Discussion has in more or less regular intervals returned to arguments between those of us who are quite contented to find Maluku being an integral part of Indonesia, and those of us who find this quite horrible and only see a future for Maluku separated from the rest of Indonesia. Of late, the latter prospect of extracting Maluku from Indonesia has been stepped up a notch further by a proposed re-alignment of Maluku into Melanesia. It thus seems useful to more closely inspect the cultural affinities, common historical roots, political ties, and other shared features, which might serve to substantiate the proposed alliance.
Although Micronesia was at least partially accessed from the Philippines or perhaps the Sangir-Talaud and North Sulawesi region, it seems safe to assume that the main stream of Austronesian migration into Oceania passed through East Indonesia, particularly Maluku. This must be particularly true for the Austronesians of Melanesia, so that one could even assert that ancestors of Austronesian (i.e. Non-Papuan) Melanesians once inhabited Maluku. Actually, all of Oceania was originally uninhabited, and Papuans too, just as the Australian Aborigines before them, once migrated to their present homes from Asia over the Philippines and Indonesian land-bridge during the last glacial period.
With regard to the Papuans, or the Non-Austronesians in general, of Melanesia and Indonesia (particularly the North Halmaherans of North Maluku and the Oirata of East Nusatenggara), the so-called Indo-Pacific hypothesis of Greenberg, which assumed them and some other groups to form a common stock, has not been substantiated so far. One has only been able to establish certain affinity between North-Halmaheran languages and one phylum of Papuan languages of Irian Jaya.
With regard to the Austronesian languages involved, more clarity exists, even though there still is quite a number of yet unsolved problems. All the languages from Bimanese (in the South) and languages of the Sula Islands (in the North) eastwards seem to belong to a single distinct group within the Austronesian family, which was named the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages by Robert Blust, who subdivided them as follows:
CEMP --.-- Central MP
|
'-- Eastern MP --.-- South-Halmahera-West-New-Guinea
|
'-- Oceanic
Besides, I hope, making it more accessible to fellow members with impaired eyesight, I have used this somewhat unusual way of schematizing the grouping hierarchy, so as to use the same scheme for visualizing a concept of how the Austronesian migration proceeded, which was put forward by Malcom Ross. This is that the migration took place step by step, whereby each successive step was only followed by part of those who took part in the previous one. In our example this means, that Austronesians coming to Central and South Maluku settled down here and spread out in this region. Only one group among them decided to move further, and then settled and spread around in the region of South Halmahera and Irian Jaya. From here, again, only one group moved further, whose language became precursor of all the present Oceanic languages, including of course those of Melanesia. The movement through the Philippines and Sulawesi into East and West Indonesia seems to have taken place between 2,500 and 1,500 BC (Peter Bellwood), and reached the Bismarck Archipelago by 1,600 BC (Matthew Spriggs).
One culture feature seems to favour this scheme. The word for "pig" in the Non-Austronesian, i.e. Papuan languages of Melanesia is typically of Austronesian origin, deriving from Proto-Austronesian *Berek "domesticated pig". Two conclusions can be made here: (1) the domesticated pig was introduced into Oceania by Austronesians, and (2) as the protoform is common to practically the whole distribution area of Austronesians, the domesticated pig must have already been known to the Austronesians before they spread out from their homeland in Taiwan (or the immediately contiguous mainland). There is one problem though. I have learned from Matthew SPriggs that the domesticated pig in Oceania is not the species which originated from Southeast China and Southeast Asia, but was originally endemic in Maluku. To my mind, there is one explanation for this: The Austronesians originally must have had the East/Southeast Asian species which they took with them on their migrations. Those who settled in Maluku, however, met upon a different species, which was better acclimatized to the local tropical conditions, and gradually replenished their stock with the local species, but retaining the word for pig they already had in their language. In other words, the ancestors of the Oceanic Austronesians must have shared a longer stay in Maluku before moving on eastwards.
With regard to the Austronesian migration and subgrouping of Austronesian languages, there is another interesting aspect which is of relevance here. Through lexicostatistical computations based on a large database for Austronesian languages, Isidore Dyen had already even earlier provided a tentative classification of Austronesian languages. The most puzzling feature of Dyen's results were however, that they revealed the existence of two areas of high digree of linguistic diversity: one in Taiwan, and another, perhaps even higher degree of diversity, in the Bismarck Archipelago and contiguous mainland PNG. A high degree of linguistic diversity in a region within the distribution area a language family is a relatively reliable indication for the place of original homeland of the family. The longer two sister-languages were separated, the futher they have generally diverged. The first splits of the precursor language into daughter languages took place in the homeland or in its direct vincinity. When some of these daughter move out and split apart abroad, then their daughters must obviously be less diverged than the languages near the homeland. The situation dicovered by Dyen thus even gave rise to the question, whether perhaps the Austronesian homeland was in the Bismarck Archipelago rather than in Taiwan.
