The indigenous people of Sri Lanka, the Veddhas ancestry group, have roots going back to prehistory. Around the 5th–4th century B.C., North Indian settlers migrated to the island and formed settlements in the north-west and north-east of Sri Lanka. They came to be known as the Sinhalese, the majority ethnic community in the country and the people who also brought the philosophy of the Buddha to Sri Lanka. Simultaneously, settlers from South India, who came to be known as Tamils, and in the 7th century AD, Moorish traders from Arabia founded trading settlements around the coastal areas of the island. From the 1500s to the 1800s, Europeans in search of spices and new lands. systematically came, saw, and conquered, giving Sri Lanka a Portuguese, Dutch, and finally a British aroma until independence in 1948. The results of a continuous stream of migration, invasion, and colonialism were a nation with a vivid and multicultural heritage rooted in centuries of foreign as well as local influences. In fact, George Bernard Shaw famously said that he was convinced that “Ceylon [was] the cradle of the human race because everyone there looks like an original”.