The Dispersal of the Formosan Aborigines in Taiwan

There are some twenty ethnic groups of the Formosan aborigines. There was virtually no written record for them until 400 years ago. I shall trace the dispersal of each Formosan tribe and show it on a map, as based on linguistic, ethnological, archaeological, and various other information, such as the oral history of the natives and written documents in Dutch, Chinese and Japanese.1 I shall indicate the directions and stages of the dispersal of each tribe. Mostly only rough migration routes and dates can be given at this stage of knowledge. They will be modified when more information is available. Another map shows the Austric dispersal, including the pre-Austronesian migration from continental Southeast Asia to Taiwan, as based on studies by Reid (1994) and Blust (1996a). Still another map shows the Batanic dispersal, including the Yami people on the Orchid Island.