Beside this, results of archaeological investigations have suggested, that early hearths of plant domestication existed at the "heads" above both ends of the Malayan Archipelago, in Southeast Asia/Southeast China, and in Papua-New Guinea, more or less coinciding with the end of the last glacial period and rising of the seas between 12,000 and 8,000 BC or pretty soon after that. In a publication of 1988 I proposed the following explanation, which at the same time combined the two plant domestication hearths with the problem of the duplicate regions of highest diversity of Austronersian languages: When the rising waters started inundating the lowlands on the Sunda Shelf (that is the land which originally connected the present islands of West Indonesia with Indochina) and the Sahul Shelf (connecting North Maluku, the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea with each other and with Australia), the population from the lowlands retreated to the highlands. This led to intermingling of peoples with lowland and highland cultures in Southeast Asia/Southeast China and in New Guinea. More important, however, it led to a concentration of population. It is known, that peoples on the threshold to the neolithic were often acquainted with the principles of plant domestication, without actually practicing it because there was no need to do so. Only when there was sudden change in the relationship between density of population and abundance of natural food supply, were the people forced to resort to agriculture or horticulture to maintain their subsistence. It is therefore understandable, that the rising seas, causing a retreat of the population to both ends of the island chain, led at both those ends to conditions favouring the emergence of agriculture or horticulture.
The Austronesians leaving the Asian continent, and heading utlimately for Oceania, originated from the culture sphere which evolved from the neolithic hearth at one end of the island chain. Upon entering Oceania, they apparently came upon the culture sphere which had evolved out of the other hearth at the opposite end of the chain. It seems reasonable to suppose, therefore, that Austronesians arriving in the Bismarck Archipelago area met and intermingled here with local peoples having a compatible culture of an almost equal degree of sophistication (New Guinea, the second largest island in the world after Greenland, is nevertheless small and isolated, compared with East and Southeast Asia with its open retreat into the expanses of Eurasia which offered far more favourable conditions for exchange and development). Both ethnic groups (imigrant Austronesian and autochthonous Papuan) must have profited tremendously from the intensive exchanges between mutually complementary cultures, leading to increased productivity and ethnic expansion. This must have led not only to increased spawning off of new comunities from older established, with obvious consequences on language divergence, but also to frequent instances of full or partial acquisition of Austronesian as language by originally Papuan communities, or its occasional creolisation. This would have given rise to "Austronesian" language groups of which already the proto-language could have differed considerably more from referent contemporary Austronesian languages, than expected for languages ensuing from normal splits. Hence the exceptionally high degree of diversity.
Indeed, we witness the emergence of a remarkable culture tradition in the Bismarck Archipelago region beginning around 1,600 (Matthew Spriggs), known as the Lapita culture. It was spread by (Oceanic) Austronesians throughout Melanesia and Western Polynesia, up to Tonga and Samoa in the East, and New Caledonia in the South. The experts are divided as to whether the culure is Austronesian or Papuan in origin, which is probably a good sign that they are both right. The spread of Lapita in Oceania coincides with the spread of the three domesticated animals: pig, dog, chicken, all of insular Southeast Asian origin (Matthew Spriggs). The stone tool kit of Lapita is either identical with or a development of that of the Austronesians in Asia (Roger Green). But, although Lapita crops are also known to Austronesians in Insular Southeast Asia, they are however endemic in the New Guinea-Bismarcks area as well, and some have been shown to be of New Guinea origin (D.E. Yen). The characteristic Lapita pottery has affinities with Austronesian pottery on the Asian side in the form of the jars, but the ornamental design seems to be a local development. Most recent archaeological investigations led by John Terrel at Aitape (North PNG) indicate that a local ceramic tradition, the Sumalo culture, predating the appearance of first Austronesians in the area, must be the long sought actual precursor of Lapita pottery.
To SUMMARIZE what we have up to here: with regard to the deepest prehistoric layer, we seem to observe two aspects in the relationship between Maluku and Melanesia. ON ONE SIDE, all Austronesian languages of Oceania and those of East Indonesia up to Flores and the Sula Islands apparently form one one group and are thus more closely related to each other than to any other Austronesian languages, including those of Central and West Indonesia. The Austronesian migration into Oceania must have made station for some time in Maluku, so that culture features brought along with them to Oceania must also have included novel features which were originally specific of Maluku (e.g. the species of domesticated pig), and thus not shared in the culture of Austronesians further West. ON THE OTHER SIDE, The unique Lapita culture, being so to speak a joint Austronesian-Papuan development, stood at the head of Oceanic culture history. This heritage is not shared by the cultures of East Indonesia. The contemporaneous linguistic development in the Bismarcks, in which Papuan languages probably also had some part, likewise puts certain distinct typological marks on the Austronesian languages of Oceania, in contrast with Austronesian languages on the Indonesian side including Maluku.
It is difficult to evaluate the significance of this earliest layer in the characteriziation of affinities and differences in the cultural identities of the peoples of Maluku and Melanesia. Developments in the later, i.e. more recent prehistorical and historical periods can probably be said to have a greater actuality in this respect.
Considering that this has already become so lengthy up to here, and taken so long to write. I think I'll send this in as first contribution, and let the rest on the relationship betweeen Maluku and Melanesia (covering the later periods) follow later.