Sri Lanka, known under British colonial rule as Ceylon, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal. The island nation has a strong cultural and historical connection to the Indian subcontinent, with a documented history spanning over 3,000 years and evidence of prehistoric human settlements from at least 125,000 years ago. Sri Lanka is a strongly Buddhist nation, with writings of the Pali Canon dating back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BCE. The country's constitution accords Buddhism the 'foremost place' and allows it special privileges, even though it does not have an official state religion. The current constitution is a republic with a semi-presidential system. Much of the country's post colonial history has been marred by a 30-year civil war. Waged between the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers or LTTE), a militant secessionist insurgency based in northeastern Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan Civil War was brutal and violent. It ended in 2009 with the decisive defeat of the Tamil Tigers.