History of Taiwan

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 BC is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancestors of today's Taiwanese

indigenous peoples. The island was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, followed

by an influx of Hoklo people including Hakka immigrants from the Fujian and Guangdong areas

of mainland China, across the Taiwan Strait. The Spanish built a settlement in the north

for a brief period but were driven out by the Dutch in 1642.

In 1662, Koxinga, a loyalist of the Ming dynasty who had lost control of mainland China in

1644, defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His forces

were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683, and parts of Taiwan became increasingly integrated

into the Qing empire. Following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing ceded

the island, along with Penghu, to the Empire of Japan. Taiwan produced rice and sugar to

be exported to the Empire of Japan, and also served as a base for the Japanese invasion

of Southeast Asia and the Pacific during World War II. Japanese imperial education was implemented

in Taiwan and many Taiwanese also fought for Japan during the war.

In 1945, following the end of World War II, the nationalist government of the Republic

of China , led by the Kuomintang , took control of Taiwan. In 1949, after losing control of

mainland China in the Chinese Civil War, the ROC government under the KMT withdrew to Taiwan

and Chiang Kai-shek declared martial law. The KMT ruled Taiwan as a single-party state

for forty years, until democratic reforms in the 1980s, which led to the first-ever

direct presidential election in 1996. During the post-war period, Taiwan experienced rapid

industrialization and economic growth known as the "Taiwan Miracle", and was known as

one of the "Four Asian Tigers". Early settlement

In the Late Pleistocene, sea levels were about 140 m lower than in the present day, exposing

the floor of the shallow Taiwan Strait as a land bridge that was crossed by mainland

fauna. The oldest evidence of human presence on Taiwan consists of three cranial fragments

and a molar tooth found at Chouqu and Gangzilin, in Zuojhen District, Tainan. These are estimated

to be between 20,000 and 30,000 years old. The oldest artefacts are chipped-pebble tools

of a Paleolithic culture found in four caves in Changbin, Taitung, dated 15,000 to 5,000

years ago, and similar to contemporary sites in Fujian. The same culture is found at sites

at Eluanbi on the southern tip of Taiwan, persisting until 5,000 years ago. At the beginning

of the Holocene 10,000 years ago, sea levels rose, forming the Taiwan Strait and cutting

off the island from the Asian mainland.

In December 2011, the ~8,000 year old Liangdao Man skeleton was found on Liang Island. In

2014, the mitochondrial DNA of the skeleton was found to belong to Haplogroup E, with

two of the four mutations characteristic of the E1 subgroup.

The only Paleolithic burial that has been found on Taiwan was in Xiaoma cave in the

southeast of the island, dating from about 4000 BC, of a male similar in type to Negritos

found in the Philippines. There are also references in Chinese texts and Taiwanese aboriginal