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The history of the Falkland Islands ((スペイン語:Islas Malvinas)) goes back at least five hundred years, with active exploration and colonisation only taking place in the 18th century. Nonetheless, the islands have been a matter of controversy, as they have been claimed by the French, British, Spaniards and Argentines at various points. The islands were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans. France established a colony on the islands in 1764. In 1765, a British captain claimed the islands for Britain. In early 1770 a Spanish commander arrived from Argentina with five ships and 1400 soldiers forcing the British to leave Port Egmont. Britain and Spain almost went to war over the islands, but the British government decided that it should withdraw its presence from many overseas settlements in 1774. Spain, which had a garrison at Puerto Soledad on East Falklands, ruled the islands from Buenos Aires until 1811 when it was forced to withdraw. In 1833, the British returned to the Falkland Islands. Argentina invaded the islands on 2 April 1982. The British responded with an expeditionary force that forced the Argentines to surrender. == Pre-European discovery == While Amerindians from Patagonia could have visited the Falklands, the islands were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Culture of Falkland Islands – history, people, clothing, beliefs, food, life, immigrants, population, religion )〕 Recent discoveries of arrowheads in Lafonia (on the southern half of East Falkland) as well as the remains of a wooden canoe provide evidence that the Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego may have made the journey to the islands. It is not known if these are evidence of one-way journeys, but there is no known evidence of pre-Columbian buildings or structures. However, it is not certain that the discovery predates arrival of Europeans. A Patagonian Missionary Society mission station was founded on Keppel Island (off the west coast of West Falkland) in 1856. Yahgan Indians were at this station from 1856 to 1898 so this may be the source of the artifacts that have been found. The presence of the warrah, ''Dusicyon australis'', has often been cited as evidence of pre-European occupation of the islands. However, in 2009, this hypothesis was disproved when DNA analysis identified the Falkland Island wolf's closest living relative as the maned wolf (''Chrysocyon brachyurus'') – an unusually long-legged, fox-like South American canid, from which it separated about 6.7 million years ago. It would seem that the lineages of the maned wolf and the Falkland Islands wolf separated in North America; canids did not appear in South America until roughly 3 million years ago in a paleozoogeographical event called the Great American Biotic Interchange, in which the continents of North and South America were newly connected by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama. This means it is likely that the Warrah arrived in the islands long before humans. The islands had no native trees when discovered but there is some ambiguous evidence of past forestation, that may be due to wood being transported by oceanic currents from Patagonia. All modern trees have been introduced by Europeans. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Falkland Islands」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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