<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="65001"%> Becky Lee

Becky Lee

 

Autosomal STR Analysis by DNA Tribes

Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

Global Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi, China), Mulao (Guangxi, China), Vietnam, Philippine, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi, China), Thailand, Chinese (Malaysia), Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Asian (Queensland, Australia), Malay (Singapore), Malay, Asian (Canada), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Singapore), Vietnam (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan.

World Region Match: Malay Archipelago, Southeast Asian, Chinese, Eatern European, Mongolian, Japanese, Finno-Ugrian, Asia Minor, Mediterranean, Northwest European, Tibetan, North India, Mestizo, India, Arabian, North African.

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Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

 

Austronesian Peoples

The Austronesian speaking peoples are a population in Oceania and Southeast Asia that speaks languages of the Austronesian family and share common descent from ancient Mongoloid aboriginal peoples of Oceania. Austronesian peoples include: Taiwanese aborigines; the majority ethnic groups of East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Madagascar, Micronesia, and Polynesia, as well as the Polynesian peoples of New Zealand and Hawaii, and the non-Papuan people of Melanesia. They are also found in Singapore, the Pattani region of Thailand, and the Cham areas of Vietnam (remnants of the Champa kingdom which covered central and southern Vietnam), Cambodia, and Hainan, China. The territories settled by Austronesian peoples are known collectively as Austronesia.

 

Taiwanese Aborigines

Taiwanese aborigines is the term commonly applied in reference to the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Although Taiwanese indigenous groups hold a variety of creation stories, recent research suggests their ancestors may have been living on the islands for approximately 8000 years before major Han Chinese immigration began in the 17th century (Blust 1999). The Taiwanese Aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian ethnic groups, such as peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar and Oceania (Hill et al. 2007; Bird, Hope & Taylor 2004).

The complexity and scope of aboriginal assimilation and acculturation on Taiwan has led to three general narratives of Taiwanese ethnic change. The oldest holds that Han migration from Fujian and Guangdong in the 17th century pushed the Plains aborigines into the mountains, where they became the Highland tribes of today (Shepherd 1993). A relatively newer view asserts that through widespread intermarriage between Han and aborigines between the 17th and 19th centuries, the aborigines were completely sinicized (Lamley 1981:282; Meskill 1979:253–55). Finally, modern ethnographical and anthropological studies have shown a pattern of cultural shift mutually experienced by both Han and Plains aborigines, resulting in a hybrid culture. Today people who comprise Taiwan's ethnic Han demonstrate major cultural differences from Han elsewhere

Sinicization, Sinicisation or Sinification, (中国化 or 汉化) is the linguistic assimilation or cultural assimilation of terms and concepts of the language and culture of China.

In more general contexts, Sinicization refers to the process of "becoming Chinese" or "becoming Han"; the opposite process is becoming "not Chinese" (desinicization). The term has been used in social science primarily to describe the assimilation of non-Han Chinese peoples (such as the Manchus) into the Chinese identity.

More broadly, "Sinicization" also refers to the phenomenon whereby neighbouring cultures to China have been influenced by Chinese culture and language without being assimilated. This is reflected in the histories of Korea, Vietnam and Japan in Sinosphere.

 

 

Philippines

The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean.

Archeological discoveries show that humans existed in the Philippines around 40,000 years ago. The Negritos, a pre-Mongoloid ethnic group that migrated from mainland Asia, settled in the islands about 30,000 years ago.

Another ethnic group known as the Malay people, a group of Malayo-Polynesian speaking people originated from the populations of Taiwanese aborigines, and settled in the Philippines approximately 6,000 years ago.

Current archaeological evidences subscribe to the "Mainland Theory" of Peter Bellwood, that the ancestors of the present-day Filipinos, as well as that of the Malays, Indonesians, and the Pacific Islanders first crossed the Taiwan Strait 4,000 years ago, during the Iron Age. These early voyagers are thought to be the Austronesians. They used balangays (boats) to cross the Bashi Channel to the Philippines. This is attested by the fact that in Taiwan and the Philippines, the peoples are subdivided into several small tribes, whereas in Malaysia and Indonesia, most peoples are homogenous or are divided into large tribes, indicating that Taiwan, then the Philippines, was the starting point for Austronesian migration, and that the present-day Malays and Indonesians, as well as the Pacific Islanders instead came from the Philippines, and not from Malaya or Sumatra.

By the 14th century, the ethnic landscape in the country was already relatively fixed. The Austronesians from Taiwan gradually supplanted the Negritos then occupied the plains, deltas, and the coastal areas. Together with the later migrant Southern Chinese, they formed the primary ancestral lineage of the present-day Filipinos.

 

* Philippine Mitochondrial DNA Diversity: A populated viaduct between Taiwan and Indonesia? by Kristina A. Tabbada, et al.

Abstract: Relatively little is known about the genetic diversity of the Philippine population, and this is an important gap in our understanding of Southeast Asian and Oceanic prehistory. Here we describe mtDNA variation in 423 Philippine samples and analyze them in the context of the genetic diversity of other Southeast Asian populations. The majority of Philippine mtDNA types are shared with Taiwanese aboriginal groups and belong to haplogroups of post-glacial and pre-Neolithic origin which have previously been identified in East Asian and Island Southeast Asian populations. Analysis of Hypervariable Segment I sequence variation within individual mtDNA haplogroups indicates a general decrease in the diversity of the most frequent types (B4a1a, E1a1a, M7c3c) from the Taiwanese aborigines to the Philippines and Sulawesi, although calculated standard error measures overlap for these populations. This finding, together with the geographical distribution of ancestral and derived haplotypes of the B4a1a sub-clade including the Polynesian Motif, is consistent with southward dispersal of these lineages "Out of Taiwan" via the Philippines to Near Oceania and Polynesia. In addition to the mtDNA components shared with Taiwanese aborigines, complete sequence analyses revealed a minority of lineages in the Philippines which share their origins - possibly dating back to the Paleolithic - with haplogroups from Indonesia and New Guinea. Other rare lineages in the Philippines have no closely related types yet identified elsewhere.

 

* A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania by Cristian Capelli

Graphic Representation of the Principal-component Analysis of Haplogroup Frequencies

(Philippines, Ami, South China)

 

The Amis

The Amis (阿美族; also Ami or Pangcah) are an indigenous people of Taiwan. They speak an Austronesian language and are one of the thirteen officially recognized peoples of Taiwanese aborigines. The traditional territory of the Amis include the long, narrow valley between the Central Mountains and the Coastal Mountains, the Pacific coastal plain eastern to the Coastal Mountains, and the Hengchun Peninsula.

In the year 2000 the Ami numbered 148,992. This was approximately 37.5% of Taiwan's total indigenous population, making them the largest tribal group. The Amis are primarily fishermen due to their coastal location. They are traditionally matrilineal. Traditional Amis villages were relatively large for indigenous groups, typically between 500 and 1,000. In today's Taiwan, the Amis also comprise the majority of "urban aboriginals" and have developed many "urban tribes" all around the island.

The Amis people generally identify themselves as Pangcah, which means "human" or "people of our kind." Nonetheless, in today's Taiwan, Amis is much more frequently used. This name comes from the word amis, meaning "north." There is still no consensus in the academic circle how "Amis" came to be used to address the Pangcah. One supposition is that it was originally used by the Puyuma to call the Pangcah, as the Pangcah lived to the north of them. Another supposition holds that those who lived in the Taitung Plain called themselves "Amis" because their ancestors had come from the north. The later explanation is recorded in the Banzoku Chōsa Hōkokusho (Survey Reports on the Savages, 1913-1918, Taipei. See: vol.8, p.4), indicating this might originate from what is classified by anthropologists as Falangaw Amis, the Amis group located from today's Chengkong to the Taitung Plain. Their closest genetic relative appears to be the Filipinos.

Not many people may have seen the Ami, but many people may have heard the Ami. The musical project Enigma used an Ami chant in their song "Return to Innocence" in their second album, The Cross of Changes. This song was the theme song of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The main chorus of it was sung by Difang and his wife, Igay, part of a Taiwanese aboriginal cultural performance group. An unauthorized recording was made while they were on tour.

* Videos: Return to Innocence by Enigma, Elders Drinking Song by Difang

* Videos: 阿美族竹竿舞, "Tinikling" (Philippine Bamboo Dance), Malaysian Version of Tinikling, Tinikling in Thailand

 

Tinikling - (tikling-bird; in-to be like; tinikling- to be like a tikling) is a dance from the Philippines.

Tinikling involves two people hitting bamboo poles, using them to beat, tap, and slide on the ground and against each other in coordination with one or more dancers who step over and in between the poles in a dance. It originated in Leyte among the Visayan islands in central Philippines as an imitation of the tikling bird dodging bamboo traps set by rice farmers. The bamboo is also used as a percussive instrument as it is banged against the ground (or a piece of wood to make it easier to hold) and each other in a pattern. when the bamboo closes it has to be hard enough to make a sound and the dancers must be quick enough to not get their foot (or feet) caught. As the dance continues the banging of the bamboo becomes faster and harder , the sound of clashing bamboo thrills the crowd and the quickness of feet demonstrated by the dancers awes them.

In the United States, tinikling is taught as part of physical education class in many elementary schools. It is a form of aerobic exercise that also improves spatial awareness, rhythm, foot and leg speed, agility, and coordination.

 

* A Comparative Study of Sakizaya and Amis in Hualien by Mitochondrial DNA Sequences Analysis by Li-huang Tsai

Excerpt: Compare with the mitochondrial DNA data infromation of ten populations in Taiwan, I obtain phylogeny trees about the Amis, Atayal, Bunun, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisayat, Tsou, Yami, Taiwan Han, Sakizaya, the North Amis and the Middle Amis. It appears that, Sakizaya, Kuwazon and Fataan is clustered together first, then clustered to Taiwan, then is Amis. Furthermore, the haplogroups figure of all these thierteen populations shows that, the Tajima’s C2 and C4 haplogroups, which are suggested as ancient mtDNA clusters of Taiwan aborigines, is absent in Sakizaya, Kuwazon and Fataan; but the distribution of SKF3-like haplogroup is only discovered within the samples of Taiwan Han, Sakizaya, the North Amis and the Middle Amis. As my opinion, the intermarriage between Sakizaya, North Amis, Middle Amis and Taiwan Han, has influenced the genetics structures of all these populations.

 

NJ Tree

 

UPGMA Tree

 

* HLA Polymorphism in Malay Sub-ethnic Groups in Penninsular Malaysia by Edinur Hisham Atan

Map Showing the Geographic Location of East and West Malaysia Within South East Asia, International and State Boundaries, Where the Samples Were Collected and the Malays Migration Pattern

 

 

Malays in Singapore

Yusof bin Ishak, first President of Singapore

Malays in Singapore (Orang Melayu Singapura) make up about 14 % of the country's population, as based on the broader definition of a "Malay race" rather than the more specific "Malay ethnic group".

The seventeenth-century Malay chronicle, the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals, tells of the founding of a great trading city on the island of Temasek in 1299 AD by a prince from Palembang. Palembang was then the capital of the diminishing Srivijayan Empire. The prince, Sri Tri Buana, (also known as Sang Nila Utama) was said to be a descendant of Alexander the Great and an Indian princess called Shahru Al-Bariyah. Legend states that he renamed the city Singapura ("lion city") after sighting a strange beast that he took to be a lion although there is no real historical evidence of this.

In the mid-fourteenth century, Singapura suffered raids by the expanding Javanese Majapahit Empire to the south and the emerging Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya to the north, both at various times claiming the island as a vassal state. Around 1388, the ruler of Palembang, Parameswara, came to Singapore to flee from Majapahit control. He murdered the king and seized power. It was a futile act. The Srivijayan Empire, already in decline, finally met its end when Majapahit attacked its capital Palembang in 1391. In 1396, Majapahit or Ayutthaya forces drove out Parameswara, who fled northward and founded kingdom of Malacca in 1400.

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. Malay is the official language of Malaysia (Malaysian) and Brunei. Another standardized version of Malay, Indonesian, is the official language of Indonesia. Malay is also one of four official languages of Singapore. It is spoken natively by 40 million people across the Malacca Strait, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and southern Thailand, Riau province, the eastern coast of Sumatra, and the Riau Islands in Indonesia, and has been established as a native language of part of western coastal Sarawak in Borneo.

* Video: History of Singapore 新加坡的歷史 Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

 

* Y-Chromosome Evidence for a Northward Migration of Modern Humans into Eastern Asia during the Last Ice Age by Bing Su, et al.

Principal-component Analysis of Y-chromosome Haplotype Frequencies of 30 Eastern-Asian Populations from

(Malaysian, Southern-Han)

 

 

Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia)

Map of Sarawak, Malaysia (Borneo)

Bidayuh is the collective name for several indigenous groups found in southern Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, that are broadly similar in language and culture (see also Issues below). The name "Bidayuh" means 'inhabitants of land'. Originally from the western part of Borneo, the collective name Land Dayaks was first used during the period of Rajah James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak. They constitute one of the main indigenous groups in Sarawak and live in towns and villages around Kuching and Samarahan in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Related groups are also found in west Kalimantan. In Sarawak, most of Bidayuh population are found within 40 km of the geographical area known as Greater Kuching, within the Kuching and Samarahan division. They are the second largest Dayak ethnic group in Sarawak after the Iban.

