Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the south-west and India in the north-west.
The history of Sri Lanka is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions, comprising the areas of South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The early human remains found on the island of Sri Lanka date to about 38,000 years ago.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
Islam is the third largest religion in Sri Lanka, with about 9.7 percent of the total population following the religion. About 1.9 million Sri Lankans adhere to Islam as per the Sri Lanka census of 2012. The majority of Muslims in Sri Lanka are concentrated in the Eastern Province of the island. Other areas containing significant Muslim minorities include the Western, Northwestern, North Central, Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces. Muslims form a large segment of the urban population of Sri Lanka and are mostly concentrated in major cities and large towns in Sri Lanka, for example Colombo. Most Sri Lankan Muslims primarily speak Tamil language, though it is not uncommon for Sri Lankan Muslims to be fluent in Sinhalese.
The Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is the main stock exchange in Sri Lanka that utilizes an electronic trading platform. The CSE headquarters have been located at the World Trade Center (Colombo) Towers in Colombo since 1995, and it has regional branches in Kandy, Jaffna, Negombo, Matara, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Ratnapura. The CSE trades 296 companies representing 20 business sectors, as of 25 January 2021, with a combined market capitalization of 3,699 billion Sri Lankan rupees.
Fa Hien Cave, also Pahiyangala Cave, is situated in the district of Kalutara, Western Province, Sri Lanka and according to a rural legend, named after an alleged resident during historical times, namely Buddhist monk Faxian. However, there is no archaeological or historical evidence to support this legend. Nonetheless, the site is of archaeological significance as Late Pleistocene human fossilized skeletal remains were discovered in the cave's sediments during excavations in the 1960s, the 1980s and in 2013. This is the largest natural stone cave in South Asia. 3500 people can stay here at the same time. To see the size of the cave, you have to go inside and look outside. Prehistoric humans have lived here for 35000-60000 years.They used sea fish, salt, and shark teeth as ornaments. This limestone was formed by corrosion over hundreds of thousands of years.
Sri Lankan Tamils, also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, live in significant numbers in the Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces.
Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonization schemes is the government program of settling mostly Sinhalese farmers from the densely populated wet zone into the sparsely populated areas of the dry zone near tanks and reservoirs being built in major irrigation and hydro-power programs such as the Mahaweli project. This has taken place since the 1950s.
Eelam War I is the name given to the initial phase of the armed conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Sri Lanka:
Batadombalena is an archaeological site with evidence of habitation from 8,000 years BCE, Balangoda Man, located 85 km (52.8 mi) from Colombo in Sri Lanka, a two-hour drive from Colombo.
Belilena is a cave in Sri Lanka, located 8 km (5.0 mi) from the town of Kitulgala. Evidence of prehistoric human presence as early as 32,000 years ago was recorded at the site. The skeletal remains of ten individuals were discovered by Paul E. P. Deraniyagala, who attributed them to Balangoda Man. Balangoda Man is assumed to have lived as early as 32,000 years ago and occupied high altitude territories of up to 2,000 ft (609.6 m) above sea level.
The prehistory of Sri Lanka covers the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Iron Age of the country until the Pre Anuradhapura period in 543 BC.
The 1956 anti-Tamil pogrom, also known as the Gal Oya riots, was the first organised pogrom against Sri Lankan Tamils in the Dominion of Ceylon. It began with anti-Tamil rioting in Colombo, followed by anti-Sinhalese rioting in Batticaloa. The worst of the violence took place in the Gal Oya valley, where local majority Sinhalese colonists and employees of the Gal Oya Development Board commandeered government vehicles, dynamite and weapons and massacred minority Tamils. It is estimated that over 150 people died during the violence. The police and army were eventually able to bring the situation under control.
The Central Province is one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka, the first level administrative division of the country. The Central Province is primarily in the central mountainous terrain of Sri Lanka. It is the 6th largest province by area and is home to 2.5 million people. It is bordered by North Central Province to the north, Uva Province to the east, North Western Province to the west and Sabaragamuwa Province to the south and west. The province's capital is Kandy.
The archaeological heritage of Sri Lanka can be divided into three ages; Prehistoric (Stone-age), Protohistoric, and historical period. The presence of man activities in Sri Lanka probably dates from 75,000 years ago. Prehistoric sites which are presently identified in the country are distributed from the maritime belt and the lowland plains of the wet and dry zones to the high plateaus and rain forests in the central and southwestern mountain regions of the island. The protohistoric period expands from about 1000 BC to the historical period at about 500 BC. The main indicators of the distribution of protohistoric and early settlements on the island are the megalithic burials and pottery sites.
The Sri Lankan diaspora are Sri Lankan emigrants and expatriates from Sri Lanka, and their descendants, that reside in a foreign country. They number a total estimated population of around 3 million.
LankaClear is the largest payments infrastructure provider in Sri Lanka. Established in February 2002, the organization is owned by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) and all CBSL-licensed commercial banks in the country. LankaClear is the operator of LankaPay, the country's largest interbank payment network.
Squatting in Sri Lanka occurs when people are displaced by war or natural disasters, find it difficult to transfer title or build shanty towns. The Government of Sri Lanka has attempted to regularize squatter settlements. In 2020, there were reported to be over 600,000 squatters on state land.