Bishop Museum chairman of anthropology Tianlong Jiao has returned from China with solid evidence that the first voyages of the ancestors of Polynesians were made between the South China Coast across open ocean to the Penghu Islands, 100 miles away in the Strait of Taiwan.

It is the first direct archaeological link established for the beginning of the epic saga of prehistoric Pacific Ocean voyaging.

The people who made the voyages were early Austronesians, ancestors of Polynesians, and the evidence is stone tools excavated at a site called Damaoshan on the small, offshore island of Dongshan on the South China Coast.

"We compared stone tools with local materials," Tianlong said. "Lab analysis indicated that none of the stone tools was made of local materials. This means they must have been imported."

A new isotope analysis comparing the composition of the tools with material from surrounding areas including Guangdong Province, Fujian Province, the Penghu Islands and Taiwan showed that the stone came originally from the Penghu Islands, Tianlong said. Adz stone from Penghu also was used on Taiwan.

"We believe the Damaoshan people went to Penghu and brought back material," he explained. "This is the first evidence of ocean voyaging in the Taiwan Strait. I consider this the first stage of Austronesian seafaring. The evidence indicates continuing contact across the Taiwan Strait, and helps us understand why the material cultures are so similar."

Another groundbreaking aspect of the Damaoshan dig was the participation of archaeologists from Taiwan in an excavation on the Chinese mainland, the first time that Taiwanese and mainland Chinese scientists have worked together on the China coast. Tianlong said Bishop Museum is acting as a bridge to bring mainland China and Taiwan together.

The excavation at Dongshan was made possible through a $25,000 grant to the Bishop Museum from the Taiwan-based Chiang Ching-Kuo foundation. Taiwanese archaeologists who participated were Dr. Li Kuang-ti and Dr. Tsang Cheng-hwa, an expert on pottery. It is his opinion, based on pottery, that the cultures at Damaoshan and on Penghu are so similar as to be one people.

Tianlong explained that the Damaoshan site was a fishing settlement. Its people relied heavily on the ocean for food and tools. Today the site is about 700 feet above sea level.

One indication of the significance of the excavation is a grant to Tianlong's anthropology department at the Bishop Museum of $270,000 that was recently approved by the Luce Foundation for collaborative research on South China coast in neolithic cultures. Bill Brown, president of Bishop Museum, said 18 institutions in the United States applied for the grant. Only two applications, including Bishop Museum's, were approved.

The Bishop Museum department of anthropology has also received a grant from the Freeman Foundation to exhibit the artifacts found in the Damaoshan site. University of Hawai'i archaeologist Barry Rolett, who helped to initiate the excavations in China, said adzes found there could have been made in Samoa. The exhibition, being organized by Tianlong, will open at Bishop Museum next year.

Tianlong said he is in agreement with a theory of Austronesian dispersal espoused by leading Pacific archaeologists Patrick V. Kirch of the University of California Berkeley and Peter Bellwood of the Australian National University. The theory outdates the idea that Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians are separate races.

The new concept is that they are all descendants of the Austronesians, who originated on the South China Coast to become one of the great seafaring cultures of the world.

A chronology now widely accepted is that the Austronesians first voyaged from the South China coast to Taiwan around 3000 B.C. The next leg to the Philippines around 2500 B.C. may have been by outrigger canoe because root words for the outrigger canoe appear in the language at this time.

From the Philippines, the Austronesians went in several directions, reaching Indonesia about 500 B.C. and Madagascar about A.D. 500. A segment of Austronesians reached the Mariana Islands in Micronesia in 2000 to 1500 B.C.

Another Austronesian offshoot began in the Bismarck Archipelago northeast of New Guinea. It was called the Lapita culture. The Lapita people began a rapid movement around 1500 B.C. that reached the Solomon Islands in Melanesia about 1300 B.C. and New Caledonia around 1200 B.C.

By 900-800 B.C. the Lapitas had sailed east as far as Samoa and Tonga, where they died out. It is believed that Polynesians evolved on these islands. The Polynesian gods appeared at this time and perhaps the double voyaging canoe that permitted the Polynesians to make voyages of thousands of miles.

The Polynesians found the Marquesas and Tahiti by A.D. 700, Hawai'i and Easter Island by A.D. 900, and New Zealand by A.D. 1200.

The first step in the voyaging saga was 100 miles from Damaoshan to Penghu. A paper about the dig establishing the link will be published next year, Tianlong said.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.