Tracing Austronesian Origins from the Qihedong Skull: A New Maritime Civilization Exhibition

China Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing, together with the Fujian Museum, has opened a special exhibition on the Austronesians and maritime civilization. As reported by China Daily (via PR Newswire), the display features a reconstruction model of a human skull from the Qihedong site in Fujian, dated to roughly 10,000–8,400 years ago. This is an exhibition news item rather than a newly published study.

The Qihedong skull draws attention because its ancient DNA was used in a Science paper published back in 2020. That work, by a team at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, included genome-wide data from 26 ancient East Asian individuals and was used to support a southern Chinese, specifically Fujian-coastal, homeland for Austronesian ancestors.

The exhibition coverage emphasizes that Austronesian speakers began expanding from China’s southeast coast about 6,000 years ago, dispersing across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The show pairs artifacts with genetic evidence to visualize this long maritime expansion.

Because this item rests on the 2020 paper rather than new research, readers should treat the underlying conclusions as belonging to that original study; the exhibition itself serves as a public-facing window onto Austronesian origins.

Source: China Daily (via PR Newswire). Mysteries of migration, 2025-12-11.