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Laszlo Montgomery (16:30)

Dapenkang culture had nothing to do with the Neolithic people who were developing along the Yellow river who served as the most ancient ancestors of the Han Northern Chinese. These proto Austronesian people in Taiwan became the earliest ancestors of the 2.3% of Aboriginal people who make up the island's modern day population. Dabangkang culture spread out all over the coasts of Taiwan as well as to Penghu. Penghu, by the way, is also known by its Portuguese name, the Pescadores Islands. This is a small island chain off the southeast coast of Taiwan. Today it's a county of Taiwan. As the story unfolds, you'll see just as early Guangzhou history started off in Panyu, a lot of Taiwan's earliest history happened in this small archipelago of 90 small islands located 30 miles off the Taiwan coast. Again, when this Dabangkang culture started to evolve, there were already pre Austronesian people living in Taiwan. Though we don't know exactly who they were, recent finds coupled with tribal myths suggests there was a sizable Negrito population. Negrito was a 16th century Spanish word to describe those first people they encountered on the Philippines, the Andaman Islands, and a few other locations in maritime Southeast Asia. Over the next couple thousand years, these people who crossed over from Southeast China began to spread out all over Taiwan and formed a myriad of Neolithic cultures The number of these different cultures is quite large and spread out all over the island, including on Panghol. It's believed around 3000 BC or thereabouts. The water levels on the planet were about the same as where we are today, and the shape of all the islands on a map would be recognizable to us. And what began and existed for a very long time as a collection of unitary clans spread out sparsely around Taiwan, really began to transform into something much bigger. Why? Probably because of the food security that was the secret to growing a population. Rice and millet farmers were by then quite advanced and able to grow a surplus of food, and fishermen were able to make the most out of the sea's bounty. So without the need to live as a nomad or hunter gatherer, Neolithic settlements proliferated and the island's population began to take off. Maybe it was this, maybe it was something else. We can't know for sure. But here is where the indigenous people warmed to this idea of searching for new lands. It was also a period where so many of these wenhuas, or cultures, expanded all around the island. Which one of these dozens of Neolithic cultures were the earliest ones to look beyond the horizon of the waters they were familiar with and risk their lives to find out that we don't know for certain. Most scientists and researchers speculate that whoever they were, it's likely they came from the south and eastern parts of the island rather than the coastal plains of the west. In this subtropical paradise on the western part of Taiwan, people most likely found no need to look for greener pastures elsewhere. So they stayed put and enjoyed their perfect little agrarian part of the island. But on the eastern part of Taiwan, it's a great place to grow tea, but not so great if you're trying to cultivate rice or millet or engage in animal husbandry. For this reason, it's thought these people to the east were the first to hop in their outrigger canoes and explore the great unknown. Their first journeys may not have had migration in mind and may have been simply for establishing trade relations. We know, for instance, that jade and pottery that originated in Taiwan was traded all along the island chain of the Ryukyus. If you look on a map, you'll see the easiest place to sail to from southern Taiwan, other than across the Taiwan Strait to China, is directly south to the island of Luzon in the Philippines. From the nephrite jade that's found locally in Taiwan and dug up from graves all over Southeast Asia, it appears likely that trade networks were already forming. I mentioned in that six part Guangzhou history series that long before the Han Chinese started showing up in Guangdong Province, there was a long established non high trade going on. Nanhai again just means South Seas or more precisely the South China Sea and the smaller seas adjacent to this body of water. This Nanhai trade was carried out by these Austronesian dominated trade networks. A lot of the same kinds of artifacts discovered in eastern Taiwan can also be found in the northern Philippines, again North Luzon. And we think it was sometime around 2200 BC or thereafter that these people in south and East Taiwan migrated to the Philippines. We know this not only from archaeological finds, but also from linguistic study over in China. This period of migration of these Austronesian indigenous people from Taiwan to the Philippines was the mythical time of Yao and Xun, the legendary Chinese rulers so beloved and respected by Confucius. So these people went from south and east Taiwan to Northern Luzon, with intermediate stops in the Batanes Islands. And once settled there, they started their incredible expansion. Some went southward throughout the Philippine Archipelago and beyond into the Celebes Sea, Molucca Sea, Banda Sea Pass, Sulawesi. And they mixed with those mysterious people who were already living there since who knows when and after these Austronesian speaking people got settled in the Philippines. One group went west in the direction of Indonesia and beyond. And another group, perhaps the bravest of them all, sailed all the way to the farthest reaches of Polynesia. The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New guinea, including the surrounding islands and Australia had been inhabited for millennia. When this great Austronesian migration commenced. However, the islands further east and north, namely New Zealand, Micronesia, Fiji and everything east, were uninhabited. So these arrivals were the first humans to populate the islands. And they braved every single kind of danger that the high seas could throw at them. Storms, rogue waves, strong winds, giant fish or whales, and all other manners of extreme weather. And we'll never know how many perished before they got a handle on the weather patterns and the currents. But today we know those who made it to those far flung places executed extraordinary feats of navigation with only the stars, birds, seaweed