Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. It is located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands with a combined area of 36,193 square kilometres. The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, has an area of 35,808 square kilometres, with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.
The history of the island of Taiwan dates back tens of thousands of years to the earliest known evidence of human habitation. The sudden appearance of a culture based on agriculture around 3000 BCE is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancestors of today's Taiwanese indigenous peoples. Han Chinese gradually came into contact with Taiwan starting in the late 13th century and started settling there by the early 17th century. Named Formosa by Portuguese explorers, the south of the island was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century whilst the Spanish built a settlement in the north which lasted until 1642. These European settlements were followed by an influx of Hoklo and Hakka immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong.
The Taiwan Strait is a 180-kilometer -wide strait separating the island of Taiwan and Asian continent. The strait is part of the South China Sea and connects to the East China Sea to the north. The narrowest part is 130 km wide.
The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. They are believed to have originated from the northern Philippines, either directly, via the Mariana Islands, or both. They were notable for their distinctive geometric designs on dentate-stamped pottery, which closely resemble the pottery recovered from the Nagsabaran archaeological site in northern Luzon. The Lapita intermarried with the Papuan populations to various degrees, and are the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia.
The Liangzhuculture or civilization was the last Chinese Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta. The culture was highly stratified, as jade, silk, ivory and lacquer artifacts were found exclusively in elite burials, while pottery was more commonly found in the burial plots of poorer individuals. This division of class indicates that the Liangzhu period was an early state, symbolized by the clear distinction drawn between social classes in funeral structures. A pan-regional urban center had emerged at the Liangzhu site in northwestern Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and elite groups from this site presided over the local centers. The Liangzhu culture was extremely influential and its sphere of influence reached as far north as Shanxi and as far south as Guangdong. The primary Liangzhu site was perhaps among the oldest Neolithic sites in East Asia that would be considered a state society. The type site at Liangzhu was discovered in Yuhang County, Zhejiang and initially excavated by Shi Xingeng in 1936.
A paddy field is a flooded field of arable land used for growing semiaquatic crops, most notably rice and taro. It originates from the Neolithic rice-farming cultures of the Yangtze River basin in southern China, associated with pre-Austronesian and Hmong-Mien cultures. It was spread in prehistoric times by the expansion of Austronesian peoples to Island Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia including Northeastern India, Madagascar, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The technology was also acquired by other cultures in mainland Asia for rice farming, spreading to East Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, and South Asia.
Nephrite is a variety of the calcium, magnesium, and iron-rich amphibole minerals tremolite or actinolite (aggregates of which also make up one form of asbestos). The chemical formula for nephrite is Ca2(Mg, Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2. It is one of two different mineral species called jade. The other mineral species known as jade is jadeite, which is a variety of pyroxene. While nephrite jade possesses mainly grays and greens (and occasionally yellows, browns, black or whites), jadeite jade, which is rarer, can also contain blacks, reds, pinks and violets. Nephrite jade is an ornamental stone used in carvings, beads, or cabochon cut gemstones. Nephrite is also the official state mineral of Wyoming.
The Sa Huỳnh culture was a culture in modern-day central and southern Vietnam that flourished between 1000 BC and 200 AD. Archaeological sites from the culture have been discovered from the Mekong Delta to Quảng Bình province in central Vietnam. The Sa Huynh people were most likely the predecessors of the Cham people, an Austronesian-speaking people and the founders of the kingdom of Champa.
The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia.
In the course of the peopling of the World by Homo sapiens, East Asia was reached about 50,000 years ago. The "recent African origin" lineage of 70 kya diverged into identifiable East Eurasian and West Eurasian lineages by about 50 kya. This early East Asian lineage diverged further during the Last Glacial Maximum, contributing outgoing from Mainland Southeast Asia significantly to the peopling of the Americas via Beringia about 25 kya. After the last ice age China became cut off from neighboring island groups. The previous phenotypes of early East Asians became either replaced or prevailed among more geographically distant groups.
