Prehistory of Taiwan - Neolithic

Neolithic

Between 4000 and 3000 BC, the Dapenkeng culture (named after a site in Taibei county) abruptly appeared and quickly spread around the coast of the island, as well as Penghu. Dapenkeng sites are relatively homogeneous, characterized by pottery impressed with cord marks, pecked pebbles, highly polished stone adzes and thin points of greenish slate. The inhabitants cultivated rice and millet, and engaged in hunting, but were also heavily reliant on marine shells and fish. Most scholars believe this culture is not derived from the Changbinian, but was brought across the Strait by the ancestors of today's Taiwanese aborigines, speaking early Austronesian languages. No ancestral culture on the mainland has been identified, but a number of shared features suggest ongoing contacts.

In the following millennium, these technologies appeared on the northern coast of the Philippine island of Luzon (250 km south of Taiwan), where they, and presumably Austronesian languages, were adopted by the local population. This migration created a branch of Austronesian, the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which have since dispersed across a huge area from Madagascar to Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. All other primary branches of Austronesian are found only on Taiwan, the urheimat of the family.

The successors of the Dapenkeng culture throughout Taiwan were locally differentiated. The Fengpitou culture, characterized by fine red cord-marked pottery, was found in Penghu and the central and southern parts of the western side of the island, and a culture with similar pottery occupied the eastern coastal areas. These later differentiated into the Niumatou and Yingpu cultures in central Taiwan, the Niuchouzi and Dahu cultures in the southwest, the Beinan Culture in the southeast and the Qilin culture in the central east. The Yuanshan Culture in the northeast does not appear to be closely related to these, featuring sectioned adzes, shouldered-stone adzes and pottery without cord impressions. Some scholars suggest that it represents another wave of immigration from the mainland, but no similar culture is known from there either.