The 'Express Train from Taiwan to Polynesia': On the congruence of proxy lines of evidence

Abstract

Renfrew's concept of an Indo-European expansion was carefully hedged with strict caveats to avoid earlier methodological and political pitfalls. His 'farming-language dispersal' hypothesis has inspired others to seek similar examples among other language families. This review argues that the model has gone awry in one of these, the 'Express Train from Taiwan to Polynesia' hypothesis. The persistence of the Austronesian language/rice-farming hypothesis results from a cluster of methodological errors that include an overall failure to heed Renfrew's caveats, over-reliance on a controversial putative linguistic homeland and failure to deal with parallel evidence impartially, resulting in unsupported claims of congruence.

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