and ocean currents to guide them. And the original people who made that first voyage to Northern Luzon in the Philippines, they spoke what we call the Malayo Polynesian branch of this Austronesian language family that had long existed in Taiwan. For this reason, Taiwan is often referred to as the Austronesian homeland and the Philippines as the Malayo Polynesian homeland. And as time went by, century after century, from the moments those first courageous souls bid farewell to their clansmen and pushed their canoes off the edge of the beach, to infinity and beyond. Maritime technologies and navigation got better and better, which allowed them to push the envelope with each voyage. Let me also say that some of these people also found their way to the Southeast Asian mainland, where these Austro Asiatic languages were spoken in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and parts of the Malay Peninsula. And during the 20th century, all manners of brilliant scientists, geneticists, archaeologists and linguists started putting all the pieces to the puzzle together. With each discovery. They knew that indeed, what began to happen in northernmost Philippines originated in Taiwan. And today, 400 million speakers of these Austronesian languages, who are part of all the cultures that were created when this great mixture of peoples was happening, are spread out today over 30 countries. I'm reluctant to drill down any deeper than this as far as these theories of Austronesian origins and dispersal go, because there are a lot of disagreements that still exist about which theory is the correct one. So roughly 2000 to 1500 BC this Austronesian dispersal was well underway. So let's trace the skittles back to where we came from, the island of Taiwan. As I said previously, there was no small number of Neolithic cultures stretching from Taipei to the most southern point of Pingdong County. I mentioned Dapengkang culture. There were several others, all differentiated by their pottery and other tools and artifacts. And these people from so many Neolithic cultures were all the ancestors of Taiwan's indigenous people. The Taiwanese indigenous people go by a few names. Taiwanese Austronesians, Taiwanese Aboriginal people, Yuanzhu Minzu, Kaoshan people, as well as by their individual tribal names. As I said, today they make up roughly 2.3% of Taiwan's population. And much more than that if you figure in all the mixed marriages that have occurred since non Austronesian people started showing up. The indigenous people of Taiwan once spoke a couple dozen or so different Austronesian languages. Some are extinct and some of them are on their way towards extinction. And some are still spoken today. Some lived in the mountains and others were known as the Plains indigenous people, the Pingpu, Zu Qin. They lived in the lowlands and coastal plains where all the main population centers would end up and where the Europeans and Chinese would go to in the greatest numbers. And for this reason, of all the Taiwan indigenous people, they were the ones who assimilated the quickest. If you look at any simple tourist map of Taiwan, you'll count about 23 tribes and clans of indigenous people. Currently, the government recognizes 16, with a few more fighting for recognition, since in varying degrees they all play a role throughout Taiwan history. I'll introduce some of them later on in the series. So let's skip ahead to what we know from official records. Chinese historians from the earliest times had this knack for keeping great records. We can only imagine how much information was lost and how all the upheavals that litter world history. But thanks to Chinese historians and scholars whose passion it was to preserve China's historical past, we know a lot about the history that went on beyond China's borders. There isn't much prior to the year 230, 10 years into the Three Kingdoms period. And from the San Guo Chi, the record of the Three Kingdoms, we know it was Sun Quan, by then the Emperor of Eastern wu, who had two of his men, Wei Wen and Zhuge Chi, lead 10,000 people in the direction of Taiwan to find the legendary islands of Yizhou and Danzhou. Now I checked my Pleco app to see what Michael Love said about Yizhou. It's the name of an ancient barbarian country, possibly Taiwan or among the Ryukyu Islands. As for Danzhou, it's suggested that this was the very same legendary island of the immortals that Qin Shi Huang sent Xu Shi to go find and bring back the elixir of life. We don't know for sure what these two places were, but that's where Sun Quan instructed his people to go and seek out. They didn't have any luck where Danzhou was concerned, but they did manage to locate Yizhou and captured a bunch of indigenous people that they brought back to China. Most all of them died en route. The back end to this expedition to Yizhou was a an exploratory mission to Zhuya or Hainan Island. That ambitious voyage ended up in a disaster and most everyone died from disease or ill fortune. And Sun Quan wasn't all too pleased and had Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi executed. And the great historian Chen Shou duly recorded this in the Record of the Three Kingdoms. As tenuous as some may consider it, some point to this story from almost 18 centuries ago as China's oldest political claim to the island of Taiwan. Some call the sun quan story from 230, 231 mighty thin gruel, with no way of saying for sure if the Yizhou they discovered was Taiwan or one of the ryukyus from the Three Kingdoms period. We have to wait almost 400 years before Taiwan appears as a blip on the China history radar. During the Sui Tang, Song and Yuan, there were a number of events that took place in the history of interaction with the mainland. During the Sui Emperor Yang was quite determined to add Taiwan to his list of conquests. And he sponsored three unsuccessful expeditions to Liuqiu, which may have been Taiwan or may have been the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan's north. The first expedition in 605 failed due to language problems. The second one in 607 went a little smoother. But the purpose of the trip was to get the folks on Taiwan to agree to tributary relations with the Sui. But Taiwan was still an island filled with a bunch of individual tribes that all had their own things going on. There was no one spokesperson for the whole island yet. So that second mission terminated unsuccessfully.

