There’s no evidence that groups of people migrated back towards Taiwan and became a major group on the main island of Taiwan. That only happened when the people of the Batanes moved Northward to Ponso no Tao. That’s why the Tao languages is not classified as Formosan, but Malayo-Polynesian, Philippine, and Batanic.
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Who was Lian Chan’s grandfather?
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Huh? It’s not like this theory (which I have no idea if true) would refer to Aborigines in general- it would specifically refer to Amis. They would be replacing other Aboriginal peoples who would have been here all along.
The old theories usually involved the Malays, and that’s definitely not the case from genetic data. See the post above for the Haplogroup distribution figures and studies.
It might be a little harder to prove genetically if people moved back from the Philippines, and if the move happened a long time ago, like at least a thousand years ago, it might be difficult to tell linguistically as well.
I think the theory probably originated from the Sanasai legend, which is a prevalent legend to all plains Aboriginals. The basic structure of the legend would be that the people originally lived in a place called Sanasai, Sansai or something similar. There was a huge flood and the last remaining people got on a boat of some kind. The people eventually reached the main island of Taiwan when the flood subsided.
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Nice, thanks for digging this thread back up.
Curious since you used this word instead of others quite a few times— What’s the difference (if any) between native, indigenous, & (new to me) aboriginal? Or are they just a tomato/tomahto deal and you preferred tomahto
I think the appropriate usage probably is determined by which ones haven’t been ruined by colonialism.
On their own, natives, indigenous, and aboriginal mean pretty much the name thing.
I guess calling people natives has a negative connotation in most places. Indigenous and aboriginal are both alright in Taiwan mostly because Taiwan wasn’t colonized by England. Although 番 and 蕃 are definitely not appropriate now, despite the fact the characters themselves don’t have negative connotations in the beginning.
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I think it’s ok to refer to individuals as natives of a small region. When referring to a group of people, then it’s only ok if the context treats them as a group of individuals. If calling a group of people natives of a large geographical area, such as an entire nation, implies they are of the same culture, mindset, or behave and think the same way, that’s when it starts to sound iffy to me.
But that’s just to me. I hear the word aboriginal sounds bad in Australia, but in Taiwan we used to have the council of Aboriginal affairs. It just depends on the history of the place.
Interesting. OTOH in 
we commonly say Native Americans. The other words sound weird offhand (indigenous feels a bit… uhh “scholarly”). Actually funny you mention specificity bc indigenous is used mostly to be specific, i.e. indigenous to region x.
I guess instead of a tomato/tomahto this may be more of an elevator/lyft situation 🤷
Calling someone a Native American is ok because that’s the official term. It feels like a totally different story if you leave out the American part.
“He’s native Taiwanese.” Sounds a-ok.
Then you get the difference between Native American and native American.
Native Taiwanese and native Taiwanese?