The island shares numerous traits with the Chinese mainland, with which it was once connected by land bridges during glacial ages of the Pleistocene period, and possibly, for a time, also with Luzon island of the Philippines and the Ryukyus archipelago.
Since prehistoric times, it has been occupied by various ethnic groups of people from the Asian nexus—different regions of the Chinese mainland and Indochina and, also, from the Philippines. Some of these people settled for generations; others, after short stays, moved on to other regions.
During the late 13th Century, a group of Han people (the major Chinese sub-group) fled from the Chinese main land to Taiwan after being defeated in battle-the earliest recorded evidence of Han settlers on the island. Then in the 17th Century, when Gen. Cheng Cheng-kung, or Koxinga, promoted cultivation of the land, large-scale immigration of the Han began to take place. As they came, they brought government organization, including historical records, to Taiwan, and thus put an end to a 'prehistoric island period' lasting more than 15,000 years.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, when Taiwan came under Japanese occupation, Japanese archaeologists began to work here systematically. Their works were continued and elaborated by ROC archaeologists after the island's post-World War II return to China. To the present, more than 1,000 prehistoric and historic sites have been found here. The density of their distribution is amazing.
At the southern tip of Taiwan, the Kenting area, with its diverse topography, attracted the attention of archaeologists in 1930, when a group of stone cist coffins, containing human skeletons, and articles buried with the dead, were unearthed by the Japanese. The area was immediately designated a protected site by the Japanese authorities. The effort at the time, however, was limited. In 1950, more stone coffins were found on the middle reaches of the Kankou River.
In 1945, Taiwan was restored to China. In 1956, when several stone cist coffins were exposed at roadside near the Oluanpi lighthouse, Professor Sung Wen-tung and the late Dr. Lin Chao-chi of National Taiwan University hurried to the site with some of their students to investigate. Their endeavors resulted in the unearthing of seven stone cist coffins, human skeletons, and intact ceramic articles and stone tools as well as many fragments.
Dr. Li Kuang-chou.
Dr. Li Kuang-chou, who heads the anthropology department of National Taiwan University, was then a student of Prof. Sung and Dr. Lin, and he followed Prof. Sung and Dr. Lin to Oluanpi in 1966. Later, when he was preparing his doctoral dissertation, he chose the prehistoric culture at the Kenting site as his subject. During his subsequent work at the site, 47,918 potsherds and many other artifacts and ecofacts were discovered.
In 1981, during the construction of walkways in newly developed Oluanpi Park, prehistoric relics were unearthed. Dr. Li, then a professor of National Taiwan University, was invited to carry out further investigations. A plentiful find there is chronologically divisible into four clearly stratified cultural layers. Dr. Li confirmed that the earliest layer was a persistent upper paleolithic cultural phase dating back 5,000 years.
He characterizes these investigations into prehistoric culture in the Kenting area as "preliminary work". Comprehensive studies and large-scale excavation are still ahead, he says. He has deliberately left several promising sites untouched to serve the future, declaring: "Archaeologists of different times tend to have differing views and interpretations concerning the same artifacts. The best way to store artifacts is to leave them underground where they are, so future archaeologists will be able to see them in place when they are ready to dig them out for examination."
Dr. Li, excited by the new Oluanpi discovery, began carefully planned excavations at five loci in the park. The results, after 33 continuous days, astonished him: As many as four distinct phases of prehistoric culture were identified at the same locus, distributed in underground layers-a bonanza for an archaeologist. Dr. Li immediately suggested that the newly established Kenting National Park authority organize overall archaeological investigations in the park area. "The cultural resources of the park are no less abundant than the natural ones, and their socio-educational functions can be even more obvious," he advised.
With his suggestions and assistance, the park authorities are planning exhibits of various artifacts and designing information boards for selected prehistoric sites.
Fossils of ice age mammoths, such as stegodon and cervus, have been unearthed in Western Taiwan. But no positive evidence of the pre-pottery culture of the ancient Asian continent was discovered in Taiwan until 1968, when various remains of the Changpin culture were found at Taitung, in east Taiwan. Subsequent findings at Oluanpi added new evidences of a pre-ceramic cultural era on the island.
The park's land areas cover 17,731 hectares, and Dr. Li and his assistants began, first of all, to work out a detailed guide map of the area. They reasoned that ancient peoples would have tended to live as separate communities in regions best suited for their daily survival. Riverside tablelands with drinking water, coasts with abundant marine life, slopes providing shelters from the wind, and forests with abundant game and firewood would be likely places for such settlements.
They marked possible sites on the map, then took to the road. They called on area residents who had collected ancient artifacts, and inquired about the source. Sometimes such pieces had been uncovered when fields were tilled; the local farmers were always happy to lead Dr. Li and his assistants to such places.
In two years, Dr. Li's team succeeded in pinpointing more than sixty such prehistoric sites. The varied cultural manifestations were then classified chronologically into ten cultural phases, from the persistent upper paleolithic 'Oluanpi-I' dating back to around 5,000 B.D., down to the Han Chinese Phase, beginning some 300 years ago.
OLUANPI-PHASE I (AROUND 3100 B.C.)
Stoneware at this stage was produced by striking flakes off rocks, using other small rocks as the strikers—a tool- production method practiced for hundreds of thousands of years. For the softer boneware, more-advanced grinding and scraping techniques were employed.