Concentrated mainly on the West end of Borneo, the Bidayuhs make up 10% of the population in Sarawak are now most numerous in the hill counties of Bau and Serian, within half and hour drive from Kuching.

Historically, as other tribes were migrating into Sarawak and forming settlements (particularly the Malays from the neighbouring archipelagos as they shore up along the coastal areas and riversides) the peace-loving, meek-natured Bidayuhs retreated further inland, hence earning them the name of "Land Dayaks n land owners". The word Bidayuh in itself literally means "land people" in Biatah dialect. In Bau-Jagoi/Singai dialect, the pronunciation is "Bidoyoh" which also carry the same meaning.

The traditional community construction of the Bidayuh is the "baruk", a roundhouse that rises about 1.5 metres off the ground. It serves as the granary and the meeting house for the settlement's community. Longhouses were typical in the olden days, similar to that of the Ibans.

Typical of the Sarawak indigenous groups, the Bidayuhs are well-known for their hospitality, and are reputed to be the best makers of tuak, or rice wine. they also do arak tonok, some kind of moonshine.

* Video: Bidayuh Dance, Sarawak Cultural Village, Mysteries of Borneo

 

 

* From Far Formosa by George Leslie Mackay

Excerpts: Head-hunting is the ruling passion among the savages in Formosa. This is the one crime of violence laid to their charge. To this, as to nothing else, they give themselves from earliest youth to decrepit age, following it with an ardor that never cools and a cruelty that never relents....

Like thier nearest of kin, the Hill Dyaks of Borneo, whom they resemble with significant closeness in most of their distinctive features of character and in their customs and habits of life, they are truthful and honest to a remarkable degree; and gross immorality, when found among them, is nearly always traceable to border-land association with the Chinese....

 

 

* Haplotype Diversity of 17 Y-Chromosomal STRs in Three Native Sarawak Populations (Iban, Bidayuh and Melanau) in East Malaysia by YM Chang YM

Abstract: 17 Y-STRs (DYS456, DYS389I, DYS390, DYS389II, DYS458, DYS19, DYS385a/b, DYS393, DYS391, DYS439, DYS635 or Y-GATA C4, DYS392, Y-GATA H4, DYS437, DYS438 and DYS448) have been analyzed in 320 male individuals from Sarawak, an eastern state of Malaysia on the Borneo island using the AmpFlSTR Y-filer (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA). These individuals were from three indigenous ethnic groups in Sarawak comprising of 103 Ibans, 113 Bidayuhs and 104 Melanaus. The observed 17-loci haplotypes and the individual allele frequencies for each locus were estimated, whilst the locus diversity, haplotype diversity and discrimination capacity were calculated in the three groups. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated that 87.6% of the haplotypic variation was found within population and 12.4% between populations (fixation index F(ST)=0.124, p=0.000). This study has revealed that the indigenous populations in Sarawak are distinctly different to each other, and to the three major ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malays, Chinese and Indians), with the Melanaus having a strikingly high degree of shared haplotypes within. There are rare unusual variants and microvariants that were not present in Malaysian Malay, Chinese or Indian groups. In addition, occurrences of DYS385 duplications which were only noticeably present in Chinese group previously was also observed in the Iban group whilst null alleles were detected at several Y-loci (namely DYS19, DYS392, DYS389II and DYS448) in the Iban and Melanau groups.

 

* Y-chromosomal STRs Haplotypes in the Taiwanese Paiwan Population by Fang-Chin Wu, et al.

MDS Plot Based on Pairwise Φst Values Calculated for the Paiwan (filled circle) and Ten Reference Populations (open circles)

(Sarawak, Malaysia (Bidayu), Minnan (China), Taiwan (Taiwanese), Melanau, Iban)

 

* HLA Polymorphism in Three Indigenous Populations of Sabah and Sarawak by J. S. Dhaliwal, et al.

Abstract: One hundred and fifty-eight Kadazan, Iban and Bidayuh individuals registered with the Malaysian Marrow Donor Registry were typed for human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A, HLA-B and HLA-DR. Six, seven and eight HLA-A alleles as well as 13, 15 and 16 HLA-B alleles were detected in the Kadazan, Bidayuh and Iban, respectively. The most common HLA-A allele in all three groups was HLA-A*24 with a frequency of 0.456, 0.490 and 0.422 in the Kadazan, Bidayuh and Iban, respectively. The most common HLA-B allele detected in the Kadazan was HLA-B*40 with a frequency of 0.333; for the Bidayuh and the Iban it was HLA-B*15 with a frequency of 0.460 and 0.275, respectively. The HLA-DR allele with the highest frequency in the Kadazan was HLA-DR*1502 with a frequency of 0.500. In the Iban and the Bidayuh, HLA-DRB1*1202 was the most common DR allele with frequencies of 0.235 and 0.310, respectively. The two most common haplotypes for the Kadazan are A*34-B*38-DR*1502 and A*24-B*40-DR*0405, whereas for the Bidayuh they are A*24-B*15-DR*1602 and A*24-B*35-DR*1202 and for the Iban they are A*34-*B15-DR*1502 and A*24-B*15-DR*1202.

 

HLA-A24 (A24) is a human leukocyte antigen serotype within HLA-A serotype group. This group currently is dominated by A*2402. A24 and A*24 are almost synonymous in meaning.

A*2402 has one of the highest "A" frequencies identified for a number of peoples, including Papua New Guineans, Indigenous Taiwanese (Eastern Tribals), Yupik and Greenland Eskimos. It is common over much of Southeastern Asia.

A24-Cw4-B35: This particular haplotype is common across a fairly wide region, possibly the most widely spread A-Cw-B haplotype in humans. Cw4-B35 has a node within the region once referred to as Thracia/Dacia.

HLA A24-B35 Haplotype Frequencies
Population (%)
Java (Indonesia) 8.0
S. Amer. Native 6.3
N. Amer. Native 5.4
Mexican 4.7
Inuit 4.2
Brazilian 3.8
Austria 3.5
Portuguese 3.1
Yakut 2.9
Mongolian 2.7
Timor 2.5
Bharghavas (India) 2.4
Greek 2.3
Italian 2.2
Mongolian 1.9
Vietnamese 1.8
Japanese 1.6
French 1.2

HLA-B15 (B15) is an HLA-B serotype. The serotype identifies the B*15 gene-allele protein products of HLA-B.

B15 is a broad antigen can be subdivided into several split antigens that are often used in characterization. B*15 is the largest allele grouping for any known human autosomal locus. One reason for the diversity of this group is that B15 is among a group of alleles enriched in the original humans that left Africa and dispersed across East Asia and Australia. As people traveled east the frequency of many alleles dropped or disappeared from migrants. However B*15 persisted, expanded and diversified. The wide range and complex environment selected for new alleles and promoted their expansion.

HLA-B15 allele *1502 is associated with the severe skin conditions Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TENS) caused by allopurinol drug sensitivity in East Asians.

HLA-DR12(DR12) is a HLA-DR serotype that recognizes the DRB1*1201 to *1203, *1206.

There are only 2 common allels for DRB1*12, *1201 and *1202. *1202 is more common on the West Pacific Rim and particularly Indochina and the South Pacific.

DR12 is associated with vulval lichen sclerosus, and undifferentiated spondyloarthritis.

DRB1*1202 is found to be increased in narcolepsy associated sudden death syndrome in the Thai population, and narcolepsy in the Japanese population.

 

* Genomic Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in the Indigenous Groups of Malaysia by Lih-Chun Hong, et al.

Abstract: Polymorphisms in the control and coding regions of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) were analyzed in four Indigenous groups (N=188). A total of 64 different mtDNA haplotypes were elucidated. Of the 64 sequences observed, 44% were unique and 56% were shared by more than one individual. We report seven novel polymorphisms, with three in the HVS-1 and four in HVS-2 segments that have hitherto not been reported. These polymorphisms have been submitted to MITOMAP database. Most mtDNA variants belonged to three major haplogroups M, N and R. The majority of the haplogroups were found to be exclusive to the Indigenous groups in Malaysia. The most frequent were haplogroups including M21a and R21, which both reflect very old lineages, deeply rooted in South East Asian populations. This was evident in about 80% of the Negritos (Jehai and Kensiu) that were genotyped. Haplogroups N21 (24%) and N22 (8%) were predominantly found in Temuan whilst haplogroup N9a6a was predominant in Bidayuh (40%). Haplogroups indicative of South and Central Asia distributions were observed in variable frequencies. The Temuan comprise the most diverse group followed by Jehai and Bidayuh. The least diverse were the Kensiu. In our study cohort, the lower levels of genetic diversity in these four groups in contrast to majority of the Asian population (0.798 - 0.872) are indicative of genetic drift and may reflect bottleneck effects due to relatively long periods of isolation. The 9bp deletion in the MT-CO2/MT-TK (tRNALys) intergenic region of mtDNA (n.p. 8271-8281) was detected in 10.1% of the participants investigated. This deletion was identified in a Kensiu individual, five Bidayuh and the majority of Temuan (28%), but not detected in Jehai. Our results support the current view that Malaysia is home to some of the oldest groups to have migrated out of Africa.

 

Haplogroup N9

 

* High Incidence of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma in Native People of Sarawak, Borneo Island by Beena C. R. Devi, et al.

Abstract: Nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) is generally a rare malignancy with a few well-known exceptions, notably South-East China. In this article, we describe evidence of a high risk of NPC in the population of Sarawak State, Malaysia, and particularly in one native ethnic group. Sarawak State is one of the two provinces of Malaysia located on the island of Borneo. The native population (71.6%) includes the Iban, Malay, Bidayuh, Melanau, and diverse smaller ethnic groups. The Chinese are the largest nonindigenous group (27.5%). We identified 392 newly diagnosed cases (292 males and 100 females) of NPC in 1996–1998 in Malaysian citizens, permanent residents of Sarawak. Age-standardized rates by sex and ethnic group were compared with the highest rates in the world. The age-adjusted rate (ASR) in Sarawak residents was 13.5/100,000 [95% confidence interval (CI) 12.2–15.0] and 6.2/100,000 (95% CI 5.7–6.7) in males and females, respectively. The risk in the Bidayuh people was 2.3-fold (M) and 1.9-fold (F) higher than the Sarawak average, and about 50% higher than that in Hong Kong—the highest recorded by any population-based registry for the same period. Local dietary habits, environmental exposures, and genetic susceptibility deserve investigation in this population.

 

* Is Nasopharyngeal Cancer Really a "Cantonese Cancer"? by JT Wee, et al.

Abstract: Nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) is endemic in Southern China, with Guandong province and Hong Kong reporting some of the highest incidences in the world. The journal Science has called it a "Cantonese cancer". We propose that in fact NPC is a cancer that originated in the Bai Yue ("proto Tai Kadai" or "proto Austronesian" or "proto Zhuang") peoples and was transmitted to the Han Chinese in southern China through intermarriage. However, the work by John Ho raised the profile of NPC, and because of the high incidence of NPC in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, NPC became known as a Cantonese cancer. We searched historical articles, articles cited in PubMed, Google, monographs, books and Internet articles relating to genetics of the peoples with high populations of NPC. The migration history of these various peoples was extensively researched, and where possible, their genetic fingerprint identified to corroborate with historical accounts. Genetic and anthropological evidence suggest there are a lot of similarities between the Bai Yue and the aboriginal peoples of Borneo and Northeast India; between Inuit of Greenland, Austronesian Mayalo Polynesians of Southeast Asia and Polynesians of Oceania, suggesting some common ancestry. Genetic studies also suggest the present Cantonese, Minnans and Hakkas are probably an admixture of northern Han and southern Bai Yue. All these populations have a high incidence of NPC. Very early contact between southern Chinese and peoples of East Africa and Arabia can also account for the intermediate incidence of NPC in these regions.

Excerpts: Before the last ice age, continental Asia extended to Japan and Taiwan through two coastal landmasses known as Tunghailand and Nanhailand (from the Gulf of Tonkin to Japan) and to Borneo and Java through Sundaland (now the Gulf of Siam and Java Sea); now all are under the sea after the rise in sea levels (Figure 3). The original southern China aborigines (protoBaiyue) probably wandered freely along this coastal region, but after the ice age and the following rising sea levels, they became isolated on the islands of Taiwan, Hainan, Borneo, and islandic Southeast Asia. Some of these people were also believed to have migrated north and across the Bering Strait into Alaska, Greenland, and the Americas....

The Bidayuhs are the aboriginal Dayaks of Borneo. they are believed to have originated in Yunnan....

Over several centuries, groups of Dai ethnic minority (also known as Tai; another "Bai-Yue descendant subgroup" from Yunnan moved steadily into Southeast Asia, and by the thirteenth century they had reached as far west as Assam (India in present-day). Once settled, they became identified in Burma as the Shan and in the upper Mekong region as the Lao.

The Thais (of today) have traditionally regarded the founding of the kingdom of Sukhothai as marking their emergence as a distinct nation....

 

Origins of the Polynesians

 

* Cancer Mortality Analysis Among Aborigines in Taiwan by YC Ko, et al.

