about them in my post "Ancient Mysteries") So is it possible that a small bunch of Pingpu came down to Australia from Formosa, bringing their dingo with them? Or that there was an exceptionally ancient branch-off back during a past Ice Age in some other land that was neither Taiwan NOR Australia?

Malaysia?

Oh, and the Pingpu are the guys who are refusing to give up their culture and language, yet still getting into University in numbers, so GO PINGPU!

The other tribes I wasn't much interested in so let's just summarise:




1) The Iraralay Tribes? These guys all look like Patrick Swayze, only with a suntan. So what's Patrick's background? A touch of American Indian? These Iraralay guys had feathered head-dresses and bows and arrows and such, so I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if there's a connection. Except for how they got there! Like, huh??





2) The Sakizaya Tribes? Well, as for the origins of these people, at the end of WWII, when the Chinese were hunting down and killing remnants of the Japanese troops, vast hordes of Japanese stripped off their uniforms, donned traditional Sakizaya clothes, and totally passed for locals. Like, totally! The Chinese couldn't distinguish them from each other. Pour cause! There are stories about how the Pingpu traditionally killed Japanese fisher-folk who'd blown off course and ended up in Taiwan, but I think the Sakizaya Tribes amply demonstrate that they didn't get all of them and these guys are simply the descendants of Japanese fisher-folk who ended up in Taiwan and couldn't find a way to return home again.






3) the Taroku were very Japanese-looking only with Raiku-like facial tattoos, so maybe a millennium-earlier earlier bunch of off-course Japanese fishermen.











4) the Atayal look Malaysian only again with the facial tattoos.














5) the Bunan tribes had a very sophisticated calender which they used for planting, their own brought-with-them food-crops and sophisticated methods of agriculture, and also polyphonic music, so lord-only-knows where they originated.








6) Tsou. Khmer roots? These guys look very Thai indeed.











7) Puyuma? Who knows, but their art is very Maori. I may be willing to call this an off-shoot of the Rukai tribes, but not until they DNA test 'em.








There were others but it's at that point I got very hungry and decided I had done enough and was now warranted to farewell my quest.

So that's what I discovered: that "The Express Train from Formosa" Model for the origins of the Polynesian is twaddle and that the Mythical Lands of Hawaii-iki lies somewhere else. Also that it's most likely that only one of these tribes descended from Polynesians who came to Taiwan from the actual Hawii-iki. And that those were The Rukai People!

And also discovered that Shung Ye really NEEDS to get its act together if it wants to make the ENORMOUS claims they're making. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof and so these MUST be forthcoming; that they MUST start taking their work seriously and stop being so "finger-fluttery", ho-hum and "Whatever, Dude!". Yes, they're right, they really have to do more research and sort out the threads. And they MUST start gathering more stories and DNA testing these 13 different tribes because those are obviously some amazing histories they have in there and there's nothing like DNA for sorting through stories and outing the truth.

And maybe folks with other interests and from other backgrounds - Japanese, Tibetan, Native American, Malays etc, etc, - archeologists and cultural anthropologists and others of that ilk - can go through this museum and see if they can make sense of these very different tribal cultures, all of whom obviously came from elsewhere at different times, deliberately or by chance, and made various cultural adaptions from out of their pasts, to accommodate their new land.

This would be just fascinating to do, wouldn't it? Ohh, I'd so like to be in on it!

But basically, I wish "Shung Ye Museum of Fosmosan Aborigines" well and hope they realise they are in a unique position to do some serious exploration into the past AND to go out and do it!