sinsin2 Posted October 8, 2001 Report Share Posted October 8, 2001 Returning from LOS last month with EVA, I read an article in Verve (inflight magazine) about the history of Taiwan. It seems that the original Taiwanese were aborigines and it had old photographs to prove it(to me).These people had only been recently displaced by the Chinese. Now if Taiwan was settled by aborigines, I presume so was Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam and maybe Laos. Can anyone clarify it for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 8, 2001 Report Share Posted October 8, 2001 The other day, I ran into Richard K. Diran at New Square One Pub ats Washington Square. He wrote (and photographed) the book "The Vanishing Tribes of Burma". He lives in BKK. I'm sure he knows the anthropology of ancient Siamese tribes. I'm not going to post his e-mail here, but I'll see if I can get some info from him. Cheers! B-Fly BKK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 8, 2001 Report Share Posted October 8, 2001 S-B - No disagreement with anything you wrote. I guess one issue would be the time frame being looked at on determining "indigenous-ness". With no disrepect intended to original poster, references to "photographs" to substantiate indigenous characteristics strikes me as pretty funny. I doubt that the Malay ancestors you spoke of overlapped much with the hill tribes in what is now northern Thailand (I base this on linguistics). So - if both groups moved into space that had no previous humanoid inhabitants, then both could be viewed as being "aboriginals" for this region. Then again, I'm not even crudely qualified. I do have Diran's book, which provides an Enthographical History of the Burmese written by others (which includes the whole Burmese state, from the Malay border to the borders with China and India). I suspect that this history pretty well mirrors that of the people who settled present day Thailand. I also have the book "The Laos of North Siam". It's earliest references are to the ancestors of the Shan people, under King Ruang, in A.D. 457, near Chiang Mai. I think I'll retire from the discussion. I don't really know what I'm talking about - I just repeat what I read. My interest was always to figure out where all these beautiful Thai women got their beauty from - with dreams of tracing back to the source!!!!!!!! How old is old? (How high is up?). Cheers! BB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 8, 2001 Report Share Posted October 8, 2001 "I thought everyone knew that? The KMT fled China after being defeated by Mao's army and invaded Formosa which I think at the time was a Portugese colony that they had taken from China." Mayor, I think you missed the point. They were talking about the original inhabitants, not the KMT!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 8, 2001 Report Share Posted October 8, 2001 Taiwan has been inhabited by Han Chinese for a long time -- hundreds of years before the KMT made it their final stronghold. Most of the pre-KMT immigrants were from Fujian province, and they make up the large proportion of today's population. Hence the Taiwanese dialect is almost identical to that spoken in Fujian. There is also still a minority population of "aboriginal" peoples, which the Chinese call "Shan Di Ren" (or "mountain people"). I don't believe they actually favored the mountains until the Chinese immigrants drove them up there, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grabii Posted October 8, 2001 Report Share Posted October 8, 2001 Sinsin, Â quote: Originally posted by sinsin: ... It seems that the original Taiwanese were aborigines ... Â Now if Taiwan was settled by aborigines, I presume so was Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam and maybe Laos. Can anyone clarify it for me. Â Since by definition an aborigine is the first or earliest known of its kind (in this case people) in a region, from the Latin ab origine "from the beginning", as opposed to an invading or colonizing population, I think you've made a safe presumption that would apply to pretty much anywhere in the world. Â Regards, JEff [ October 08, 2001: Message edited by: JEff ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinsin2 Posted October 9, 2001 Author Report Share Posted October 9, 2001 JEff quote: Since by definition an aborigine is the first or earliest known of its kind (in this case people) in a region, from the Latin ab origine "from the beginning", as opposed to an invading or colonizing population, I think you've made a safe presumption that would apply to pretty much anywhere in the world. Point taken. I mean similar to Australian Blacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinsin2 Posted October 9, 2001 Author Report Share Posted October 9, 2001 peesooahbkk I am the same...I don,t really know what I,m talking about either. But if one of the earlier (races) inhabitants of Thailand was black,I would like to know. Official Thai history makes no mention of it. Because skin colour is so important class wise to Thais..I would take great pleasure dropping this bombshell on some of my acquaintences Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinsin2 Posted October 9, 2001 Author Report Share Posted October 9, 2001 Population of Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan, 1998 Individuals Households Plains Dwellers 185,652 49,174 Mountain Dwellers 210,442 53,814 Total 396,094 102,988 Source: Ministry of the Interior http://www.gio.gov.tw/info/book2000/ch0201t.htm Before the Han Chinese immigration began in the mid-1600s, Taiwan was inha-bited by people belonging to the Austronesian race, the members of which lived in a vast area extending from Madagascar in the west to Hawaii and Easter Island in the east, and from New Zealand in the south to Taiwan in the north. Taiwan's aborigines are believed to have come from the Malay archipelago in different waves about 6,000 years ago at the earliest and less than 1,000 years ago at the latest. Since their languages are very different--more varied than those of the Philippines--some scholars suggest that Taiwan is the original homeland of all Austronesians. Archeological findings indicate that Taiwan had been inhabited by other people before the current aborigines came. However, little is known about them, particularly when and why they disappeared. http://www.sinica.edu.tw/tit/culture/0795_TribesOfTaiwan.html OK now what about Thailand/Vietnam/Cambodia Laos?. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 9, 2001 Report Share Posted October 9, 2001 Sinsin, information on the number of Sakai living in Thailand is sketchy; there shouldn't be more than 300, most of them in the Banthat mountain range. It's a beautiful area, and if you ever get the chance, go there! Thai history doesn't mention the existence of an aboriginal race on "Thai" soil. It's the typical, snotty attitude of the conqueror, but the same also happened in innumerable other places. In Sri Lanka, for example, the aboriginal Vedda people are as badly off as the Sakai, and so are the Adivasis (lit. "the original dwellers") in India. There must be hundreds of more examples the world over. Sometimes, the conquerors even try to re-write history, so as to proclaim themselves the original lords of the land. This happened recently in parts of India, where new text books claimed that the Aryan had always lived in India and were not - as common wisdom has it - immigrants from the steppes of Central Asia. Countries are like women - there's always someone who got there before you. No need denying the fact! [ October 08, 2001: Message edited by: Scum_Baggio ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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