Abstract: Mortality among Aborigines tribes in Taiwan from malignant neoplasms in the 1971-80 and 1981-90 decades were analyzed. Sex and tribe specific standardized mortality ratios were calculated from death certificate data and compared with the number of expected deaths derived from the cancer mortality of the entire population of Taiwan. Mortality due to oral cancer was statistically significantly higher than expected among Paiwan men in the 1971-80 decade and among Paiwan women from 1971-80 and 1981-90; as was mortality from nasopharyngeal cancer among Bunun, Paiwan and Rukai men from 1981-90 and among Bunun and Paiwan women from 1971-80 and 1981-90; mortality due to stomach cancer among the Atayal, Bunun and Paiwan people from 1971-80 and 1981-90, among Rukai men from 1971-80 and among the Tsou and mixed group women from 1981-90; mortality from liver cancer among Atayal and Bunun men in 1971-80, among Bunun women from 1971-80 and 1981-90 and among Paiwan women in 1981-90; mortality due to nasal cavity, middle ear and paranasal sinuses cancer among Rukai men from 1981-90; and mortality due to bone cancer among Tsou men and Atayal women from 1981-90. Mortality due to colorectal cancer was statistically significantly lower than expected among mixed group men from 1971-80 and in Atayal women from 1981-90; as was mortality from lung cancer among Atayal men and Paiwan women from 1971-80 and among Paiwan and mixed group men in the 1981-90 decade. Overall, the standardized mortality ratio of all cancers in aborigines was a little higher than in the general population of Taiwan. However, differences for ratio or site existed in different tribes.

 

Bunun

 

Paiwan

 

Rukai

 

* Ancient Jades Map 3,000 Years of Prehistoric Exchange in Southeast Asia by Hsiao-Chun Hung, et al.

The Distribution of Taiwan Nephrite Artifacts in Southeast Asia

The green zone represents the currently known distribution of Taiwan nephrite artifacts. The green triangle locates the Fengtian nephrite deposit. Yellow stars represent sites outside Taiwan with positively identified Fengtian nephrite artifacts (Taiwan itself has >108 jade-bearing sites, and these cannot be shown individually). Blue stars represent sites with jade artifacts of possible Fengtian origin. Black circles represent sites that have identified nephrite of non-Fengtian origin.

EXCERPT: We have used electron probe microanalysis to examine Southeast Asian nephrite (jade) artifacts, many archeologically excavated, dating from 3000 B.C. through the first millennium A.D. The research has revealed the existence of one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world. Green nephrite from a source in eastern Taiwan was used to make two very specific forms of ear pendant that were distributed, between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., through the Philippines, East Malaysia, southern Vietnam, and peninsular Thailand, forming a 3,000-km-diameter halo around the southern and eastern coastlines of the South China Sea. Other Taiwan nephrite artifacts, especially beads and bracelets, were distributed earlier during Neolithic times throughout Taiwan and from Taiwan into the Philippines.

 

* Genetic Admixture History of Eastern Indonesia as Revealed by Y-chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Analysis by S. Mona, et al.

Two-dimensional MDS Plot Based on a Fst Distance Matrix Computed from NRY Haplogroup Frequencies

(TCH - Taiwan Han Chinese, VIN - Vietnamese, CHI - Chinese, KOR - Korean, SMT - Sumatra, MAL - Malay, SBO- South Borneo, JAV - Java)

Open white circles: AN-speaking groups; full black circles: NAN (Papuan)-speaking groups; full gray circles: all other populations (irrespective of languages). Groups with more than five samples were not considered. Abbreviations are as following: ADR: Adonara (eastern Indonesia, EI), ALR_p: NAN Alor (EI), ETR_a: AN eastern Timor (EI), FLO: Flores (EI), LMB: Lembata (EI), PNT_p: NAN Pantar (EI), PNT_a: AN Pantar (EI), SLR: Solor (EI). Additional data are from Kayser et al. (2001, 2003, 2006) and additionally from Mona et al. (2007) for NRY data, and from Tommaseo-Ponzetta et al. (2002) for mtDNA data: MOL: Moluccas (pooled from Hiri and Ternate, EI), TEN: Nusa Tenggara (pooled Alor, Flores, Roti, Timur; EI), KAR: Karon (Northwest New Guinea, NWNG), BAH: Baham (NWNG), BIK: Biak (NWNG), EKA: Ekari (NWNG), HAT: Hatam (NWNG), MAB: Maibrat (NWNG), MAN: Mantion (NWNG), MOI: Moi (NWNG), MSK: Moskona (NWNG), WAN: Wandamen (NWNG), IRA: Irarutu (NWNG), ONI: Onin (NWNG), THE: Tehit (NWNG), ASM: Asmat (Southwest New Guinea, SWNG), AWY: Awyu (SWNG), CIT: Citak (SWNG), DAN: Dani/Lani (SWNG), KET: Ketengban (SWNG), KRW: Korowai (SWNG), MAP: Mappi (SWNG), MY: Muyu (SWNG), UNA: Una (SWNG), YAL: Yali (SWNG), KMB: Kombai (SWNG), TRO: Trobriand (Papua New Guinea, PNG), BRN: Bereina (PNG), KAP: Kapuna (PNG), TOL: Tolai New Britain (PNG), PCO: PNG coast, PHL: PNG highlands, FIJ: Fiji, AS1: Australian Aborigines Arnhem Land, AS2: Australian Aborigines Great Sandy Desert, CHI: Han Chinese (East Asia, EA), TAB: Taiwan Aborigines (EA), TCH: Taiwan Han Chinese (EA), VTN: Vietnam (EA), KOR: Korea (EA), MAL: Malay (Southeast Asia, SEA), PHI: Philippines (SEA), SBO: South Borneo (SEA), SMT: Sumatra (SEA), JAV: Java (SEA), COK: Cook Islands (Polynesia, POL), FUT: Futuna (POL), NIE: Niue (POL), TOK: Tokelau (POL), TON: Tonga (POL), TUV: Tuvalu (POL), WES: West Samoa (POL).

 

Two-dimensional MDS Plot Based on a Fst Distance Matrix Computed from mtDNA Sequences

(TCH - Taiwan Han Chinese, SBO- South Borneo, SMT - Sumatra, JAV - Java, SLR - Solor)

____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

 

Yue Peoples

Map of Asia, 200 BC: Nan-Yue and Min-Yue

The Baiyue (百越), Hundred Yue or Yue (越) is a loose term denoting various partly-sinicized or un-sinicized peoples who inhabited southern China and northern Vietnam between the first millenium BC and the first millenium AD. In the warring states period, the word "Yue" referred to the State of Yue in Zhejiang. The later kingdoms of Minyue in Fujian and Nanyue in Guangdong are both considered Baiyue states. Chinese writers depicted the Yue as barbarians who had tatoos, lived in primitive conditions, and lacked such technology as bows, arrows, horses and chariots. The Baiyue have been compared to the lost tribes of Israel, with a great deal of speculation among Chinese historians concerning who they were and what happened to them. Many of the ethnic groups now inhabiting southern China and northern Vietnam are thought to be descendants of the Baiyue. Connecting them to existing peoples in South China led to questions concerning the Chinese character of the South, while connecting them to the Vietnamese might validate nationalistic Vietnamese views. Variations of the name continue to be used by both the Cantonese (粵) and by the Vietnamese (Việt) to refer to themselves.

Historian Luo Xianglin has suggested that these peoples shared a common ancestry with the Xia Dynasty. There is little evidence, however, that the Yue peoples held any common identity.

Ethnolinguists have suggested that the pronunciation of Yue may be related to a type of hemp produced in what is now Zhejiang. The character itself is related to the character for "ceremonial ax" (鉞), usually considered a symbol of royal or imperial authority. A number of stone axes have been found in the area of Hangzhou, and there is evidence that the ceremonial ax was a southern invention.

Peoples of the Lower Yangtze: In the 5th millennium BC, the lower Yangtze area was already a major population centre, occupied by the Hemudu and Majiabang cultures, who were among the earliest cultivators of rice. By the 3rd millennium BC, the successor Liangzhu culture shows some influence from the Longshan culture of the North China Plain.

From the 9th century BC, two northern Yue peoples, the Gou-Wu and Yu-Yue, were increasingly influenced by their Chinese neighbours to their north. These two states were based in the areas of what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang respectively. Their aristocratic elite learned the written Chinese language and adopted Chinese political institutions and military technology. Traditional accounts attribute the cultural change to the Grand Earl of Wu (吳太伯), a Zhou prince who had fled to the south. The marshy lands of the south gave Gou-Wu and Yu-Yue unique characteristics. They did not engage in extensive agrarian agriculture, relying instead more heavily on aquaculture. Water transport was paramount in the south, so the two states became advanced in shipbuilding and developed riverine warfare technology. They were also known for their fine swords.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, the two states, now called Wu and Yue, were becoming increasingly involved in Chinese politics. In 512 BC, Wu launched a large expedition against the large state of Chu, based in the Middle Yangtze River. A similar campaign in 506 succeeded in sacking the Chu capital Ying. Also in that year, war broke out between Wu and Yue and continued with breaks for the next three decades. In 473 BC, the Yue king Goujian finally conquered Wu and was acknowledged by the northern states of Qi and Jin. In 333 BC, Yue was in turn conquered by Chu. The kings of the state of Yue, and therefore its successor state Minyue, claimed to be descended from Yu the Great of the Chinese Xia dynasty. According to Sima Qian, Wu was founded by Wu Taibo, a brother of King Wu of the Zhou dynasty.

Sinification and Displacement: After the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, the former Wu and Yue states became incorporated into the Chinese empire. The Qin armies also advanced south along the Xiang River to modern Guangdong and set up commanderies along the main communication routes. "In the south he seized the land of the hundred tribes of the Yue and made of it Guilin and Xiang provinces, and the lords of the hundred Yue bowed their heads, hung halters from their necks, and pleaded for their lives with the lowest officials of the Qin," wrote Sima Qian.

The "Treatise of Geography" in the Han Shu (completed 111 AD) describes the Yue lands as stretching from Kuaiji (in modern Zhejiang) to Jiaozhi (modern northern Vietnam). Throughout the Han Dynasty period two groups of Yue were identified, that of the Nanyue in the far south, who lived mainly in the area of what is now Guangdong, Guangxi, and Vietnam; and that of the Minyue who lay to the southeast, centred on the Min River in modern Fujian.

Sinification of these peoples was brought about by a combination of imperial military power, regular settlement and Chinese refugees. According to one Chinese immigrant of the second century BC, the Baiyue "cut their hair short, tattooed their body, live in bamboo groves with neither towns nor villages, possessing neither bows or arrows, nor horses or chariots." The difficulty of logistics and the malarial climate in the south made the displacement and eventual sinification of the Yue peoples a slow process. When the Chinese came into contact with local Yue peoples, they often wrested control of territory from them or subjugated them by force. When a serious rebellion broke out in 40 AD led by the Trung Sisters in what is now modern Vietnam, a force of some 10,000 imperial troops was dispatched under General Ma Yuan. Between 100 and 184 AD no less than seven outbreaks of violence took place, often answered with strong action by the Chinese.

As Chinese migrants gradually increased, the Yue were gradually forced into poorer land on the hills and in the mountains. Unlike the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, such as the Xiongnu or the Xianbei, however, the Yue peoples never posed any serious threat to Chinese expansion or control. Sometimes they staged small scale raids or attacks on Chinese settlements – termed "rebellions" by traditional historians.

Most Yue peoples were eventually sinicized, and continue to live in Zhejiang and Guangdong, the Kam-Tai (Daic): Zhuang, Buyi, Dai, Sui (Shui), Kam (Dong), Hlai (Li), Mulam, Maonan, Ong-Be (Lingao), Thai, Lao, Shan, and Vietnamese people retained their ethnic identities. Some of these peoples migrated to Mon-Khmer areas after ruled by officials of Han Chinese emperors.

Language: Our knowledge of Yue speech is limited to fragmentary references and possible loanwords in other languages, principally Chinese. There is some disagreement about the languages they spoke, with candidates drawn from the non-Sinitic language families still represented in areas of southern China, the Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien) and Austro-Asiatic. Chinese, Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao and the Vietic branch of Austro-Asiatic have similar tone systems, syllable structure, grammatical features and lack of inflection, but these are believed to be areal features spread by diffusion rather than indicating common descent.

Jerry Norman and Mei Tsi-Lin presented evidence that at least some Yue spoke an Austro-Asiatic language:

They also provide evidence of an Austro-Asiatic substrate in the vocabulary of Min Chinese dialects. Norman and Mei's hypothesis is widely quoted, but has recently been criticized by Laurent Sagart.

Scholars in China often assume that the Yue spoke an early form of Tai-Kadai. The linguist Zhengzhang Shangfang has applied this hypothesis to the only record of Yue language, a short song transcribed phonetically in Chinese characters in 528 BC and included in the Shuoyuan compiled by Liu Xiang five centuries later. He proposed an interpretation in written Thai (dating from the late 13th century) as the closest available approximation to the original language, but his interpretation remains controversial.

