Experts gathered for a special boat launching in the eastern county of Taitung as part of a seminar in which elders of the indigenous Amis Tribe demonstrated how their ancestors navigated the seas in bamboo rafts.
The seminar on indigenous navigation practices, sponsored by the Taitung County Austronesian Community College, brought experts in history, cultural studies and archeology together to discuss how Taiwan's native Austronesian population spread across the islands of the South Pacific.
Bamboo rafts were the primary method of marine transportation for peoples living along the Taitung coast, said Jesse Liu, a professor at National Taitung University. It would not have been uncommon to see over 100 such rafts scattered along the beaches before they were replaced with modern motorboats and rafts made from plastic, he said.
The traditional vessels had been forgotten until the community college began working with indigenous tribes to remake them in 2003, he said.
More than just tools, the rafts represent the seafaring culture of the region. Studying the vessels can provide valuable reference points for research on human navigation and cultural asset preservation, he said.
The Amis Tribe is one of six indigenous peoples that call Taitung home, along with the Paiwan, Rukai, Bunun, Puyuma and Yami Tribes.
Academia Sinica research fellow Liu Yi-chang, who was also at the seminar, said that he had once seen a large bamboo craft off Taiwan's southeastern coast in 1980, which he believes was built for long-distance voyages.
He surmised that Taiwan's indigenous population traveled to the island on bamboo rafts from what is today China's Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces at some point during the Paleolithic Period.
(By Tyson Lu and Elizabeth Hsu)
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