Prehistory of Taiwan

Prehistory of Taiwan is the period before written records, reconstructed mainly from archaeological evidence. It spans early human occupation through the emergence of historical documentation.

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Changbin culture: A Paleolithic archaeological culture in eastern Taiwan, known for stone tools found at coastal cave and rock-shelter sites. Its early stone-tool sites are among the clearest evidence of Taiwan’s first known human occupation.
Neolithic Revolution: The broad transition from mobile foraging toward farming, animal domestication, and more settled communities. Agriculture and settled life distinguish many Taiwanese Neolithic communities from earlier ones.
Out of Taiwan theory: A hypothesis that Austronesian-speaking populations expanded from Taiwan into the Philippines and farther across the Pacific. It links Taiwan’s prehistoric population history to the spread of Austronesian languages.
Archaeology: The study of past human life through material remains, their contexts, and systematic investigation. Archaeology supplies the principal evidence for Taiwan’s past before written documentation.
Taiwanization: The adoption or promotion of a distinctively Taiwanese cultural or political identity. Modern identity debates can shape how Taiwan’s ancient past is interpreted and presented.
Baxian Caves: A group of archaeological cave and rock-shelter sites on Taiwan’s eastern coast, associated with Changbin culture. Finds from these shelters anchor the archaeological record of early occupation in eastern Taiwan.
Rice domestication: The prolonged process through which wild rice became a cultivated crop with traits suited to human use. Rice cultivation formed part of the subsistence changes associated with Taiwan’s Neolithic settlements.
Austronesian expansion: The dispersal of Austronesian-speaking peoples across island Southeast Asia and the Pacific over several millennia. Taiwan is a major proposed point of origin for this maritime expansion.
Radiocarbon dating: A method for estimating the age of once-living materials by measuring their remaining carbon-14. It helps establish chronologies for organic remains recovered from Taiwanese sites.
Ancient DNA: Genetic material recovered from ancient human remains and used to study population history and biological relationships. Genomic evidence may test proposed links between prehistoric Taiwanese populations and later migrations.