Legacy: The fall of the Han Dynasty and the succeeding period of division sped up the process of sinification. Periods of instability and war in northern China, such as the Northern and Southern Dynasties and during the Song Dynasty led to mass migrations of Chinese. Intermarriage and cross-cultural dialogue has led to a mixture of Chinese and non-Chinese peoples in the south. By the Tang Dynasty (618–907), the term "Yue" had largely become a regional designation rather than a cultural one. A state in modern Zhejiang province during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, for example, called itself "Wu-Yue". Likewise, the "Viet" in "Vietnam" (literally, "Viet South") is a cognate of the "Yue".

The impact of Yue culture on Chinese culture has not been determined authoritatively but it is clear that it is significant. The languages of the ancient states of Wu and Yue had significant influence on the modern Wu language and to some extent of the Min languages of Fujian. Linguistic anthropologists have also determined that a number of Chinese words can be traced to ancient Yue words, such as the word jiāng (river) mentioned above. To some extent, some remnants of the Yue peoples and their culture can also be seen in some minority groups of China and in Vietnam.

 

* The Origin of Minnan & Hakka, the So-Called "Taiwanese" Inferred by HLA Study by M. Lin

Abstract: The Minnan and Hakka people groups, the so-called "Taiwanese", are the descendants of early settlers from the southeast coast of China during the last few centuries. Genetically they showed affinities to southern Asian populations as determined by phylogenetic trees and correspondence analysis calculated from HLA allele frequencies. This corresponds historically with the fact that they are the descendants of the southeast coastal indigenous population (Yueh) of China and should therefore not be considered as descendants of "pure" northern Han Chinese. A33-B58-DRB1*03 (A33-Cw10-B58-DRB1*03-DQB1*02), the most common HLA haplotype among "Taiwanese", with a haplotype frequency of 6.3%, has also been found to be the most common haplotype among Thai-Chinese and Singapore Chinese, two other populations also originating from the southeast coast of China. These observations suggest that this haplotype is the most well conserved ancient haplotype of the Yueh (從組織抗原推論閩南人及客家人，所謂「台灣人」的來源 by 林媽利).

 

(Minnan, Hakka, Thai Chinese, Singapore Chinese, Thais, Vietnamese, Buyi, Southern Han, Miao)

 

 

Taiwan Han Chinese - Minnan (Hoklo, Hokkien)

Photo of "The Hokkien Marilyn Monroe"

Taiwanese people (臺灣人): According to official governmental statistics, 98% of Taiwan's population is made up of Han Chinese, while 2% are Taiwanese aborigines. The composite category of "Taiwanese people" is often reputed by many Taiwanese to include a significant population of at least four constituent ethnic groups: the Hoklo (70%), the Hakka (15%), Mainlander (13%), and Taiwanese aborigines (2%).

Hoklo (Minnan, Hokkien) commonly refers to those Taiwanese people who claim Han Chinese ancestry from the southern part of Fujian province of China. Large populations of similar background can also be found in Malaysia, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia where they are usually referred to as Hokkien, meaning Fujian in Min Nan language. In Hong Kong's New Territories, "Fukienese" often refers to all Min Nan speakers relocating from Fujian.

In Taiwan, the Hoklos are the largest ethnic group (see Demographics of Taiwan). Most Hoklos trace their paternal ancestry to male settlers who migrated to Taiwan from Fujian in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Because about 70% of the population in Taiwan are Hoklo, Taiwanese is often used interchangeably with Hoklo. People who are aware of the multi-ethnic nature of Taiwan recognize the two are not identical, although most people will know by context when this word refers to people from Taiwan and when this word refers specifically to Hoklos.

Fujian (福建; local transliteration from Hokkien: Hok-kiàn) is one of the provinces on the southeast coast of China. Fujian borders Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait. The name Fujian comes from the combination of Fuzhou and Jian'ou, two cities in Fujian. The name was coined during Tang Dynasty.

Recent archaeological discoveries demonstrate that Fujian (especially the northern coastal region around Fuzhou) had entered the Neolithic Age by the middle of the 6th millennium BC. From the Keqiutou site (7450-5590 BP), an early Neolithic site in Pingtan Island located about 70 km southeast of Fuzhou, numerous tools made of stones, shells, bones, jades, and ceramics (including wheel-made-ceramics) have been unearthed, together with spinning wheels, a definitive evidence of weaving.

The Tanshishan (昙石山) site (5500-4000 BP) in suburban Fuzhou spans the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age where semi-underground circular buildings were found in the lower level. The Huangtulun (黄土崙) site (ca.1325 BC), also in suburban Fuzhou, was of the Bronze Age in character.

This area was also the place for the kingdom of Minyue. The word "Mǐnyuè" was derived by combining "Mǐn" (閩), perhaps an ethnic name and associated with the Chinese word for barbarians (蠻), and "Yue", after the State of Yue, a Spring and Autumn Period kingdom in Zhejiang Province to the north. This is because the royal family of Yuè fled to Fujian after their kingdom was annexed by the State of Chu in 306 BC. Mǐn is also the name of the main river in this area, but the ethnonym is probably earlier.

Minyue was a de facto kingdom until the emperor of Qin Dynasty (秦朝), the first unified imperial Chinese state, abolished the status. In the aftermath of the fall of the Qin Dynasty, however, civil war broke out between two warlords, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang; the Minyue king Wuzhu sent his troops to fight side-by-side with Liu Bang, and his gamble paid off. Liu Bang was victorious, and founded the Han Dynasty; in 202 BC he restored Minyue's status as a tributary independent kingdom. Thus Wuzhu was allowed to construct his fortified city in Fuzhou as well as a few locations in the Wuyi Mountains, which have been excavated in recent years. His kingdom extended beyond the borders of contemporary Fujian into eastern Guangdong, eastern Jiangxi, and southern Zhejiang.

After the death of Wuzhu, Minyue maintained its militant tradition and launched several expeditions against their neighboring kingdoms in Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang, mostly in the 2nd century BC, only to be stopped by the Han Dynasty. The Han emperor eventually decided to get rid of the potential threat by sending in large forces simultaneously from four directions via land and sea in 111 BC. The rulers in Fuzhou surrendered to avoid a futile fight and destruction; thus the first kingdom in Fujian history came to an abrupt end. Nonetheless, the people of northern Fujian still erect temples in memory of their first kings.

The Han Dynasty collapsed at the end of the 2nd century AD, paving the way for the Three Kingdoms era. Sun Quan, the founder of the Kingdom of Wu, spent nearly twenty years subduing the Shan Yue people, the branch of the Yue people living in mountains.

The first wave of immigration of the noble class arrived in the province in the early 4th century AD when the Western Jin Dynasty collapsed and the north was torn apart by invasions by nomadic peoples from the north, as well as civil war. These immigrants were primarily from eight families in central China: Lin (林), Huang (黄), Chen (陳), Zheng (郑), Zhan (詹), Qiu (邱), Ho (何), and Hu (胡). The first four remain as the major surnames of modern Fujian.

Zhongyuan or the Central Plain of China (中原) refers to the area on the lower reaches of the Yellow River which formed the cradle of Chinese civilization. It forms part of the North China Plain.

In its narrowest sense, the Central Plain covers modern-day Henan, the southern part of Hebei, the southern part of Shanxi, and the western part of Shandong province. A broader interpretation of the Central Plain's extent would add the Guanzhong plain of Shaanxi, the northwestern part of Jiangsu, and parts of Anhui and northern Hebei.

Nevertheless, isolation from nearby areas owing to rugged terrain contributed to Fujian's relatively backward economy and level of development, despite major population boost from northern China during the "barbarian" invasions. Population density in Fujian remained low compared to the rest of China. Only two commanderies and sixteen counties were established by the Western Jin Dynasty. Like other southern provinces such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan, Fujian often served as a destination for exiled prisoners and dissidents at that time.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties era, the Southern Dynasties reigned south of the Yangtze River, including Fujian.

The Tang Dynasty (618-907) oversaw the next golden age of China. As the Tang Dynasty ended, China was torn apart in the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. During this time, a second major wave of immigration arrived in the safe haven of Fujian, led by general Wang, who set up an independent Kingdom of Min with its capital in Fuzhou. After the death of the founding king, however, the kingdom suffered from internal strife, and was soon swallowed up by Southern Tang, another southern kingdom.

Quanzhou was blooming into a seaport under the reign of the Min Kingdom, and may have been the largest seaport in the Eastern hemisphere. In the early Ming dynasty, Quanzhou was the staging area and supply depot of Zheng He's naval expeditions. Further development was severely hampered by the sea trade ban of the Ming Dynasty, and the area was superseded by nearby ports of Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai despite the lifting of the ban in 1550. Large scale piracy by Wokou (Japanese pirates) was eventually wiped out by Chinese military and Japanese authority of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Late Ming and early Qing Dynasty symbolized an era of large influx of refugees and another 20 years of sea trade ban under the Kangxi Emperor, a measure intended to counter the refuge Ming government of Koxinga in Taiwan. Incoming refugees, however, did not translate into a major labor force owing to their re-migration into prosperous regions of Guangdong province. In 1689, the Qing dynasty officially incorporated Taiwan into Fujian province. Settlement of Taiwan by Han Chinese followed, and the majority of people in Taiwan are descendants of emigrants from Southern Fujian. After Taiwan was separated into its own province in 1885 and ceded to Japan in 1895, Fujian arrived at its present extent. It was substantially influenced by the Japanese after the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895 until the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) of WWII.

* Taiwan under Japanese rule

 

* Phylogeographic Differentiation of Mitochondrial DNA in Han Chinese by Yong-Gang Yao, et al.

PC Map of the MtDNA Data (with respect to the basal haplogroup profiles) of 13 Regional Han Samples

(Taiwan-1 clusters with Yunnan, Guangdong/Guangzhou, and Hong Kong.
Taiwan-2 clusters with Wuhan, Xinjiang, Shanghai)

 

* Genetic Relationship of Chinese Ethnic Populations Revealed by mtDNA Sequence Diversity by Yong-Gang Yao, et al.

Unrooted NJ Tree

(Taiwanese Han, Cantonese, Thai, Dai, Zhuang)

 

* Genetic Link Between Chaoshan and Other Chinese Han Populations: Evidence from HLA-A and HLA-B allele frequency distribution by Sheng-Ping Hu, et al.

Neighbor-Joining Tree

(Taiwan Minnan, Minnan, Hakka, Chaoshan, Hongkong Chinese, China South, Singapore Chinese)

 

* Distribution of HLA Gene and Haplotype Frequencies in Taiwan: A comparative study among Min-nan, Hakka, Aborigines and Mainland Chinese by C.K. Shaw, et al.

Abstract: A total of 8,497 blood samples were typed for HLA-A, B, DR and DQ. Of these, 7,137 Min-nan, 714 Hakka, 535 Mainland Chinese (152 from North China, 211 from Middle China, and 172 from South China) and 111 Aborigines were randomly selected from Tzu Chi Taiwan Marrow Donor Registry (TCTMDR). Differences in HLA gene and antigen frequencies have been observed between various ethnic groups of the Chinese population in Taiwan. The phylogenic tree shows Taiwan Aborigines and Javanese cluster together; Min-nan shares a common cluster with Hakka, Southern Hans and Thai; and Northern Hans shares a cluster with Middle Hans. The separation between Northern/Middle and Southern Chinese Hans support the idea that Northern and Southern Chinese have different genetic background. Aborigines appeared to be quite distinct in the distribution of a majority of the class I and class II antigens. High frequency of HLA-A24 (60.4%) and relatively restricted HLA polymorphisms are noted in Aborigines. The HLA haplotypes with high frequency in Aborigines included A24-B60-DRB1*04, A24-B60-DRB1*14, A24-B48-DRB1*04, and A24-B48-DRB1*14, which are different from the other ethnic groups. Although the phylogenic tree separates Aborigines and Han Chinese populations, 4 out of 20 most common HLA-A, -B, and -DR haplotypes presented in both Aborigines and Han Chinese may reflect an ancient common origin or intermixture between early settlers of Han Chinese and Taiwan Aborigines. The results in this study are essentially a summary of the observed gene/haplotype frequencies and differences among various ethnic groups in Taiwan.

 

 

Hong Kong People

Hong Kong people (Hongkongers) (香港人) refer to people who originate from Hong Kong.

Most Hong Kong Chinese have ancestral roots from Guangdong Province and the Yangtze River Delta, as these two main Chinese groups inter-mingled.

Cantonese people represent the largest group in Hong Kong. Beside the Cantonese, people of other Han Chinese groups also reside in Hong Kong. However, the Cantonese remains the largest group even amongst other Han Chinese groups in Hong Kong. As such, Hong Kong culture is highly Cantonese-influenced. Together with the fact that Cantonese is most commonly used as the language of both everyday and formal conversations, as well as its use in the media and education, other Han Chinese groups in Hong Kong, such as the Hakka, the Hoklo (Hokkien), the Shanghainese, or the Teochew, in particular those who are Hong Kong born or raised, often assimilate into the mainstream Cantonese identity of Hong Kong.

 

* The GM Genetic Polymorphism in Taiwan Aborigines: New data revealing remarkable differentiation patterns
by Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, et al.

Multidimensional Scaling Analysis among 63 Populations from Southeast Asia
Excluding all Sino-Tibetans but the Southern Chinese (grouped)

(Chinese from Hong-Kong, She, Guangzhou, Siraya, Saisiat, Pazeh, Thai)

 

 

Vietnamese

Vietnamese: The ancient Vietnamese people were first known simply as the Lac or Lac Viet in recorded history and the country of Vietnam during that time was known as Văn Lang. Archaeological evidence of the bronze age Dong Son Culture, also known as Lac Society, suggest the ancient Vietnamese people were among the first to practice agriculture.

