ABSTRACT
All the aboriginal peoples in Taiwan speak languages belonging to the Austronesian family. The linguistic evidence indicates that their ancestors arrived in Taiwan at the same time, cal. 6500 BP. 1 The Formosan languages they speak are generally believed to be more diverse than the Austronesian languages of any other area outside Taiwan. They must have started to split into different ethnic groups at a great time depth. Since there was no written document for any of the Formosan languages until the 17th century, we have to rely on linguistic methods to reconstruct the early stages of the dispersal of Formosan aborigines. We can only give approximate dates or a relative chronology at this stage of knowledge, and these are summarized in Plate 8.I.
