The April 24 issue of a newspaper in Shaoxing, in East China's Zhejiang Province, said Gaoshan minority might have been from Yue, which is another word for the areas around Shaoxing.

The Gaoshan minority live in the mountains of central Taiwan and islands to the southeast of Taiwan, in nine smaller communities with a total population of 240,000.

Experts say the group's migration might have taken place 6,000 to 4,000 years ago, about the time when documented human civilization began to take shape in China.

For decades, most historians have agreed that the Gaoshan minority came from the early tribes of East China's Fujian Province.

However, Huang Dashou, Taiwan historian and president of the Chinese History Research Institute, recently wrote in his "History of Taiwan's Early Inhabitants" that the island's first settlers practised the same customs, told the same legends and shared the same shipbuilding technology as the Yue people.

He Youji, a researcher from Zhejiang, agrees with Huang's theory.

"Astonishing parallels have been found in relics of the early Gaoshan minority in Taiwan and the Yue in Shaoxing," He said at the Second National Forum on Yue Culture Study in Shaoxing last week.

According to He's thesis, Gaoshan relics were found in Taidong County, in Taiwan, in 1968 and 1980.

The relics featured stamped pottery belonging to the Hemudu cultures,which lived east of Shaoxing about 7,000 years ago.

"(These findings) were the best evidence of the theory," He said.

He added the Gaoshan and Hemudu people also shared customs, such as worshiping the bird god, tattooing to avoid bad luck and building houses on wooden poles.

(from China Daily)