In 258 BC, An Dương Vương founded the kingdom of Âu Lạc in what is now northern Vietnam. In 208 BC, Chao Tuo (known as Triệu Đà in Vietnamese), a former Qin Dynasty general from China, allied with the leaders of the Yue peoples in what is now modern-day Guangdong and declared himself King of Southern Yue. He defeated An Dương Vương and then combined Âu Lạc with territories in southern China and named his kingdom Nam Việt, or Southern Yue (Nam means "south"). Việt is cognate to Yue, which is the pronunciation of Yue in ancient Chinese and some modern southern Chinese dialects. The term was used in bai yue ("hundred Viet") for the various peoples in what is now southern China, including the regions of northern Vietnam.

According to a research study done by the Hopital Saint-Louis in Paris, France: "the comparison of the Vietnamese with other East Asian populations showed a close genetic relationship of the population under investigation with other Orientals," with the exception of seven unique markers. These results, along with remnants of Thai enzyme morphs, indicate a dual ethnic origin of the Vietnamese population from Chinese and Thai-Indonesian populations. According to a recent HLA study headed by laboratories at the Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan, the Vietnamese people are classified in the same genetic cluster as the Miao (Hmong), Southern Han (Southern Chinese), Buyei and Thai, with a divergent family consisting of Thai Chinese and Singapore Chinese, Minnan (Hoklo) and Hakka.

 

Hanoi

Hanoi is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. From 1010 until 1802, with a few brief interruptions, it was the political centre of an independent Vietnam. It was eclipsed by Huế during the Nguyen Dynasty as the capital of Vietnam, but Hanoi served as the capital of French Indochina from 1902 to 1954. From 1954 to 1976, it was the capital of North Vietnam.

 

 

Thai People

King Bhumibol

The Thai (or Tai) are the main ethnic group of Thailand and are part of the larger Tai ethnolinguistic peoples found in Thailand and adjacent countries in Southeast Asia as well as southern China. Their language is the Thai language, which is classified as part of the Kradai family of languages

The earliest mention of the Thai, as a nation in south China called NAN-JOA (Nanzhao or Nanman), comes from Chinese records dating back to the sixth century BC. These early Thai emanated out of the Yunnan region and dispersed into the general area of what is today Thailand. These Thai peoples arrived in various waves and displaced the earlier native Mon and Khmer populations as they settled the region with a large group settling in Thailand during the Sung period of China roughly around 960 AD. The related Lao people split off from the early Kradai peoples and moved into Southeast Asia, mainly Laos, while another kindred people, the Shan, made their way into Myanmar.

The founding of the Sukhothai kingdom culminated in the emergence of the first Thai nation-state founded in 1238. Various conflicts in the Chinese-dominated region of Nanchao facilitated increased migration of the Thai, especially mercenaries fleeing from the Mongol conquest of China, and helped establish the Thai as a regional power.

The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Daic, Kadai, Kradai, or Kra-Dai, are a language family of highly tonal languages found in southern China and Southeast Asia. They include Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos respectively. There are nearly 100 million speakers of these languages in the world. Ethnologue lists 92 languages in this family, with 76 of these languages being in the Kam-Tai branch.

The diversity of the Tai-Kadai languages in southeastern China, especially in Guizhou and Hainan, suggests that this is close to their homeland. The Tai branch moved south into Southeast Asia only about a thousand years ago, founding the nations that later became Thailand and Laos in what had been Austroasiatic territory.

The Tai-Kadai languages were formerly considered to be part of the Sino-Tibetan family, but outside of China they are now classified as an independent family. They contain large numbers of words that are similar in Sino-Tibetan languages. However, these are seldom found in all branches of the family, and do not include basic vocabulary, indicating that they are old loan words (Ostapirat 2005).

Several Western scholars have presented suggestive evidence that Tai-Kadai is related to or a branch of the Austronesian language family. There are a number of possible cognates in the core vocabulary. Among proponents, there is yet no agreement as to whether they are a sister group to Austronesian in a family called Austro-Tai, a backmigration from Taiwan to the mainland, or a later migration from the Philippines to Hainan during the Austronesian expansion.

 

* More Genetic Sharing among the Population of Taiwan than Expected: A plain tribes (Pinpu) perspective by Marie Lin, et al.

Mitochondrial DNA (Neighbor Joining Phylogram)

(Hakka, Minnan, Fujian, Thailand, Vietnamese)

 

* Genetic Origins of the Ainu Inferred from Combined DNA Analyses of Maternal and Paternal Lineages by Atsushi Tajima, et al.

(Taiwan Han, Malaysian, Aboriginal Taiwanese, Phillipine, Thai, Indonesian)

 

 

Southern Mongoloid

Map of the Yangtze River

Southern Mongoloid populations are a subgroup of Mongoloid populations, distinguished by older criteria like appearance and craniology, or dental patterns. Genetically Northern Mongoloids are very unrelated to Southern Mongoloids.

In Cavalli-Sforza's genetic clustering work (1988) South Chinese join Southeast Asians in genetic clustering while the North Chinese associate with Koreans, Japanese, Ainu, Bhutanese and Tibetans in genetic clustering. Other Southeast Asians include Malaysian, Viet Muong, Thai, Western Indonesian and Philippine.

Xiao and Cavalli-Sforza (2000) find the boundary between Northern and Southern Mongoloids to approximate the Yangtze River, and suggest that their ancestors arrived from Africa via separate routes. Principal component analysis of gene frequencies of Chinese populations

Other scientists have suggested that the finding of sharp genetic differences between North and South China is an artifact of using an insufficient number of samples. However, Xiao and Cavalli-Sforza (2000) has a larger number of samples than previous studies.

Modern biological evidence from the anthropological textbook Human Species (2003) contradicts earlier theories of which groups were more genetically related to other groups. The Human Species(2003) and Physical Anthropology used the genetic clustering of Cavalli-Sforza (2000) in their publication. Humans are all related. Humanity divided itself into the African and the Eurasian/Oceanic branch. The Eurasian and Oceanic branches are the products of this common origin. The Eurasian branch split into the Amerindian and major East Asian branch. The major East Asian branch divided itself into eastern Russian and the East Asian. The Oceanic branch divided itself into the Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders. According to the Human Species (2003), East Asians generally are more genetically similar to the South Asians than to Southeast Asians, because the Far East and the Indian Subcontinent are members of the Eurasian branch while Southeast Asians (including south Chinese) are members of the Oceanic branch. More interestingly, Asians have very local genetic clusters inside these regions, implying different Asian ethnic groups have not historically intermarried with each other. Examples of localized genetic clusters include Japan, Korea, Mongolia and China which form separate genetic clusters from each other.

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Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

 

Miao

The Miao (苗族) are a linguistically and culturally related group of people recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China as one of the 55 official minority groups. Miao is a Chinese term and does not reflect the self-designations of the component sub-groups, which include (with some variant spellings) Hmong/Mong, Hmu, A Hmao,and Kho (Qho) Xiong. The Miao live primarily in southern China, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, and Hubei. Some members of the Miao sub-groups, most notably Hmong/Mong people, have migrated out of China into Southeast Asia (northern Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand).

Historically, the term "Miao" had been applied inconsistently to a variety of non-Han peoples often with the connotation of "barbarian." This former meaning has not kept members of the modern nationality from self-identifying as Miao.

Archaeological Discoveries: Many Miao scholars believe the Dawenkou Culture to be Miao. They cite the pottery designs found in the tombs as examples. The designs are very similar to present day Miao embroideries. Combine this with the presence of Miao in Shangdong suggests the Miao's origin is not the south but the mouth of the Yellow River. It would also support the Miao's claim to the Shang Dynasty since Shangdong is part of Shang.

Lady Dai found in Tomb no. 1 at Mawangdui is believed by many Miao as a Miao woman. They cite the T-shaped banners draped over her coffin as an example of Miao burial practices and beliefs. This dispel the belief that the sinicization of the Miao was by force or even sinicized during the Han Dynasty. Liu Bang is a general under Xiang Yu meaning he commanded Miao troops and they are his base of power. When the dispute with Xiang Yu broke out Xiang Yu's uncle Xiang Bo and Fan Kuai saved Liu Bang's life. This meant Liu Bang's support among the Miao was strong. The Han-Chu contention was not about a struggle between two groups of people but between two individuals. This explains why Miao beliefs and culture flourished during the Western Han. It would also mean that the Han nationality began when the Miao and Huaxia came together as one. The present day Miao may be the remnant of those who fled when Qin conquered Chu. They left before peace came and never returned. It would explain why Chu is acknowledged by the Miao as a Miao Kingdom but not Han given Liu Bang's base of power was former Chu in the South.

 

Dawenkou Culture

The Dawenkou culture (大汶口文化) is a name given by archaeologists to a group of Neolithic communities who lived primarily in Shandong, but also appeared in Anhui, Henan and Jiangsu, China. The culture existed from 4100 BC to 2600 BC, co-existing with the Yangshao culture. Turquoise, jade and ivory artefacts are commonly found at Dawenkou sites. The earliest examples of alligator drums appear at Dawenkou sites.

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Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

 

Henan

Henan (河南), is a province of the People's Republic of China, located eastern central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is 豫, named after Yuzhou Province (豫州), a Han Dynasty province (zhou) that included parts of Henan. The name Henan means "south of the (Yellow) River" (Huang He).

With nearly 100 million people, Henan is the most populous province of China by residency. It borders Hebei to the north, Shandong to the northeast, Anhui to the southeast, Hubei to the south, Shaanxi to the west, and Shanxi to the northwest.

Henan is often called Zhongyuan (中原) or Zhongzhou (中州), literally "central plains" or "midland"; this name is also broadly applied to the entire North China Plain. Henan is traditionally regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization.

 

* STR Polymorphisms of the Henan Population and Investigation of the Central Plains Han Origin of Chaoshanese by LN Xu, et al.

Abstract: Allele frequencies for 15 short tandem repeat (STR) loci were obtained from a Chinese Han population in Henan province of middle China. No deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was observed for the STR loci except for D3S1358. The 15 STR loci are potentially useful for paternity testing and forensic casework in the Henan population. A phylogenetic tree based on CODIS STR allele frequencies of 25 Han populations revealed noticeable but far less clear distinctions between southern and northern Chinese populations; the Henan Han population was located at an intermediate position between south and north Chinese Han populations, relatively closer to Chaoshan and Minnan Han. Moreover, admixture analysis showed a large proportion of Central Plains Han origin in Chaoshanese and Minnanese. Admixture and phylogenetic analysis also reflected the genetic similarity shared by these two groups.

 

* mtDNA Evidence: Genetic background associated with related populations at high risk for esophageal cancer between Chaoshan and Taihang Mountain areas in China by Xiao-Yun Li, et al.

Abstract: There are three major geographic regions in China known for their high incidences of esophageal cancer (EC): the Taihang Mountain range of north-central China, the Minnan area of Fujian province, and the Chaoshan plain of Guangdong province. Historically, waves of great population migrations from north-central China through coastal Fujian to the Chaoshan plain were recorded. To study the genetic relationship among the related EC high-risk populations, we analyzed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups based on 30 EC patients from Chaoshan and used control samples from the high-risk populations, including 48, 73, and 89 subjects from the Taihang, Fujian, and Chaoshan areas, respectively. The principal component of all haplogroups, correlation analysis of haplogroup frequency distributions between populations, and haplogroup D network analysis showed that compared with other Chinese populations, populations in the three studied areas are genetically related. The highest haplogroup frequency shared by all studied populations was haplogroup D, with much higher frequency in the Chaoshan area EC patients. The majority of haplogroup D individuals among the Chaoshan area EC patients belonged to subhaplogroups D4a and D5a, with the total frequency of these two haplogroups significantly higher than that in the high-risk population in the same area (χ2 = 9.017, p < 0.01). In conclusion, EC high-risk populations in these three areas share a similar matrilineal genetic background, and D4a and D5a might be candidate genetic markers for screening populations susceptible to EC in the Chaoshan area. Ours is the first report to show the association between mtDNA haplogroups (D4a and D5a) and esophageal cancer.

 

Taihang Mountains

Map from East Asia in Geographic Perspective

The Taihang Mountains (太行山) are a Chinese mountain range running down the eastern edge of the Loess Plateau (黃土高原) in Henan, Shanxi and Hebei provinces. The range extends over 400 km from north to south and has an average elevation of 1,500 to 2,000 meters. The principal peak is Xiao Wutaishan (2,882 metres). Cangyan Shan in Hebei forms the eastern tip of the Taihang range.

The name of Shanxi Province (山西), meaning "west of the mountains", derives from its location west of the Taihang Mountains, as does the name of Shandong Province ( 山東; east of the mountains).

