WHY STUDY AUSTRONESIAN?
Austronesia is a unique language family. Looking at its diaspora, this language family covers more than half of the globe: from Madagascar in the west to the Easter Islands in the east, and from Taiwan—Micronesia in the north to New Zealand in the south. This language-family had the largest area of dispersal in the world before colonization by the West. Nowadays, it consists of some 1,200 languages spoken by more than 300 million people, ranging from languages with only hundreds or thousands of speakers as in several places in Pacific area to millions as in Malaysia and the Philippines, even hundreds of millions as in Indonesia.
For present-day Austronesians, methods of earning a daily living vary from hunting and food-gathering, fishing, and subsistence faming, to modern trade. According to classification of race, they, particularly those who live outside Melanesia and in some parts of the Philippines, are southern Mongolids.
Many scholars believe that the Austronesian diaspora has been fundamental in forming the diversity of peoples and cultures within the area of dispersal. The arrival of Austronesian speakers has been viewed as a crucial stage in the ethnogenesis of Island Southeast Asian nations and ethnic groups. Therefore, studying early Austronesians and their interactions would provide a way to better understand the cultural diversity and populations in this territory.
All the characteristics mentioned above make Austronesia an eternally interesting subject and a never-ending stimulus for research.
Many explanations given to this phenomenon have not revealed the true problems. One of the most contro-versial subjects concerns the origin of Austronesian. Indonesia lies in a strategic position for revealing many issues relating to Austronesia and the culture of its speakers.
From the geographical point of view, Indonesia has potentially rich data, considering the vast area it covers and its location in the centre of the Austronesian diaspora. More than 80% of Austronesian speakers live within this area with their varied cultures. The existence of non-Austronesians enclaves in Moluccas, Lesser Sunda and Papua is very important for understanding the interaction processes within the Austronesian group.
These conditions make research on Austronesia very promising and intriguing, especially since such research is still infrequently conducted there. Where did Austronesian speakers come from, which area was first inhabited by them, how did they spread and develop, why are the physical aspects of the speakers varied, etc., are issues that still require unraveling.