Results and Conclusion
摘要
The overarching theme of the Matsu Islands research reported in this book is the relationship between humans and the sea, and the discussion here derives from the author’s decades of involvement in maritime and island archaeology. The two ‘Liangdao Man’ skeletons unearthed from the prehistoric sites on Liangdao Island in the Matsu Archipelago are a discovery of great significance to archeology and anthropology, and beyond what is reported here in this book, they likely will continue to reveal to us knowledge of how humans from the East Asian coast became the Austronesian voyagers who conquered the oceans and settled much of the Pacific. What we have presented in this book reflects the results of research by many individuals, but much of the interpretations of this research that fills these pages are only the humble opinions of the author, and the future will likely show that they need revision. As the saying goes, “there is no end to learning,” and the research on the archeology of the Matsu Archipelago and current understanding of ‘Liangdao Man’ are still very limited. After all, this research and many of the analytical methods it employs are still in their infancy. In the future, more archaeological research will be carried out to enrich our understanding, new methods will be developed to analyze the data, and new topics will continue to be studied and explored.