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No Migration from the North after the Sixth Century
before our Era, and None from the South after
its BeginningNone from a People with an
Alphabet

(22) And all this occurred before the beginning of our era, as the iron age commenced in Indonesia about that time. Had the immigrants seen any weapon made of the new metal, warlike as they were, they would not have failed to bring it with them. The complete absence of iron from the whole of Polynesia before the arrival of the first European voyagers makes it quite certain that there was no migration into that region after our era began. And the cause of the cessation was undoubtedly the new maritime power of the Malays, which preyed upon commerce and upon peaceful as well as adventurous expeditions. From the north migration ceased at an earlier period; for bronze weapons came in with the Japanese into the northern archipelago six or seven centuries before our era, and had migrants gone south after that they would have taken those with them. It was this very Japanese invasion that stopped emigration from their islands; the invaders were too busy for many centuries subduing the Ainos to attend to navigation or foreign ambitions. Not till their empire was consolidated, and they had surplus population, did their maritime enterprise extend beyond their own and the Chinese coastal seas.

(23) Nor did the immigrants by either route come from a people that had risen to the dignity of a script or written alphabet; for none came into the region except in the far east, into Eastern Island. And this bars any Semitic land as the origin of any immigration, for all the Semitic peoples in South Asia had reached that stage of culture thousands of years before our era.