Rising seas made China's ancient mariners: Environmental changes cultivated seafaring, not rice...

Science News ^ | Friday, April 1st, 2011 | Bruce Bower

[SunkenCiv]

ascending sea levels launched a flotilla of rafts or canoes on voyages from China to Taiwan around 5,000 years ago, a new study suggests.

At a time when rice farming dominated in other regions, the inundation of the Fuzhou Basin in southeastern China starting about 9,000 years ago led to the creation of a maritime culture that eventually took to the seas, says a team led by archaeologist Barry Rolett of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

Analyses of sediment cores extracted from the Fuzhou Basin indicate that, at that time, the kind of marshy areas that are needed for rice paddies disappeared under rising waters. What are hilltops in the region today shrank to islands no more than one mile across.

Locals built outposts on newly minted islands starting around 5,500 years ago and honed their nautical skills, probably using wooden canoes or bamboo rafts to obtain fish and other aquatic food in a vast estuary, Rolett and his colleagues report in the April Quaternary Science Reviews. A largely rice-free, maritime lifestyle eventually enabled sea voyages of 130 kilometers to Taiwan, Rolett proposes. Farming villages first appeared on Taiwan 5,000 years ago.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, they're called the Indo-Europeans. ;')

SHOOT RIDERS -- Coastal residents of southeastern China navigate waterways today on bamboo rafts such as this one. Island dwellers in the region took sea voyages 5,000 years ago, perhaps using similar rafts equipped with sails, researchers say.B. Rolett

[SunkenCiv]

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[Christian Engineer Mass]

It must have been Bush’s SUV & Palin’s harsh rhetoric that caused these seas to rise.

How did they solve their problem without buma to lower the oceans?

[wastedyears]

Totally brings to mind Rime of the Ancient Mariner...

[hinckley buzzard]

All very interesting except that indigenous Taiwanese were negrito and austronesian, not mainland ethnic (Han)Chinese. Although Chinese fishermen and other sailors no doubt visited the island the Chinese didn't have much interest in Taiwan until the 17th century when they contested the Dutch presence there.

[tbw2]

Could it have been the catalyst for Asians sweeping out into the Pacific, becoming Pacific Islanders?

[JoeProBono]

[DallasDeb]

Say what? You mean to tell me Earth had rising seas 5000 years ago that weren’t caused by man-made global warning? Do the slimatologists know that?

[DallasDeb]

Grrrr. Warning = warming.

[Cold Heart]

Interesting. Looking at the bamboo rafts reminds me of the PVC rafts of very similar construction I have seen off Southern Taiwan. The local fishermen take those things well offshore and are difficult to see in the chop. I had to do some hard over evasive maneuvers on a large container ship at 24 knots to avoid hittiing one of them.

Memories just triggered. I had the same experience off N. Taiwan about 20 years earlier. Those were bamboo rafts and a bunch of them. That was hard right, hard left repeatedly at 22 knots on a passenger ship. We broke some of the dish settings the steward dept. had just set. Jr third mate then, senior chief mate on the PVC raft raft incident.

[smokingfrog]

Obvious junk science!

[Sherman Logan]

Linguistic and DNA evidence indicates all the Indonesian and Polynesian peoples originated from Taiwan. From Madagascar to Hawaii and Easter Island. Them boys got around!

[JoeProBono]

[afraidfortherepublic]

The History Channel did a program entitled “Who really discovered America” that made a strong argument for the Chinese discovering and settling in South America before their northern neighbors crossed the Bering straits land bridge. Of course, they went on and made strong cases for half a dozen other cultures too.

[colorado tanker]

I saw that same History program. By the end I was thinking, golly who WASN’T here?!