The recordkeeping and development of the economic history of Taiwan started in the Age of Discovery. In the 17th century, the Europeans realized that Taiwan is located on the strategic cusp between the Far East and Southeast Asia. Two main European empires that competed to colonize it were the Dutch and Spanish Empires. Taiwan also became an intermediate destination for trade between Western European empires and East Asia states. The history of Taiwan as a colony of the Dutch Empire, Kingdom of Tungning, Qing China, and Empire of Japan between 1630 and 1945 was based heavily on economics.
In a hypothesis developed by Wilhelm Solheim, the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network (NMTCN) is a trade and communication network that first appeared in the Asia-Pacific region during its Neolithic age, or beginning roughly around 5000 BC. Nusantao is an artificial term coined by Solheim, derived from the Austronesian root words nusa "island" and tao "man, people". Solheim's theory is an alternative hypothesis to the spread of the Austronesian language family in Southeast Asia. It contrasts the more widely accepted Out-of-Taiwan hypothesis (OOT) by Peter Bellwood.
The prehistory of the Philippines covers the events prior to the written history of what is now the Philippines. The current demarcation between this period and the early history of the Philippines is April 21, 900, which is the equivalent on the Proleptic Gregorian calendar for the date indicated on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription—the earliest known surviving written record to come from the Philippines. This period saw the immense change that took hold of the archipelago from Stone Age cultures in 50000 BC to the emergence of developed thalassocratic civilizations in the fourth century, continuing on with the gradual widening of trade until 900 and the first surviving written records.
Since H. Otley Beyer first proposed his wave migration theory, numerous scholars have approached the question of how, when and why humans first came to the Philippines. The current scientific consensus favors the "Out of Taiwan" model, which broadly match linguistic, genetic, archaeological, and cultural evidence.
The Dapenkeng culture was an early Neolithic culture that appeared in northern Taiwan between 4000 and 3000 BC and quickly spread around the coast of the island, as well as the Penghu islands to the west. Most scholars believe this culture was brought across the Taiwan Strait by the ancestors of today's Taiwanese aborigines, speaking early Austronesian languages. No ancestral culture on the mainland has been identified, but a number of shared features suggest ongoing contacts.
The Kalanay Cave is a small cave located on the island of Masbate in central Philippines. The cave is located specifically at the northwest coast of the island within the municipality of Aroroy. The artifacts recovered from the site were similar to those found to the Sa Huynh culture of Southern Vietnam. The site is part of the "Sa Huynh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere" which was an Iron Age maritime trading network associated with the Austronesian peoples of the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, as well as most of northeastern Borneo and Southern Thailand. The type of pottery found in the site were dated 400 BC to AD 1500. The "Sa Huynh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere" is characterized by a remarkable continuity in trade goods, including decorated pottery and double-headed pendants and earrings known as lingling-o.
Philippine jade culture, or jade artifacts, made from white and green nephrite and dating as far back as 2000–1500 BC, have been discovered at a number of archaeological excavations in the Philippines since the 1930s. The artifacts have been both tools like chisels and ornaments such as lingling-o earrings, bracelets, and beads.
The Maritime Silk Road or Maritime Silk Route is the maritime section of the historic Silk Road that connected China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian peninsula, Somalia, Egypt and Europe. It began by the 2nd century BCE and flourished later on until the 15th century CE. Major players in the Maritime Silk Road include the merchants from the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties of imperial China, Austronesian sailors in Southeast Asia, Tamil merchants in India and Southeast Asia, and Persian and Arab traders in the Arabian Sea and beyond. The network followed the footsteps of older maritime networks in Southeast Asia, as well as the maritime spice networks of Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, India, and the Indian Ocean, coinciding with these ancient maritime trade roads by the current era.
Lingling-o or ling-ling-o, are a type of penannular or double-headed pendant or amulet that have been associated with various late Neolithic to late Iron Age Austronesian cultures. Most lingling-o were made in jade workshops in the Philippines, and to a lesser extent in the Sa Huỳnh culture of Vietnam, although the raw jade was mostly sourced from Taiwan.
The Chimei lithic workshops were workshops for making stone tools in the mid-Neolithic period scattered around Chimei Island in Penghu County. These workshops are located at Nankang Village, Tunghu Village, and Hsihu Village in Chimei Township, Penghu County, and they can be dated back to 3,800 to 4,500 years ago.
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