i dont think normal people sit around at a ramen place and wonder about the origins of the early austronesians

girls are always wondering if khasi pine that is now the basis of the montane forests of the northern philippines were brought by early austronesian settlers¹ from the mainland as an invasive species... the timeline roughly matches up but we dont have hard evidence

_{1. YES! SETTLERS! AUTOCTHONY IS A NATIONALIST LIIIIEEEEEE. there were earlier people in the philippines who got displaced and assimilated by that settlement that we don't know much about...}

A Negrito-like population was most likely also present in Taiwan before the Neolithic expansion and must have persisted into historical times, as suggested by evidence from morphological features of human skeletal remains dating from around 6,000 years ago resembling Negritos (especially Aetas in northern Luzon), and further corroborated by Chinese reports from the Qing period rule of Taiwan (1684 to 1895) and from tales of Taiwanese indigenous peoples about people with "dark skin, short-and-small body stature, frizzy hair, and occupation in forested mountains or remote caves".