All containers of this period were for food, and there was no evidence of either tilling or livestock raising. The people of the time engaged in hunting-gathering of natural food resources to supply their needs.
Though also belonging to the pre-ceramic culture, as preliminary investigations clearly indicate, Oluanpi-Phase I differs considerably from the Changpin culture, discovered earlier in Taitung, in at least its tool-making techniques, food preferences, and residential choices. Further studies and larger-scale excavations into the prehistoric sites of both are necessary to clearly define the time-and-space development of pre-ceramic cultures on the island and inter-relationships among the varied cultural patterns.
THE KENTING PHASE (AROUND 2500 B.C.)
Ceramics are an important innovation of the neolithic period. Archaeologists are especially interested in ancient earthenware: it is a very sensitive indicator to cultural developments of the past.
The earthenware of the Kenting Phase is identified by characteristic red, cord-marked patterns. Pieces with similar patterns were also found in the middle and southern parts of Taiwan, but never in the north—a notable phenomenon. On some of the earthen ware fragments, there are identifiable traces of rice and beans—the first evidences of rice-cultivation in prehistoric Taiwan. Farming, fishing, and hunting-gathering were the major living patterns.
Tool-making techniques were now matured. Stoneware, shellware, and boneware were ground now to fine finishes. Spinning and weaving handicrafts appeared. And man-made articles were now produced both for daily use and as an art for decorative and ritual purposes. The culture of this age began to transcend living for mere survival.
OLUANPI-PHASE III (AROUND 1500 B.C.)
People of this period established their residential communities in more secluded areas than those selected by their ancestors—probably out of defensive considerations. They relied more on marine products now as farming activities sharply dwindled; hunting- gathering remained an important mode of living.
There is no discernible direct linkage between the culture of this phase appeared the Kenting Phase relative to ceramic production techniques, shapes, and decorative patterns. Some of the utensils unearthed from this stage were firsts, or rarely seen in Taiwan's archaeological explorations. Still others show a close relation to pottery patterns developed in other regions of the island.
OLUANPI-PHASE IV, THE HSIANG-LIN PHASE, & THE KUEISHAN PHASE
The similarities in tool-making techniques, styles, and patterns indicate that the culture of Oluanpi-Phase IV, dating around 50 B.C., stems directly from Oluanpi III. However, the ceramics of the former have mostly plain surfaces.
The Hsiang-lin Phase appeared at almost the same time as Oluanpi-Phase IV, its evidences turning up at sites in river-valley plains and hill lowlands, in contrast with the latter's marine lowlands and stream-mouth terraces. Due to the contrasting residential environments, living patterns differed considerably.
Investigation into the Hsiang-lin Phase stopped short' after location of possible sites and samples of surface collection; no excavations have been carried out. As a result, information on the culture is limited.
Big Pointed Mountain is the stuff for a mystery movie.
The Kueishan Phase appeared coincidentally with the late period of Oluanpi-Phase IV, in the 2nd Century. Ironware is in evidence here, though stoneware is still in use. It is an interesting sidelight that ironware rarely appears in ancient Taiwan cultures. Red remained the main color for earthenware, but greyish-black also came into fashion. On ceramic surfaces, the characteristic patterns of human heads and figures have been found, so far, in Asia only at Kueishan Prehistoric Site II; judging from the thick, accumulated layers of artifacts here, this culture must have been developing for quite a long time; there should be other sites still uncovered.
THE AMI PHASE & THE PAIWAN PHASE
The Ami are the most numerous among Taiwan's aborigines. They first seem to have appeared around the early 5th Century. Identification of the area from which they migrated to Taiwan remains an unsolved puzzle. They chose to live in river valleys and hill lowlands, and farming was their most important means of obtaining food. Fishing, in both rivers and the ocean, was active, but hunting became a ritual and sport instead of a priority means of sustenance.
The spinning and weaving handicrafts of the early Ami were of high quality. While it is known that earthen ware production was regarded as women's work, full details of the prehistoric Ami culture are yet to be determined by archaeologists.
The Paiwan chose to live in the mountains of southern Taiwan at 500-1,300 meters above sea level. The great Tawu Mountain is their legendary place of origin. They lived by primitive farming of non-irrigated slopelands, with hunting-gathering and fishing in creeks as important sidelines. Their woodcarving, highly developed, was applied to daily utensils, furniture, houses, weapons, and ritual articles. Human heads and figures, snakes, and deer were the favorite decorative motifs.
A village of flagstone houses on a slope of Nanjen Mountain is the representative site of the ancient Paiwan culture. Archaeological investigations have identified the source of the flagstones, unseen nearby, along the banks of valley creeks on the other side of the hill. These tribesmen carried on all daily activities outdoors, using the stone houses for sleeping only, and the residences are unusually low and narrow compared to those of other cultures.
THE SIRAYA PHASE & THE HAN PHASE
The Siraya Phase culture appeared in the 8th Century in southern Taiwan. According to Siraya tribal legends, their ancestors sailed here from Hsiaoliuchiu, an offshore island to the southwest of Taiwan. The legends identify no previous homeland. They settled, at first, in the Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Pingtung areas; after the 9th Century, some migrated, first to the southern rim of the Central Range and the Hengchun Peninsula, then northeastward to Taitung, and on north to Hualien. They were the first among the aborigines to make contact with the Han people. In time, they were assimilated by the Han. Little is now known of their original culture.