4 - Interpretation of craniofacial variation and diversification of East and Southeast Asians

Summary

Introduction

The origins and affinities of Southeast Asians have been much debated over the years. The classic view held that the indigenous inhabitants of Southeast Asia were of Australian and Melanesian lineages. Then a wave of migrants from somewhere in southern China displaced and absorbed the majority of the indigenous population at some point between 4,000 and 5,000 years BP (Brothwell 1960, Howells 1976, 1977, Birdsell 1977, Bowles 1977, Glinka 1981, Bellwood 1985, 1987). In stark contrast to the population replacement model described above, other researchers espouse a local evolution model in which there was no significant gene flow into Southeast Asia from populations of East Asia (Bulbeck 1981, 1982, Omoto 1984, Turner 1987, 1990, 1992, Pietrusewsky 1988, Pietrusewsky and Chang 2003). Recently, Lahr (1996) and Underhill et al. (2001) have suggested that the colonisation of Southeast Asia by modern humans may have taken place through multiple dispersals. The first may have been an eastward movement of coastal peoples from East Africa to Arabia via the Horn, along the Indian Ocean rim towards Southeast Asia and finally into Australia. The second phase of modern occupation of Southeast Asia might have resulted from an expansion of the range of modern humans in North Africa and West Asia (Lahr 1996).

Turner (1987, 1990, 1992), Ballinger et al. (1992) and Chu et al. (1998) proposed that the human occupation of East and Northeast Asia resulted from the expansion of late Pleistocene Southeast Asians.