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Laszlo Montgomery (32:11)

This is a Reese's Peanut Butter cup sound experiment. We're looking to find the perfect way to hear Reese's so you'll buy more of them. Here we go. Reese's, Reese's. Reese's. Reese's. Reese's. Hey, get out of here, you little stinker. Reese's, Reese's.

Narrator (32:34)

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Laszlo Montgomery (32:38)

That breathy one sounded very creepy, am I right? After learning their lessons from the two past failed attempts in this third expedition, in 610, the Sui military came much better prepared and in much greater numbers. They were able to inflict some serious damage on the aboriginal forces they clashed with. But the losses to the Sui army were also considerable. And after sailing back to the mainland with several thousand captives, someone was able to convince Sui Yangti to declare victory and give up on this island of little strategic value. The Tang dynasty emperors surprisingly showed little interest in Taiwan. The island didn't contain any particular commodities that were considered important enough. Nor was the island located in the immediate seaways of the maritime Silk Road. Starting here in the Tang, more and more people from the mainland will sail across the strait and explore opportunities. But not on Taiwan. The destination of choice was on Penghu Tang poet Shijian Wu, who was immortalized thanks to one of his poems being included in the Tang Shi san Baishou, or 300 Tang poems retired to Penghu in the early 9th century during the reign of Tang Emperor Xuanzong. In his poetry, Shijianwu played up the merits of this Penghu paradise. Though many Chinese tried their luck on Penghu during the Sui and Tang, it wasn't until the Song where the numbers started to pick up. You might find it as no surprise that it was the fishing in and around Penghu that attracted the earliest arrivals there. As I said, without any one single political entity to negotiate with, it was somewhat of a lesson in frustration for China's diplomats to negotiate for relations. There were too many indigenous people to deal with, all speaking different languages, and many were quite hostile to any kind of entreaty originating from the mainland. But in the Northern Song, more and more Chinese started coming to Penghu and Taiwan. All the abundance in Song China started to show by the 11th century. And as it happened in China, from time to time, following a sustained period of peace and economic prosperity, some people, to escape population pressures, began migrating across the strait. And these Song era people heading in the direction of Penghu in Taiwan were mostly Hokkien people from southern Fujian who spoke their Minnan dialect. And hot on their heels were the Hakkas from southeastern Guangdong. Today, there are no small number of Hokkien and Hakka people long residing in Taiwan who can look back on these Song dynasty arrivals as their earliest ancestors. This particular wave that came during the Song was just the beginning of more migrations to come. In 1171, the Southern Song Emperor Xiaozong had Penghu placed under the jurisdiction of Quanzhou, Fujian Province. And with Penghu now part of the Song Empire, authorities dispatched troops to these islands to protect the Chinese inhabitants there. The primary antagonizer to these Chinese migrants to Penghu were Japanese Wokou pirates, who throughout the Ming Dynasty remained a constant menace. And besides this, Song records also wrote about occasional raids from Taiwan by aboriginal people who attacked residents on Penghu armed with bows and arrows, spares and knives. Between 1174 and 1189, there were even attacks by fearless Taiwanese natives who sailed across the Taiwan Strait to raid coastal villages on Fujian. As more Chinese continued to homestead on Penghu, the Song government beefed up its forces there and built military installations. The Song was the first Chinese dynasty to have its own navy, and they used it to patrol around Penghu and Taiwan. And after the Mongol takeover of China, beginning with Kublai Khan in 1271, those migrants from China who had settled in Taiwan in Penghu, with things looking grim on the mainland, decided to make their temporary visit Permanent. The Yuan government set up an administrative post on Penghu to control things there and and on Taiwan. But this was on paper only, and this office had little impact on the affairs of those places. And as more Chinese arrived from the mainland, setting themselves up on the western coastal plain, they inevitably began having confrontations with aboriginal people who had populated these areas for centuries. Now it was the turn of the Taiwan indigenous people to face