Shelley Rigger

And then on the top is a sort of skin layer that looks delicious because it looks like it has all kinds of wonderful flavors soaked into it.

But it's actually a rock.

And everybody in Taiwan wants to see it.

And lots of people in mainland China want to see it too.

When Chinese tourists come to Taiwan, they flock to the National Palace Museum and they want to see the meat rock.

And Taiwan's human history is a little bit like the meat rock.

Right.

There are all these layers that accumulated on top of one another of human communities, and they've now all kind of melded together to form one thing.

The first layer, of course, are the indigenous Taiwanese who have been there as long as anyone can imagine, remember.

Taiwan's indigenous people are Austronesian, meaning of the same kind of back in, you know, deepest ancient history origins as other South Pacific islanders.

And they...

may have been the sort of original South Pacific islanders.

The linguistic and DNA research suggests that many of the other South Pacific islands, people came there from Taiwan.

Like in Moana with the boats, you know?

Where they're going from one island to another, that really happened.

But it seems as if the original island where all that started may have been Taiwan.

Fascinating.

So they speak a different language.

Their cultures are very...

specific to Taiwan, the island where their cultures developed over thousands of years.