太行山又名五行山、王母山、女媧山。中國東部地區的重要山脈和地理分界線。聳於北京、河北、山西、河南4省、市間。北起北京西山，南達豫北黃河北崖，西接山西高原，東臨華北平原，綿延400餘公里，為山西東部、東南部與河北、河南兩省的天然界山。這裡是華北平原進入山西高原的要道。

歷史與軍事作用: 太行山形勢險峻，歷來被視為兵要之地。從春秋戰國直到明、清，兩千多年間烽火不息。公元前650年，齊伐晉，入孟門、登太行。齊桓公曾懸車束馬窬太行。公元前263年，秦伐韓，在太行山「決羊腸之險」，一舉奪韓滎陽。公元前204年，劉邦被困於滎陽、成皋之間，他採納酈食其的建議，北扼飛狐之口，南守白馬（今河南滑縣東北）之津，終於轉危為安。東漢元初元年（公元114年），漢安帝為防外敵侵犯洛陽，下詔在太行南端36處要衝屯兵。曹操圍臨漳，袁尚輕易率軍東出太行，結果大敗於曹軍。晉太元十九年（公元394年），後燕慕容垂進伐西燕，屯軍於臨漳西南。西燕慕容永令全部人馬前去堵塞太行山口，慕容垂引兵自滏口進入，滅了西燕。隋末，李世民與竇建德相爭，李世民進據虎牢，使竇不能越過太行，李乘機佔領上黨，盡收河東之地。元至元十八年（公元1281年），劉福通率起義軍越過太行，火燒上黨。元將察罕粘木兒塞井陘、杜太行，遏止起義軍向北發展。

 

* 分子人類學所見歷史上閩越族群的消失 by 李輝

Excerpts: 分子人類學用DNA 材料和計算生物學方法解答了很多人類學的問題。對於中國南方和東南亞地區最大的族群，侗傣族群和馬來族群(Malay)，分子人類學研究發現他們有共同的起源—百越族群 (Baiyue)，所以可以定義為“澳泰族群”。閩越是這個族群歷史上重要的一支，曾經是福建(Fujian)的主體民族。通過對現代福建和其他閩語人群的分子人類學研究，結果並沒有看到閩越的結構。閩語人群基本都是來源於北方的漢族移民。所以可以確定歷史上的閩越族在福建地區基本上已經消失。 ...

現代福建的人群主要是漢藏語系漢語族齊語支的漢族群體，因為齊語支現在主要分佈在福建，所以也叫閩語(Min language)支。齊語支是漢語三大語支之一，形成於河南東部到山東一帶，可能是漢語在東夷語(Eastern Barbarians)的影響下形成的。福建的齊語支起源較早。因為發現閩語中有許\多特徵保留著漢代的漢語音韻樣式，所以可能是漢代(Han Dynasty: 206 BC – 220 AD)來到福建(Fujian)的。如果是這樣的話，就和閩越族被強制移民的時間相吻合了。

 

東夷(Eastern Barbarians)是中國古代，尤其是商朝、周朝時期，對東部部族的稱呼，因有九支主要部族又稱九夷。隨著商代的東夷與華夏的融合，東夷後來改為對東方外族的泛稱。其認定範圍也隨之更改。從黃帝時期的山東(Shandong)，到河南(Henan)一帶, 再到日後秦漢時期的朝鮮半島，日本(Japan)列島。(朝鮮和韓國(Korea)認為：現代朝鮮人可能是東夷的一支。) 在《三國志·魏書》中，扶餘、高句麗、沃沮、東濊也是東夷。唐杜佑《通典》將朝鮮、新羅、倭、高句麗、流求等歸入東夷，明代嚴從簡將日本、朝鮮、琉球歸入東夷。

東夷文化是中國最古老的文明之一。東夷文化的許多方面都與中原文明不分伯仲。東夷人是中國最古老文字、弓箭、禮制和金屬的發明和使用者。

 

 

The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan (閩南語; literally "Southern Fujian language"), are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian and its neighboring regions, in Taiwan, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora.

In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien in particular the Amoy and Taiwanese.

Southern Min forms part of the Min language group, alongside several other divisions. The Min languages/dialects are part of the Chinese language group, itself a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Cantonese, or Mandarin. As with other varieties of Chinese, there is a political dispute as to whether the Southern Min language should be called a language or a dialect.

The Min Nan (or "Hokkien") language can trace its roots through the Tang Dynasty. Min Nan (Hokkien) people call themselves "Tang People". Because of the widespread influence of the Tang culture during the great Tang Dynasty, we find today still many Min Nan words shared by the Korean and Japanese language. For example, the term for bridge is "kyo" (Hokkien, Korean, Japanese), book is "chaek" (Hokkien, Korean), student is "hak seng" (Hokkien, Korean), dangerous is "wui hiam" (Hokkien), "wui ham" (Korean), and insurance is "po hiam" (Hokkien) or "po ham" (Korean).

 

 

Japan

The Japanese people (日本人) are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. The term "Japanese people" may also be used in some contexts to refer to a locus of ethnic groups including the Yamato, Ainu and Ryukyuan people.

The Japanese language is a Japonic language that is sometimes treated as a language isolate; it is also related to the Ryukyuan languages, and both are suggested to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.

Altaic is a proposed language family that is held by its proponents to include the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and possibly the Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe (Turks, Kalmyks). The group is named after the Altai Mountains, a mountain range in Central Asia.) Micro-Altaic would have a total of about 348 million speakers today, Macro-Altaic about 558 million.

Genetics: A 2008 study about genome-wide SNPs of East Asians by Chao Tian et al. reported that Japanese, Koreans and Han Chinese are far from southeast Asians, and Japanese is related to Koreans who are related to Han Chinese, but Japanese is relatively far from Han Chinese if compared to Koreans.

 

* Bayesian Phylogenetic Analysis Supports an Agricultural Origin of Japonic Languages by Sean Lee and Toshikazu Hasegawa

Abstract: Languages, like genes, evolve by a process of descent with modification. This striking similarity between biological and linguistic evolution allows us to apply phylogenetic methods to explore how languages, as well as the people who speak them, are related to one another through evolutionary history. Language phylogenies constructed with lexical data have so far revealed population expansions of Austronesian, Indo-European and Bantu speakers. However, how robustly a phylogenetic approach can chart the history of language evolution and what language phylogenies reveal about human prehistory must be investigated more thoroughly on a global scale. Here we report a phylogeny of 59 Japonic languages and dialects. We used this phylogeny to estimate time depth of its root and compared it with the time suggested by an agricultural expansion scenario for Japanese origin. In agreement with the scenario, our results indicate that Japonic languages descended from a common ancestor approximately 2182 years ago. Together with archaeological and biological evidence, our results suggest that the first farmers of Japan had a profound impact on the origins of both people and languages. On a broader level, our results are consistent with a theory that agricultural expansion is the principal factor for shaping global linguistic diversity.

 

* Refined Geographic Distribution of the Oriental ALDH2*504Lys (nee 487Lys) Variant by Hui Li, et al.

Abstract: Mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) is one of the most important enzymes in human alcohol metabolism. The oriental ALDH2*504Lys variant functions as a dominant negative greatly reducing activity in heterozygotes and abolishing activity in homozygotes. This allele is associated with serious disorders such as alcohol liver disease, late onset Alzheimer disease, colorectal cancer, and esophageal cancer, and is best known for protection against alcoholism. Many hundreds of papers in various languages have been published on this variant, providing allele frequency data for many different populations. To develop a highly refined global geographic distribution of ALDH2*504Lys, we have collected new data on 4,091 individuals from 86 population samples and assembled published data on a total of 80,691 individuals from 366 population samples. The allele is essentially absent in all parts of the world except East Asia. The ALDH2*504Lys allele has its highest frequency in Southeast China, and occurs in most areas of China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Indochina with frequencies gradually declining radially from Southeast China. As the indigenous populations in South China have much lower frequencies than the southern Han migrants from Central China, we conclude that ALDH2*504Lys was carried by Han Chinese as they spread throughout East Asia. Esophageal cancer, with its highest incidence in East Asia, may be associated with ALDH2*504Lys because of a toxic effect of increased acetaldehyde in the tissue where ingested ethanol has its highest concentration. While the distributions of esophageal cancer and ALDH2*504Lys do not precisely correlate, that does not disprove the hypothesis. In general the study of fine scale geographic distributions of ALDH2*504Lys and diseases may help in understanding the multiple relationships among genes, diseases, environments, and cultures.

 

The Geographic Distribution of ALDH2*504Lys Allele Frequency

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Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

 

 

* ADH1B Arg47His Polymorphism Is Associated with Esophageal Cancer Risk in High-Incidence Asian Population: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis by Guohong Zhang, et al.

Excerpt: Some alleles that increase the risk of complex diseases like cancers, are ancestral. Both historical records of migration and genetic fingerprints of East Asians and ancient population in Central China suggested there were some common ancestries in populations along the ‘‘Asian esophageal cancer belt’’. The ADH1B*47His allele is highly prevalent in Asian populations, particularly in northeast Asians (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans). It was proposed the ADH1B*47His allele may serve better as an ancestral marker for understanding expansions and migrations of ancient Central China populations, and is related to disease susceptibility and natural selection as well. Except for in East Asia, a high frequency of the ADH1B*47His allele is also found in West Asian countries such as Iran and Turkey, where high-incidence regions of ESCC exist, too. Such a worldwide double-peak pattern of frequency distribution of the ADH1B* 47His allele was argued to be the result of independent increase of the derived allele in both western and eastern Asia after humans had spread across Eurasia. Based on these facts and findings, we propose that ADH1B*47Arg is a risk factor for ESCC in Asian populations that stems from recent common ancestralness of them.

 

* The ADH1B Arg47His Polymorphism in East Asian Populations and Expansion of Rice Domestication in History by Yi Peng, et al.

The Distribution of the ADH1B*47His Allele and the Sites of Early Rice Relics

 

 

 

Zhou -- Qin -- Yan (燕國) -- He Bei Yu (Hebei Province)
Zhou -- Qin -- Ba (巴國) / Shu (蜀國) -- Cantonese Language (Cantonese People)
Zhou -- Qin -- Qin / Jin (晉國) -- Guan Zhong Yu -- Northern (Mandarin)
Zhou -- Qin -- Guan Dong Yu -- Zhong Yuan Yu -- Gan Language
Zhou -- Qin -- Guan Dong Yu -- Zhong Yuan Yu -- Hakka Language (Hakka People)
Zhou -- Qin -- Guan Dong Yu -- Zhong Yuan Yu -- Min Language (Hokkien People)
Zhou -- Qi (齊國) -- Min Language (Minnan People, Fuzhou People, Teochew People)
Zhou -- Wu (吳國) -- Shanghainese Language (Shanghainese People)
Zhou -- Wu -- Hui Language (Anhui Province)
Zhou -- Chu (楚國)-- Xiang Language (Hunan Province)

 

 

Qi State (Shandong)

Qi (齊國) was a powerful state during the Spring and Autumn Period and Period of the Warring States. Its capital was Linzi, which is part of the present city of Zibo in Shandong Province.

Qi was founded around 1046 B.C. as one of the many states of the Zhou Dynasty. The first ruler appointed for Qi is Jiang Shang, the most powerful official during that time. The Jiang family (姜) ruled Qi for several centuries before it was replaced by the Tian family (田) in 384 BC. In 221 BC, Qi was the last state of pre-Imperial China to be conquered by the State of Qin, the final obstacle which allowed the Qin Dynasty to consolidate the first centralized and imperial empire over China.

Lord Huan of Qi (齊桓公, died 643 BC) was the best-known ruler of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn Period. His personal name was Jiāng Xiǎobái (姜小白) . Lord Huan of Qi appointed Guan Zhong (管仲, given name Yíwú, 夷吾), the famous thinker and economist, as his prime minister, and adopted Guan's thoughts and policies to administer his country, reform the economic system and develop relations with other states, After scores of years, Qi became the strongest state for its economic and military strength, and was named as the "state with one thousand chariots" and the "head of the five strongest states". The culture and education undertakings were rather developed in Qi. Both poetry and music were of high level. Linzi District remained its capital for as long as 638 years, and was the biggest city in the orient.

The Silk Road, prosperous through the Han (漢朝; 206 BC–220 AD) and Tang Dynasties (唐朝; 618 AD–907 AD) is the famous passageway in China's history for economic and cultural exchange between East and West. As a result of textual research, Shandong area, with Zibo as its center, was the major place of silk supply at that time, and was one of the origins of the "Silk Road".

Shandong is the second most populous province of China, after Henan, with a population of almost 92 million. Over 99% of Shandong's population is Han Chinese. Minority groups include the Hui and the Manchus. Shandong is also known as having highest average height of any Chinese province.

* Videos: 臨淄中國古車博物館, 山東淄博「東周殉馬坑」

 

 

Ancient DNA from Yixi (Linzi), Shandong Peninsula

The Yixi site is located in Linzi (Zibo), Shandong Province, China. The ruins of the city are surrounded by over 100 tumulus, some as far as 10 km away. Many of the tombs around Linzi had been looted in antiquity. Over 600 horses were sacrificed in two rows, found in a tomb pit, near what is considered the tomb of Duke Jing of Qi. The sacrificial horse pit is now the site of a museum, the Museum of the State of Qi.

