Until 1972 sri Lanka was known as Ceylon. Sri Lanka's maritime borderlines meats with India to its northwest and Maldives to its southwest. History of sri Lanka have been documented over 3,000 years. Theories suggest that sri Lanka had pre-historic human settlements taking us back to at least 125,000 years ago. Its
geographic locality and bottomless harbours made it of great strategic
importance since the period of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II.
Indo-Aryan emigration from India in the 5th century B.C. came to form the largest ethnic group on Sri Lanka today, the Sinhalese. Tamils, the second-largest ethnic group on the island, were originally from the Tamil region of India and emigrated between the 3rd century B.C. and A.D. 1200. Until colonial powers controlled Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamil rulers fought for dominance over the island.