section_path: History by region/Southeast Asia & Oceania/Austronesia
section_name: Austronesia
paragraph_text: Austronesia
  
  Around 3000 to 1500 BCE, a large-scale migration of Austronesians, known as the Austronesian expansion began from Taiwan. Population growth primarily fueled this migration. These first settlers settled in northern Luzon, in the archipelago of the Philippines, intermingling with the earlier Australo-Melanesian population who had inhabited the islands since about 23,000 years earlier. Over the next thousand years, Austronesian peoples migrated southeast to the rest of the Philippines, and into the islands of the Celebes Sea and Borneo. From southwestern Borneo, Austronesians spread further west in a single migration event to both Sumatra and the coastal regions of southern Vietnam, becoming the ancestors of the speakers of the Malayic and Chamic branches of the Austronesian language family.
  
  Soon after reaching the Philippines, Austronesians colonized the Northern Mariana Islands by 1500 BCE or even earlier, becoming the first humans to reach Remote Oceania. The Chamorro migration was also unique in that it was the only Austronesian migration to the Pacific Islands to successfully retain rice cultivation. Palau and Yap were settled by separate voyages by 1000 BCE.
  
  Another important migration branch was by the Lapita culture, which rapidly spread into the islands off the coast of northern New Guinea and into the Solomon Islands and other parts of coastal New Guinea and Island Melanesia by 1200 BCE. They reached the islands of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga by around 900 to 800 BCE. This remained the furthest extent of the Austronesian expansion into Polynesia until around 700 CE, when there was another surge of island colonization. It reached the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas by 700 CE; Hawaii by 900 CE; Rapa Nui by 1000 CE; and New Zealand by 1200 CE. For a few centuries, the Polynesian islands were connected by bidirectional long-distance sailing, with the exception of Rapa Nui, which had limited further contact due to its isolated geographical location. Island groups like the Pitcairns, the Kermadec Islands, and the Norfolk Islands were also formerly settled by Austronesians but later abandoned. There is also putative evidence, based in the spread of the sweet potato, that Austronesians may have reached South America from Polynesia, where they might have traded with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
  
  Austronesians established prehistoric maritime trade networks in Island Southeast Asia, including the Maritime Jade Road, a jade trade network, in Southeast Asia which existed in Taiwan and the Philippines for 3,000 years from 2000 BCE to 1000 CE. The trade was established by links between the indigenous peoples of Taiwan and the Philippines, and later included parts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and other areas in Southeast Asia (known as the Sa Huynh - Kalanay Interaction Sphere). Lingling-o artifacts are one of the notable archeological finds originating from the Maritime Jade Road. During the operation of the Maritime Jade Road, the Austronesian spice trade networks were also established by Islander Southeast Asians with Sri Lanka and Southern India by around 1000 to 600 BCE.
  
  They also established early long-distance contacts with Africa, possibly as early as before 500 BCE, based on archaeological evidence like banana phytoliths in Cameroon and Uganda and remains of Neolithic chicken bones in Zanzibar. An Austronesian group, originally from the Makassar Strait region around Kalimantan and Sulawesi, eventually settled Madagascar, either directly from Southeast Asia or from preexisting mixed Austronesian- Bantu populations from East Africa. Estimates for when this occurred vary from the 1st century CE, to as late as the 6th to 7th centuries CE. It is likely that the Austronesians that settled Madagascar followed a coastal route through South Asia and East Africa, rather than directly across the Indian Ocean. Genetic evidence suggests that some individuals of Austronesian descent reached Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
  
  By around the 2nd century BCE, the Neolithic Austronesian jade and spice trade networks in Southeast Asia connected with the maritime trade routes of South Asia, the Middle East, eastern Africa, and the Mediterranean, becoming what is now known as the Maritime Silk Road. Prior to the 10th century, the eastern part of the route was primarily used by Southeast Asian Austronesian traders using distinctive lashed-lug ships, although Tamil and Persian traders also sailed the western parts of the routes. It allowed the exchange of goods from East and Southeast Asia on one end, all the way to Europe and eastern Africa on the other.
  
  Srivijaya, an Austronesian polity founded at Palembang in 682 CE, rose to dominate the trade in the region around the straits of Malacca and Sunda and the South China Sea emporium by controlling the trade in luxury aromatics and Buddhist artifacts from West Asia to a thriving Tang market. It emerged through the conquest and subjugation of neighboring thalassocracies. These included Melayu, Kedah, Tarumanagara, and Mataram, among others. These polities controlled the sea lanes in Southeast Asia and exploited the spice trade of the Spice Islands, as well as maritime trade-routes between India and China.