 

* Molecular Genetic Analysis of Remains of a 2,000-year-old Human Population in China-and Its Relevance for the Origin of the Modern Japanese Population by H. Oota, et al. (1999)

Abstract: We extracted DNA from the human remains excavated from the Yixi site (approximately 2,000 years before the present) in the Shandong peninsula of China and, through PCR amplification, determined nucleotide sequences of their mitochondrial D-loop regions. Nucleotide diversity of the ancient Yixi people was similar to those of modern populations. Modern humans in Asia and the circum-Pacific region are divided into six radiation groups, on the basis of the phylogenetic network constructed by means of 414 mtDNA types from 1, 298 individuals. We compared the ancient Yixi people with the modern Asian and the circum-Pacific populations, using two indices: frequency distribution of the radiation groups and genetic distances among populations. Both revealed that the closest genetic relatedness is between the ancient Yixi people and the modern Taiwan Han Chinese. The Yixi people show closer genetic affinity with Mongolians, mainland Japanese, and Koreans than with Ainu and Ryukyu Japanese and less genetic resemblance with Jomon people and Yayoi people, their predecessors and contemporaries, respectively, in ancient Japan."

 

The Yayoi period (弥生時代) is an era in the history of Japan traditionally dated 300 BC to 300 AD. It is named after the neighbourhood of Tokyo where archaeologists first uncovered artifacts and features from that era. Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of an intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. The Yayoi followed the Jōmon period (14,000–300 BC) and Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū.

 

* Genetic Structure of a 2,500-Year-Old Human Population in China and Its Spatiotemporal Changes by Li Wang, et al. (2000)

Abstract: To examine temporal changes in population genetic structure, we compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of three populations that lived in the same location, Linzi, China, in different periods: 2,500 years ago (the Spring–Autumn era), 2,000 years ago (the Han era), and the present day. Two indices were used to compare the genetic differences: the frequency distributions of the radiating haplotype groups and the genetic distances among the populations. The results indicate that the genetic backgrounds of the three populations are distinct from each other. Inconsistent with the geographical distribution, the 2,500-year-old Linzi population showed greater genetic similarity to present-day European populations than to present-day east Asian populations. The 2,000-year-old Linzi population had features that were intermediate between the present-day European/2,500-year-old Linzi populations and the present-day east Asian populations.

Result: The smallest genetic distance for the present-day Linzi population was that from the Mongols, followed by those from mainland Japanese and Koreans. Surprisingly, the three smallest genetic distances for the 2,000-year-old Linzi population were from the present-day central Asian populations: the Kirghiz (Sary-Tash), followed by the Kazakh and the Uighurs. Even more surprisingly, the three smallest genetic distances for the 2,500-year-old Linzi population were from the Turkish, Icelander, and Finnish, rather than from the east Asian populations.

 

* Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of China: A Caveat About Inferences Drawn from Ancient DNA by Yong-Gang Yao, et al. (2003)

Abstract: The decipherment of the meager information provided by short fragments of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is notoriously difficult but is regarded as a most promising way toward reconstructing the past from the genetic perspective. By haplogroup-specific hypervariable segment (HVS) motif search and matching or near-matching with available modern data sets, most of the ancient mtDNAs can be tentatively assigned to haplogroups, which are often subcontinent specific. Further typing for mtDNA haplogroup-diagnostic coding region polymorphisms, however, is indispensable for establishing the geographic/genetic affinities of ancient samples with less ambiguity. In the present study, we sequenced a fragment (982 bp) of the mtDNA control region in 76 Han individuals from Taian, Shandong, China, and we combined these data with previously reported samples from Zibo and Qingdao, Shandong. The reanalysis of two previously published ancient mtDNA population data sets from Linzi (same province) then indicates that the ancient populations had features in common with the modern populations from south China rather than any specific affinity to the European mtDNA pool. Our results highlight that ancient mtDNA data obtained under different sampling schemes and subject to potential contamination can easily create the impression of drastic spatiotemporal changes in the genetic structure of a regional population during the past few thousand years if inappropriate methods of data analysis are employed.

 

* Reanalysis of Eurasian Population History: Ancient DNA Evidence of Population Affinities by C.C. Bennett, F.A. Kaestle (2006)

Abstract: Mitochondrial hypervariable region I genetic data from ancient populations at two sites in Asia-Linzi in Shandong (northern China) and Egyin Gol in Mongolia-were reanalyzed to detect population affinities. Data from 51 modern populations were used to generate distance measures (F^sub ST^'s) to the two ancient populations. The tests first analyzed relationships at the regional level and then compiled the top regional matches for an overall comparison to the two probe populations. The reanalysis showed that the Egyin Gol and Linzi populations have clear distinctions in genetic affinity. The Egyin Gol population as a whole appears to bear close affinities with modern populations of northern East Asia. The Linzi population seems to have some genetic affinities with the West, as suggested by the original analysis, although the original attribution of "European-like" seems to be misleading. We suggest that the Linzi individuals are potentially related to early Iranians, who are thought to have been widespread in parts of Central Eurasia and the steppe regions in the first millennium B.C., although some significant admixture between a number of populations of varying origin cannot be ruled out. We also examine the effect of sequence length on this type of genetic data analysis and discuss the results of previous studies on the Linzi sample.

Discussion: ... the Linzi individuals, they seem to be most highly related to Near Easterners (Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis), Armenians, and Eastern Europeans (Slavs, Hungarians), although others, such as Catalans and Iraqis, are mixed in. The Icelanders are twelfth on this list. The high placement of the Vietnamese may be an anomaly, error, or some element of ancient genetic history that is not clear ....

 

 

Ancient Iranian peoples who settled Greater Iran in the 2nd millennium BC first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BC. They remain dominant throughout Classical Antiquity in Scythia and Persia.

The Iranian languages form a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Indo-Aryans around in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Proto-Iranians are traced to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia. The area between northern Afghanistan and the Aral Sea is hypothesized to have been the region where the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of Indo-Iranian tribes.

By the 1st millennium BC, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka and Scythian tribes remained mainly in the south and spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang.

Countries which are geographically fully located within the Balkan peninsula:  Albania,  Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria,  Greece,  Kosovo, Macedonia,  Montenegro. Countries which are partially located in the peninsula: Serbia, Croatia,  Slovenia, Romania,  Turkey.

The division of Proto-Iranian into an "Eastern" and a "Western" group is attested in the form of Avestan and Old Persian, the two oldest known Iranian languages.

* Video: Schythians or Huns?

 

 

Eastern Anatolia

The Eastern Anatolia Region (Turkish: Doğu Anadolu Bölgesi) is one of seven non-administrative subdivisions of Turkey and encompasses its eastern provinces.

The region and the name "Doğu Anadolu Bölgesi" were first defined at the First Geography Congress in 1941. It has the highest average altitude, largest geographical area, and lowest population density of all regions of Turkey. Most of the region was formerly called the Armenian Highlands or, simply, Armenia.

The Apricot was first cultivated in India in about 3000 BC. In Armenia it was known from ancient times; having been brought along the Silk Road; it has been cultivated there so long it is often thought to be native there.

The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation, but most likely is northern and western China and Central Asia and possibly also Korea and Japan.

 

 

Bosnian

Bosnians during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnians are people who reside in, or come from, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The earliest cultural and linguistic roots of Bosnian history can be traced back to the Migration Period of the Early Middle Ages. It was then that the Slavs from northeastern Europe, invaded the Eastern Roman Empire and settled the Balkan peninsula.

The Slavic peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Central and Eastern Europe. From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit most of the Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Many settled later in Siberia and Central Asia or emigrated to other parts of the world. Over half of Europe's territory is inhabited by Slavic-speaking communities. The worldwide population of people of Slavic descent is roughly 315 million.

Modern nations and ethnic groups called by the ethnonym Slavs are considerably diverse both in appearance and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual ethnic groups themselves – are varied, ranging from a sense of connection to feelings of mutual hostility.

Slavic peoples are classified geographically and linguistically into West Slavic (including Czechs, Kashubs, Poles, Slovaks, Sorbs, Silesians), East Slavic (including Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes).

 

 

Scythians

Detail of a Scythian golden comb, featuring a battle-scene, from the 4th century Solokha royal burial mound.

The Scythians (斯基泰人) or Scyths were an Iranian speaking people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic steppe throughout Classical Antiquity. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scyths in this area. Much of the surviving information about the Scyths comes from the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) in his Histories, and archaeologically from the exquisite goldwork found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia.

The name "Scythian" has also been used to refer to various peoples seen as similar to the Scythians, or who lived anywhere in a vast area covering present-day Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia — known until medieval times as Scythia.

Chinese jade and steatite plaques, in the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes

Scythian Influences in China: Ancient influences from Central Asia became identifiable in China following contacts of metropolitan China with nomadic western and northwestern border territories from the 8th century BC. Chinese jade-carvers began to make imitations of the designs of the steppes. The Chinese adopted the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (descriptions of animals locked in combat), particularly the rectangular belt-plaques made of gold or bronze, and created their own versions in jade and steatite.

* A Study on the Scythian Buckle by Moon-Ja Kim

Dian Kingdom (4th century BC-109 BC) Bronze Cowrie Container with Gilt Warrior and Four Oxen (Photo from "Barbarian Kingdoms": Ancient Treasures of South and Southwest China, The Art Institute of Chicago)

Scythian Influences? Iaroslav Lebedynsky and Victor Mair speculate that some Scythians may also have migrated to the area of Yunnan in southern China following their expulsion by the Yuezhi in the 2nd century BC. Excavations of the prehistoric art of the Dian civilization of Yunnan have revealed hunting scenes of Caucasoid horsemen in Central Asian clothing. The scenes depicted on these drums sometimes represent these horsemen practicing hunting. Animal scenes of felines attacking oxes are also at times reminiscent of Scythian art both in theme and in composition.

The bronze lids were covered with miniature figurines and structures, depicting various scenes from the life of the Dian people. The bronze lids depicted the Dian people engaged in everyday activities such as hunting, farming and weaving. Other scenes depicted the leisurely pursuits of the Dian people, such as bullfighting, dancing and music-making. The Dian people dressed in tunics over short pants and wore their hair in topknots. The bronze lids corroborated Sima Qian's description of the Dian hairstyle.

Many scenes depicted the Dian at war, often riding horses. Archaeological evidence shows that horses had been domesticated by the Dian people as early as the sixth century BC. The bronze lids also depicted the Dian decapitating their enemies (who wore their hair in long plaits).

Archaeologist in China recently discovered the inundated remains of a Dian city under Lake Fuxian; some archaeologist believe that the ruins are the remains of the capital of the Dian Kingdom. An earthquake and subsequent flood killed the inhabitants and completely destroyed the city in 110.

At Dabona, a site connected with the Dian culture, archaeologists discovered a large double coffin burial; The outer coffin was made of wood and the inner coffin was made of bronze. The inner coffin was shaped like a house and weighs over 157 kg.

The Yunnan Provincial Museum holds many archaeological relics of the Dian culture.

Horse chariots during the Kofun period. Detail of bronze mirror (5th-6th century). Eta-Funayama Tumulus, Kumamoto.

Scythian Influences in Northeastern Asia: Scythian influences have been identified as far as Korea and Japan. Various Korean artifacts, such as the royal crowns of the kingdom of Silla, are said to be of Scythian design. Similar crowns, brought through contacts with the continent, can also be found in Kofun era Japan.

The Kofun period (古墳時代) is an era in the history of Japan from around 250 to 538 AD. The word kofun is Japanese for the type of burial mounds dating from this era. The Kofun period follows the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes referred to collectively as the Yamato period.

Generally, the Kofun period is divided from the Asuka period for its cultural differences. The Kofun period is illustrated by an animistic culture which existed prior to the introduction of Buddhism. Politically, the establishment of the Yamato court, and its expansion as allied states from Kyūshū to the Kantō are key factors in defining the period. Also, the Kofun period is the oldest era of recorded history in Japan. However, as the chronology of the historical sources are very much distorted, studies of this age require deliberate criticism and the aid of archaeology.

The archaeological record, and ancient Chinese sources, indicate that the various tribes and chiefdoms of Japan did not begin to coalesce into states until 300, when large tombs began to appear while there were no contacts between western Japan and China. Some describe the "mysterious century" as a time of internecine warfare as various chiefdoms competed for hegemony on Kyūshū and Honshū.

Chinese chronicles make note that the horse was absent on the islands of Japan and they are first noted in the chronicles during the reign of Nintoku (late-4th century and early-5th century), most likely brought by China and Korean immigrants. The horse is one of the treasures presented when the king of Silla surrenders to Empress Jingū in the mythological record of Nihonshoki. Irrigation, sericulture, and weaving were also brought to Japan by China and Korean immigrants who are mentioned in the ancient Japanese histories. For instance, the Hata clan, of Chinese origin, introduced sericulture.

The cavalry wore armour, carried swords and other weapons, and used advanced military methods like those of north-east Asia. Evidence of these advances is seen in funerary figures (called haniwa; literally, clay rings), found in thousands of kofun scattered throughout Japan. The most important of the haniwa were found in southern Honshū—especially the Kinai region around Nara—and northern Kyūshū. Haniwa grave offerings were made in numerous forms, such as horses, chickens, birds, fans, fish, houses, weapons, shields, sunshades, pillows, and male and female humans. Another funerary piece, the magatama, became one of the symbols of the power of the imperial house. Much of the material culture of the Kofun period is barely distinguishable from that of the contemporaneous southern Korean peninsula, demonstrating that at this time Japan was in close political and economic contact with continental Asia (especially with the southern dynasties of China) through Korea. Indeed, bronze mirrors cast from the same mould have been found on both sides of the Tsushima Strait

 

 

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is, with respect to a given prehistoric society, the period in that society when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) included smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring outcroppings of copper and tin ores, creating a bronze alloy by melting those metals together, and casting them into bronze artifacts. The Bronze Age also included the domestication of the horse.

