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> As well as being genetically related, Langley says it’s likely that the people who inhabited these islands in the Pleistocene era, 12,000 years ago, had “an image of an inter-island ‘community of practice’ with shared values and worldviews”.

How can you determine that from a poorly attested material culture? The way it’s worded makes me deeply suspicious that it’s backporting the doctrine of Indonesian national unity into the Stone Age.

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My impression is that Indonesian people aren't under any delusions that the country matches any specific historical borders. They're well aware that their country's borders are a product of colonization.

That said, it seems to me like there's increasing evidence that the Austronesian expansion was more than just random refugees getting swept to different islands by fluke storms as is sometimes implied. There is wooden pole art all around the pacific rim, DNA evidence in south america, linguistic evidence in south america, and now this. It seems reasonable to suspect that the austronesian expansion was supported by a series of large trade networks and societies that provided logistical support for the expansion.

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