this all too common phenomenon in world history. The Yuan dynasty's interaction with Taiwan mostly concerns the story of Wang da Yuan. From 1328 to 1333, he traveled throughout the South China Sea, Java Sea, Andaman Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea 300 years before Admiral Zheng he. And he wrote about every place that he visited. In his Daoy Zhi Lue, a brief account of island barbarians, Wang Da Yuan wrote about Penghu and noted the presence of Chinese engaged in fishing. He also visited Liuqiu, which was probably Taiwan, and described the topography of the place, noting that he did not encounter any Chinese living there. Among Wang's observations about Taiwan was that the people wore their hair in tufts, tattooed their bodies, and wore red silk and yellow cloth wrapped around their heads. The travels of Wang Da Yuan are more celebrated for his other discoveries elsewhere in Southeast Asia, particularly during his 1330 stopover in Singapore, which was then called Temasek. During the Ming from 1602 to 1603, we have another traveler, literatus and soldier who once fought under Qi Jiguang. This was Chengdi. He joined up with an expedition led by one Shen you Rong, who who was embarking on an expedition to Taiwan from the island of Kinmen, 6.2 miles off the coast of Xiamen. More about that tiny island later. The purpose of this voyage was to deal with the problem that seemed to have no eradicating the Japanese Wok Kou pirates from their Taiwan lair. As far as ridding the place of pirates, the expedition was quite successful. And as a kind of cherry on top, they also chased away a number of Dutch sailors based on Penghu who were scouting around the place. Chased away they were, but they'd be back later and we'll look at them in part two of this series. Not long after returning from this exciting voyage to Taiwan and back, Chun Di, 62 years old at the time, wrote a book about his 21 days spent on Taiwan and his observations regarding the aboriginal people there. This was called the Dongfan Ji, an account of the Eastern Barbarians, also later known as the Record of Formosa. This was one of those lost books that thankfully lived on in later compendia, but in 1955 a copy of the entire text was discovered in the Tokyo Imperial University. This work, the Dongfan Ji, is hailed as the first detailed account of Taiwan's indigenous people, their language, customs, description of their person, their society and all kinds of other interesting observations. Chandi referred to them as Yi, which means barbarian and carries all the well traveled baggage of cultural chauvinism. His descriptions of the indigenous people exudes a strong whiff of primitivism and obviously looks down on their relative backwardness. He noted they tattooed their bodies, ate a lot of daire meat, were extremely physically fit, could run as fast as a horse, and remarkably had no calendars or chieftains to rule them. In fact, he was sort of incredulous that such a place so close off China's coast could be so backward relative to such a sophisticated, refined and culturally advanced place as China. There were many more observations such as their architecture, agriculture methods, marriage and funeral customs, and vivid descriptions of their cuisine. There's no mention about which one of the multitude of tribes it was that he was mixing with. It's believed as his few weeks stay there was limited to the southwest part of Taiwan between Tainan and Kaohsiung, that it was the Suraia or Shillaya people who were the ones he encountered. The Shilla Ya were among the Ping Po, or Plains Aboriginal people who lived in the west of Taiwan in the lowlands and coastal plains. When the Dutch start showing up in force, it will be these Ping Poo people who they interact with. Mostly we thank these Shillaya people for giving us the name Taiwan. It came from their language which pronounced it Taio Wang. From that we get the name Taiwan and the Chinese characters chosen to name the place. The language of these Sillaya people belong to the same family as Indonesian, Malay and Tagalog. More about them as we wander through the Taiwan history timeline. So let's close up shop for now. Almost 100 million years we covered. I'd say that's enough for one single episode. A CHP thankful shout out to Messrs Toby Openshaw and Josh Brown for their kind assistance. I thank you all for tuning in, especially if you made it this far, and I don't see why you wouldn't have. This is Laszlo Montgomery signing off from Southern California and living the life somewhere in the city of Los Angeles. My friends do consider coming back again next time for another exciting episode of the China History Podcast.

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