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3 - A multivariate craniometric study of the prehistoric and modern inhabitants of Southeast Asia, East Asia and surrounding regions: a human kaleidoscope?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2009

By
Michael Pietrusewsky
Edited by
Marc Oxenham  and
Nancy Tayles
Michael Pietrusewsky
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii Hawaii USA
Marc Oxenham
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
Nancy Tayles
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
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Summary

Introduction

The peoples and cultures of Southeast Asia, a region with boundaries that are more influenced by its past inhabitants than by today's geopolitical borders, have been described as representing a human kaleidoscope (Bowles 1977). Broadly defined, this region now includes present-day Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, former French Indochina (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam), Malaysia and the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines. The people and the prehistory of this region are often portrayed as a southern division of eastern Asia (Bellwood 1997). While making sense of the biology of the modern-day inhabitants of this region has proved daunting, including its earlier inhabitants adds yet another dimension, one that lends itself to addressing issues including the origins of the people in the region, ancient and modern.

In recent years, new archaeological and linguistic perspectives on the evolution and prehistory of Southeast Asia and East Asia have emerged, positions that frequently centre on rice domestication, the development of agriculture and the dispersal of languages hypothesised as having most likely emanated from southern China. Archaeologists (e.g. Bellwood 1996, 2000, Glover and Higham 1996, Higham 1996, 2001) as well as historical linguists (e.g. Bayard 1996–97, Blust 1996) now argue against both in situ agricultural development and diffusion of agricultural technology to the indigenous hunter–gathering populations in late Holocene Southeast Asia, in favour of an agricultural colonisation model. Bellwood (1997) has argued most strenuously for a population displacement to account for the people who now inhabit Southeast Asia.

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Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia , pp. 59 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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