Austronesian expansion in the context of "Citrus fruit"

Taiwanese indigenous peoples, formerly called Taiwanese aborigines, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognized subgroups numbering about 600,303 or 3% of the island's population. This total is increased to more than 800,000 if the indigenous peoples of the plains in Taiwan are included, pending future official recognition. When including those of mixed ancestry, such a number is possibly more than a million. Academic research suggests that their ancestors have been living on Taiwan for approximately 15,000 years. A wide body of evidence suggests that the Taiwanese indigenous peoples had maintained regular trade networks with numerous regional cultures of Southeast Asia before Han Chinese settled on the island from the 17th century, at the behest of the Dutch colonial administration and later by successive governments towards the 20th century.

Taiwanese indigenous peoples are Austronesians, with linguistic, genetic and cultural ties to other Austronesian peoples. Taiwan is the origin and linguistic homeland of the oceanic Austronesian expansion, whose descendant groups today include the majority of the ethnic groups throughout many parts of East and Southeast Asia as well as Oceania and even Africa which includes Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, Philippines, Micronesia, Island Melanesia and Polynesia.

A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing square-rigged or fore-and-aft sails. Some ships carry square sails on each mast—the brig and full-rigged ship, said to be "ship-rigged" when there are three or more masts. Others carry only fore-and-aft sails on each mast, for instance some schooners. Still others employ a combination of square and fore-and-aft sails, including the barque, barquentine, and brigantine.

Early sailing ships were used for river and coastal waters in ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Austronesian peoples developed maritime technologies that included the fore-and-aft crab-claw sail and with catamaran and outrigger hull configurations, which enabled the Austronesian expansion into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. This expansion originated in Taiwan c. 3000 BC and propagated through Island Southeast Asia, reaching Near Oceania c. 1500 BC, Hawaii c. 900 AD, and New Zealand c. 1200 AD. The maritime trading network in the Indo-Pacific dates from at least 1500 BC. Later developments in Asia produced the junk and dhow—vessels that incorporated features unknown in Europe at the time.

Austronesian vessels are the traditional seafaring vessels of the Austronesian peoples of Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands.

They range from small dugout canoes to large lashed-lug plank-built vessels. Their hull configurations include monohulls as well as catamarans and outrigger boats (single-outrigger boats and trimarans). Traditional sail types include a variety of distinctively Austronesian crab-claw and tanja configurations, though modern vessels are typically motorized. These vessels allowed the migrations of the Austronesian peoples during the Austronesian expansion (starting at around 3000 to 1500 BC from Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia) throughout the islands of the Indo-Pacific, reaching as far as Madagascar, New Zealand, and Easter Island. They were also used to establish trading routes, including the Austronesian maritime trade network which formed the maritime leg of the spice trade and later, the maritime silk road.

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is a species of flowering tree in the mulberry and jackfruit family (Moraceae) believed to have been selectively bred in Polynesia from the breadnut (Artocarpus camansi). Breadfruit was spread into Oceania via the Austronesian expansion and to further tropical areas during the Colonial Era. British and French navigators introduced a few Polynesian seedless varieties to Caribbean islands during the late 18th century.

It is grown in 90 countries throughout South and Southeast Asia, islands in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, Central America, and Africa. Its name is derived from the texture of the moderately ripe fruit when cooked, similar to freshly baked bread and having a potato-like flavor.

Ikat (literally "to bind" in Malayo-Polynesian languages) is a dyeing technique from Southeast Asia used to pattern textiles that employs resist dyeing on the yarns prior to dyeing and weaving the fabric. In Southeast Asia, where it is the most widespread, ikat weaving traditions can be divided into two general groups of related traditions. The first is found among Daic-speaking peoples (Laos, northern Vietnam, and Hainan). The second, larger group is found among the Austronesian peoples (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Timor-Leste) and spread via the Austronesian expansion to as far as Madagascar. It is most prominently associated with the textile traditions of Indonesia in modern times, from where the term ikat originates. Similar unrelated dyeing and weaving techniques that developed independently are also present in other regions of the world, including India, Central Asia, Ryukyu Islands (where it is called Iichiiri or Tucciri), Japan (where it is called kasuri), Africa, and the Americas.

In ikat, the resist is formed by binding individual yarns or bundles of yarns with a tight wrapping applied in the desired pattern. The yarns are then dyed. The bindings may then be altered to create a new pattern and the yarns dyed again with another colour. This process may be repeated multiple times to produce elaborate, multicolored patterns. When the dyeing is finished all the bindings are removed and the yarns are woven into cloth. In other resist-dyeing techniques such as tie-dye and batik the resist is applied to the woven cloth, whereas in ikat the resist is applied to the yarns before they are woven into cloth. Because the surface design is created in the yarns rather than on the finished cloth, in ikat both fabric faces are patterned. Ikat can be classified into three general types: warp ikat or weft ikat, in which either the warp or weft yarns are dyed, respectively; and double ikat, where both the warp and weft yarns are dyed.

Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is an herbaceous perennial that grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of leaves) about one metre tall, bearing narrow leaf blades. The inflorescences bear flowers having pale yellow petals with purple edges, and arise directly from the rhizome on separate shoots.

Ginger is in the family Zingiberaceae, which also includes turmeric (Curcuma longa), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), and galangal. Ginger originated in Maritime Southeast Asia and was likely domesticated first by the Austronesian peoples. It was transported with them throughout the Indo-Pacific during the Austronesian expansion (c. 5,000 BP), reaching as far as Hawaii. Ginger is one of the first spices to have been exported from Asia, arriving in Europe with the spice trade, and was used by ancient Greeks and Romans. The distantly related dicots in the genus Asarum are commonly called wild ginger because of their similar taste.

The indigenous peoples of the Cordillera in northern Luzon, Philippines, often referred to by the exonym Igorot people, or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples, are an ethnic group composed of nine main ethnolinguistic groups whose domains are in the Cordillera Mountain Range, altogether numbering about 1.8 million people in the early 21st century.

Their languages belong to the northern Luzon subgroup of Philippine languages, which in turn belongs to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family. A 2014 genetic study has found that the Kankanaey (an Igorot subgroup from Mountain Province), and by extension other indigenous Cordillera groups, descend almost entirely from the ancient Austronesian expansion originating in Taiwan around 3000-2000 BCE