VISIT SRI LANKA
(Sathyage Travels)
History of Sri Lanka
A blast to the past
Stone-age tools have been found that was dated to around 125,000 BCE by the earliest humans in the island who were similar to Palaeolithic people, gatherers and hunters. In around 60,000 BCE, the earliest humans who were modernized arrived to South Asia from Africa. The most definitive settlement evidence was seen dating to 28,000 BCE with regards to settlement in Sri Lanka.
A famous land bridge existed that connected Sri Lanka to India till around 5000 BCE which allowed many different groups of people to enter and exit the country. There were inhabitants from Australia, South-East Asia and India from about 30,000 years ago. Currently the modern-day Väddā tribal group were earlier known as Veddoid and are known to be ancestors of the earlier inhabitants.
Many historians believe that the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan cultures may not have arrived in Sri Lanka until the first millennium BCE, where modern Tamils and Sinhalese claim that their forefathers had arrived first.
In the 100 BCE, a magnificent and remarkable irrigation system was developed and was known to be one of the most elaborate irrigation systems in South Asia. In 327 BCE, when Alexander the Great arrived in the region, a trading center had already been established at Tirukketisvaram (which was earlier known as Mantai).
During the years 1505-1594, Sri Lanka was met with a crisis by the first European settlers. They were the Portuguese: Lourenco de Almeida. They realised that the country was divided into 7 separate kingdoms and was unable to fight off any intruders to the country. They founded a port in Colombo in 1517 and gradually started their control over the country. It is during this time that the Portuguese named the island, Ceilão, which was transliterated to Ceylon in English by the British later on.
In the year 1638 King Rajasinghe II, made a treaty with the Dutch to get rid of the Portuguese. The Portuguese by then had captured most of the coastal area. The chief condition of the treaty was for Sri Lanka to handover the coastal areas to the Dutch. The agreement was breached by both parties and the Dutch finally captured Colombo in 1658. By the year 1660, they had captured the whole island, except for the city of Kandy. The Dutch who were protestants persecuted the Catholics but did not touch the Buddhists, Muslims and the Hindus. The current Dutch Burgher Sri Lankans are descendants from the legacy of the Dutch period.
During the years 1815-1948, Great Britain, fearing that Sri Lanka will be delivered to the French, occupied the coastal areas and named the island Ceylon. In 1840, the British invaded Kingdom of Kandy and realised that the uplands were suitable for cultivations of rubber, tea and coffee. By the mid of the 19th Century, Ceylon tea became staple and brought great wealth to few white tea planters.
Sri Lanka’s independence movement was to become a peaceful and diplomatic movement which was aimed at achieving independence and also self-rule from the British empire. There was a non-violent transfer of power from the British administration to the representatives of Ceylon. Ceylon was granted independence on the 4th of February, 1948. Then on the 22nd of May, 1972 Ceylon became a republic and was renamed the Republic of Sri Lanka.