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podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 253, The Beautiful Island,

Part 2.

Before we get into it this week, just a quick correction.

A few of you wrote in to let me know that I'd actually oversimplified my discussion of the origins

of the Austronesian peoples of whom Taiwan's aboriginals are apart.

It's true that one of the theories, the theory I described, is that those peoples originated

in Southeast Asia, in basically what's now Indonesia. There's another theory, however, that they're

actually originally from Taiwan. That's apparently grounded in both archaeological evidence, as well as linguistic evidence

regarding the origins of Austronesian languages.

...