Taiwanese aborigines
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Taiwan Aboriginal peoples, which were originally living in Taiwan
before Chinese people immigrating to Taiwan in the 17th century. The language of
Taiwan Aboriginal is classified as Austronesian. In Qing dynasty of China, they
were called the "barbarians", were not belong to any country. During the
Japanese
ruling
period, they were named as "Takasago". After the Chinese Government moving to
Taiwan, Aboriginal peoples were divided into "Aboriginal people" and "plains".
In 1994, the Government named them "indigenous people" to
get rid of
ethnic discrimination. Now they are further called "Aboriginal peoples".
The Austronesian peoples spread across Southeast Asia, Indochina,
the Malay Peninsula, the India Ocean and the group of Pacific Island. The vast
ocean and islands are east of Easter Island in the West of South America, in the
west is the east coast of Madagascar, north of Taiwan, South of New Zealand. It
includes Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, New Guinea, etc, is the most
widely distributed of the peoples in the world. Most people
lives
in South-East Asia region, the population of this region is about
200 million. Due to the vast region, different natural environment and
historical evolution
for thousands of years,
Austronesian regions is become a rich, unique and diverse cultures Island.
According to anthropological studies, the feature of the Austronesian peoples ' culture is burning field for farming. Thay also build elevated housing in order to far from the ground, that can also avoid the moisture and snakes and insects. The feature is include chewing betel nuts, good at weaving baskets, and hunting seafood, and so on. The northernmost Austronesian ethnic distribution is Taiwan, there is a lot of evidence showing that Taiwan and Austronesian peoples are contacting for 1000 years, so that Taiwan is not an isolated nation. At present the population of Taiwan Aboriginal peoples is more than 530,000 people , approximately only occupies in the world the south island language family nationality gross population 0.11%. Although the population proportion is very low, but many archaeology research concluded, in the ancient times, the process of south island moving to the southern coastal, Taiwan held the crucial geography status. Taiwan should be the diffusion of Austronesian peoples originated thousands of years ago. Today other Austronesian regions has been occasion of Islam, Christianity, Catholic culture. We can discover that Taiwan aborigines still hold the unique cultural practices..
Source :http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/E8