Taiwanese Aboriginals

Some were here 8000 years before the first Han Chinese stepped foot on Taiwan. 8000 years is a long time to create and evolve a culture. Unfortunately, it doesn't take nearly as long to gentrify one to extinction...some settlements and trading, some government fostered language shift and assimilation, and there you go. One of the key conponents of culture is language, so here's language as an example. There were at one time, "one time" being less then a century ago, 26 known Aboriginal languages. At last count 10 are extinct, 5 are moribund (they'll become extinct to matter what is done), and several others are endangered to one degree or another. Here's why Taiwan's aboriginal languages make such a good example: most historical linguists consider Taiwan to be the original homeland of the Austronesian language family. That's 1/5th of the languages spoken globally now. At this moment, indigenous peoples only make up about 2% of the population of Taiwan (the rest are Chinese, either Hakka or immigrant). When I am fortunate enough to meet one, I try and take a photo. If I were a linguist or ethnographer, maybe I'd take a recorder and a lot of time. I'm neither, but I do have my camera.