It would also suggest that the site continued to carried significance after the transition from Paleolithic cultures to Neolithic cultures, i.e. the arrival of Austronesian, between 4,000 and 3,100 years ago, who built the megalith stone terraces on top of the “structure”.
Despite of when it was built, it’s worth noting that the base of the mountain is made of natural andesite, and if the structure saw first construction 27,000 years ago, people only tried to make it look more like a pyramid. So it’s not quite at a scale like the pyramids in Egypt, where entire structures were man-made.
Estimates of the indigenous population in the Dutch period range from less than 100,000 to about 500,000. I’m not sure how reliable the upper-limit estimates are. Would 500,000 have been crowded in an era before irrigation and while hunting was may have been very important to some peoples? Not sure.
Estimates vary wildly for New Zealand, Hawaii etc.
I think people would have had a tougher time in New Zealand. I know the Hawaiians had pigs, but after the Maori killed off all the Moa, they had to rely on seafood for their protein, and it was a lot less reliable than having pigs or chicken around. In comparison, Taiwanese indigenous peoples had pigs, deers, and many other sources of protein. I think that would allow Taiwan to have had a much larger population.
All in Mandarin. This is a genetic research to see which indigenous groups in Taiwan reflect more of the genetic makeup of the initial peopling of Taiwan, and which groups reflect the genetic makeup of the initial wave of Austronesian’s southward expansion.
The conclusion is that there are 3 major groups of indigenous peoples, the Atayal and other Northern tribes, the Pangcah tribe, and Rukai, Paiwan and other Southern tribes. Bunun, Tao, and other Flatland tribes are sort of sandwiched between the two major southern groups.
The conclusion is that Pangcah (Amis) is the group that is most related to the Ilocano and Kankanaey peoples in the Philippines. Not sure if that could only mean that people closely related to Pangcah were the ones that made the initial voyage because perhaps the Pangcah legends were right, and they indeed migrated backwards.
As for the makeup of the group that became the ancestors of Indigenous Taiwanese peoples, this study compared ancient DNA from Liangdao in the south (Zhejiang) and Boshan in the north (Shandong), and DNA found at Hanben (Yilan). The northern and southern groups in China were fairly separated 7000BP, but early peoples in Taiwan, while still very southern, had a higher ratio of northern ancestry compared to other peoples living in southern China at the time.
Today, the people living along China’s coastal regions have about even ratio of ancient southern and northern admixture, while Taiwan’s indigenous peoples stayed pretty much the same as the Hanben samples 1500BP. The same ratio is reflected in ancient DNA found in Guam, Vanuatu and Tonga from over 2200BP.