Origins: The place and time of the invention of bronze are controversial. It is possible that bronzing was invented independently in the Maykop culture (It is known mainly from its inhumation practices, which were typically in a pit, sometimes stone-lined, topped with a kurgan or tumulus) in the North Caucasus as far back as the mid 4th millennium BC, which would make them the makers of the oldest known bronze; but others date the same Maykop artifacts to the mid 3rd millennium BC.

Central Asia: The Altai Mountains in what is now southern Russia and central China have been identified as the point of origin of a cultural enigma termed the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon. It is conjectured that climatic problems in this region around the start of the second millennium BC created ecological, economic and political changes which triggered a rapid and massive migration of peoples westward into northeast Europe and eastward into southeast China, Vietnam and Thailand across a frontier of some 4,000 miles. This migration took place in just five to six generations and led to peoples from Finland in the west to Thailand in the east employing the same metal working technology and, in some areas, horse breeding and riding. It is further conjectured that this phenomenon may have been the medium through which the Uralic group of languages spread across Europe and Asia, ultimately producing 39 modern languages including Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Lappish.

The Altai Mountains are known as the original locus of the speakers of Turkic as well as other members of the proposed Altaic language group.

Altaic is a proposed language family that is held by its proponents to include the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and possibly the Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate (Georg et al. 1999:73–74). These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe (Turks, Kalmyks).

Southeast Asia: Dating back to the Neolithic Age,the first bronze drums, called the Dong Son drums have been uncovered in and around the Red River Delta regions of Vietnam and Southern China. These relate to the prehistoric Dong Son Culture of Vietnam

In Ban Chiang, Thailand, (Southeast Asia) bronze artifacts have been discovered dating to 2100 BC.

In Nyaunggan, Burma bronze tools have been excavated along with ceramics and stone artefacts. Dating is still currently broad (3500–500 BC).

The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia by Charles Higham

 

 

 

 

Đông Sơn Culture

The Đông Sơn culture was a prehistoric Bronze Age culture that was centered at the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam. Its influence flourished to other parts of Southeast Asia, including the Indo-Malayan Archipelago from about 1000 BC to 1 BC.

The Dong Son people were skilled at cultivating rice, keeping buffaloes and pigs, fishing and sailing with long dug-out canoes. They also were skilled bronze casters, as can be seen in the famous Dong Son drums, which have been found widely in Southeast Asia and the lower reaches of southern China.

The Dong Son culture is linked to the Tibeto-Burman culture, the Dai culture in Yunnan and Laos, the Mon-Khmer cultures and the culture associated with the Plain of Jars in Laos. Similar artifacts have been found in Cambodia along the Mekong River dating back to the 4th millennium B.C. Dong Son influence is seen throughout South-East Asia, from the moko drum of Alor, Indonesia (suspected of originating with Dong Son bronze drums) to the design of keris knife.

To the south of the Dong Son culture was the proto-Cham Sa Huynh culture.

The theory based on the assumption that bronze casting in eastern Asia originated in northern China; however, this idea has been discredited by archaeological discoveries in north-eastern Thailand in the 1970s. In the words of Clark D. Neher, currently Distinguished Teaching Professor in Dept. of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, "Bronze casting began in Southeast Asia and was later borrowed by the Chinese, not vice versa as the Chinese scholars have always claimed".

This interpretation is supported by the work of modern Vietnamese archaeologists. They have found that the earliest bronze drums of Dong Son are closely related in basic structural features and in decorative design to the pottery of the Phung Nguyen culture. Furthermore, the recurring images of a figure holding a scroll of paper and the finding of these dated papers at various sites may point to the Dong Son as the first peoples who began the paper making process. However, as of now, these are only theories proposed by Vietnamese scholars.

The bronze drums were made in significant proportions in Vietnam and parts of Southern China and were then traded to the south and west to places such as Java and the Bali islands. Thus it became valued by people with very different cultures. The Dong Son bronze drums exhibit the advanced techniques and the great skill in the lost-wax casting of large objects, the Co Loa drum would have required the smelting of between 1 and 7 tons of copper ore and the use of up to 10 large castings crucibles at one time. Most scholars agree the Dong Son drums display an artistic level reaching perfection that few cultures of the time could rival.

 

 

Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King

Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King (西漢南越王博物館, 南越王墓) is a museum in Jiefangbei Road, Yuexue District, Guangzhou, southern China. With an area of 1,4000 sq. m, the tomb is the witness of Guangzhou’s history of over 2,000 years. It is well known for its well-preserved tomb and funerary antiquity from the Han Dynasty, as well as elegant and grand architecture from the Lingnan (south of the Nanling Mountain) area.

The owner of the tomb is the second king, Zhao Mo (r. 137 BC – 122 BC).

Layout: Hidden 20 meters (65.6 feet) underground, the tomb is made up of 750 huge stones with colorful murals. The over 1,000 pieces of cultural relics, bronzeware and terra cotta ware in particular, feature the Yue Culture of south China (Nanyue Culture). Represented also are traces of central Chinese culture, the Chu culture of south China, the Bashu (Ba State, Shu State) culture of southwest China, the Hun culture from the northern grassland, and even foreign cultures.

The tomb was discovered in 1983, 20 meters under Xianggang Shan (Elephant Hill) in Guangzhou on a construction site for a hotel, and was excavated. The tomb measures 10.85 meters in length and 12.43 meters in width. It is divided in 7 parts, with a front chamber, east and west wing rooms, the main coffin chamber, east and west side rooms, and a back storage chamber.

Artefacts: The tomb has yielded more than 1,000 burial artefacts, a chariot, gold and silver vessels, musical instruments, and human sacrifices were found (15 courtiers were buried alive with him to serve him in death). It is also the only tomb of the early Western Han Dynasty that has murals on its walls.

The tomb also yielded the oldest imperial seal discovered in a Chinese tomb: the seal, with the name "Zhaomo", declared the royal corpse to be “Emperor Wen", indicating that he considered himself equal in rank to the Han ruler.

Alongside Chinese artifacts, pieces from the steppes, and Iranian and Hellenistic Central Asian regions have been found: a Persian silver box found in the tomb is the earliest imported product found to date in China.

A silk-jade garment made up of 2,291 pieces of jade is the spotlight of the mausoleum. It is acknowledged that jade garments with pieces connected by gold, silver, or copper are not uncommon. But this garment is unique for its jade pieces connected by silk which makes it the only one of its kind in the world. Nor are historical records available to verify other jade garments connected by silk thread. In addition, the style of buttons down the front is unique among unearthed jade garments. This silk-sewn-jade garment shows the early development of jade garments as well as development of the Nanyue culture.

Three sets of bronze serial bells, thirty-six bronze vessels, thirty-six bronze mirrors, and three gold seals is the historical thumb made by intellectual Nanyue people in China and well presents the Nanyue Culture.

Zhào Mò (趙眜) was the second ruler of the kingdom of Nanyue (Vietnamese: Nam Việt). The name of this kingdom means "Southern Việt" (or Southern Yue). It included parts of southern China, as well as northern Vietnam. His capital was Pānyú, modern Guǎngzhōu. The culture of the kingdom encouraged assimilation between the native Yuè and immigrant Chinese. Zhào Mò was a grandson of Zhào Tuō (who had outlived his sons). Compared to his grandfather, Zhào Mò was a weak king and allowed Nam Việt to fall under the influence of China. (In traditional history, his political weakness is treated as a reflection of personal moral failing.) He rule began in 137 BC and ended with his death in 122 BC. In Vietnamese history, he is considered a king of Vietnam.

 

 

Guangzhou

Guangzhou (廣州) is the capital and a sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the People's Republic of China. The city is also known by an alternative English name, Canton. It is a port on the Pearl River, navigable to the South China Sea, and is located about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Hong Kong.

History: The first known city built at the site of Guangzhou was Panyu (蕃禺, later simplified to 番禺; Poon Yu in Cantonese) founded in 214 BC. The city has been continuously occupied since that time. Panyu was expanded when it became the capital of the Nanyue Kingdom (南越) in 206 BC.

Recent archaeological founding of her palace suggests that the city might have traded frequently with foreigners by the sea routes. The foreign trade continued through every following dynasty and the city remains a major international trading port to this day.

Arab and Persian pirates sacked Guangzhou (known to them as Sin-Kalan) in AD 758, according to a local Guangzhou government report on October 30, 758, which corresponded to the day of Guisi (癸巳) of the ninth lunar month in the first year of the Qianyuan era of Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty. The Arab historian Abu Zayd Hasan of Siraf reports that in 878 followers of the Chinese rebel leader Huang Chao besieged the city and massacred a large number of foreign merchants resident there.

From the tenth to twelfth century, Persian women were to be found in Guangzhou, some of them in the tenth century like Mei Zhu in the harem of the Emperor Liu Chang, and in the twelfth century large numbers of Persian women lived there, noted for wearing multiple earrings and "quarrelsome dispositions". Multiple women originating from the Persian Gulf lived in Guangzhou's foreign quarter, they were all called "Persian women" (波斯婦 Po-ssu-fu or Bosifu). Some scholars did not differentiate between Persian and Arab, and some say that the Chinese called all women coming from the Persian Gulf "Persian Women".

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive to the city by sea, establishing a monopoly on the external trade out of its harbor by 1511. They were later expelled from their settlements in Guangzhou (in Portuguese Cantão), but instead granted use of Macau as a trade base with the city in 1557. They would keep a near monopoly of foreign trade in the region until the arrival of the Dutch in the early seventeenth century.

After China claimed control of Taiwan in 1683, the Qing government became open to encouraging foreign trade. Guangzhou quickly emerged as one of the most adaptable ports for negotiating commerce and before long, many foreign ships were going there to procure cargos.

Portuguese in Macau, Spanish in Manila, and Armenians and Muslims from India were already actively trading in the port by the 1690s, when the French and English British East India Company's ships began frequenting the port through the Canton System.

Other companies were soon to follow: the Ostend General India company in 1717; Dutch East India Company in 1729; the first Danish ship in 1731, which was followed by a Danish Asiatic Company ship in 1734; the Swedish East India Company in 1732; followed by an occasional Prussian and Trieste Company ship; the Americans in 1784; and the first ships from Australia in 1788.

By the middle of the 18th century, Guangzhou had emerged as one of the world's great trading ports under the Thirteen Factories, which was a distinction it maintained until the outbreak of the Opium Wars in 1839 and the opening of other ports in China in 1842. The privilege during this period made Guangzhou one of the top 3 cities in the world.

Guangzhou's monopoly on English trade ended with the Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1842 to end the First Opium War between Britain and China. The treaty opened four new treaty ports, allowing British merchants to trade in Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai in addition to Guangzhou.

 

 

* Extreme mtDNA Homogeneity in Continental Asian Populations by Hiroki Oota, et al.

Tw (Taiwan Han Chinese) Ca (Cantonese) - Finns - Kirghiz Lowlander - British - Kazakh - Turks - Basques - Sardinian
Tw (Taiwan Han Chinese) Ca (Cantonese) - Finns - Indian - Ainu - Aboriginal Australian - Anatolia Turks - Borneo
Tw (Taiwan Han Chinese) Ca (Cantonese) - Korean - Philippines - Uighurs - Changsha - Taiwanese (aborigines) - Vietnamese - Vanuata - Indonesian - PNG
Tw (Taiwan Han Chinese) Ca (Cantonese) - Xi'an - Tottori (Japanese) - Kirghiz Highlander - Mongolian - Ngoebe - Altai of Siberia - Amerind - Argentina - Siberians

____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Native Population Match: Filipinos (Taiwan), Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Mulao (Guangxi), Vietnam, Thailand, Miao (Guangxi), Thailand, Eastern Anatolia (Turkey), Malay (Singapore), Bidayuh (Sarawak, Malaysia), Chinese (Hong Kong), Vietnamese (Hanoi, Vietnam), Japan, Thailand, Bosnia, Taiwanese, Lille (France), Maonan (Guangxi), Han (Henan).

 

Lille, France

Lille is a city in northern France (French Flanders). It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium. It is the capital of the Nord-Pas de Calais region and the prefecture of the Nord department.

French Flanders is a part of the historical Dutch-speaking region in present-day France. The region today lies in the modern-day region of Nord-Pas de Calais, the department of Nord, and roughly corresponds to the arrondissements of Lille, Douai and Dunkirk on the Belgian border.

Dutch Formosa refers to the period of colonial Dutch government on Formosa (now known as Taiwan), lasting from 1624 to 1662. In the context of the Age of Discovery the Dutch East India Company established its presence on Taiwan to trade with China and Japan, and also to interdict Portuguese and Spanish trade and colonial activities in East Asia.

The time of Dutch rule saw economic development in Taiwan, including both large-scale hunting of deer and the cultivation of rice and sugar by imported labour from Fujian in China.