The Peopling of East Asia - More Information

One of the most dynamic research areas in the prehistory of East Asian regions is the synthesis of the findings of archaeology, linguistics and genetics. Several countries have only recently opened to field research and highly active local groups have made possible a raft of collaborative studies which would have been impossible even a decade ago. This book presents an overview of the most recent findings in all these fields. New proposals on the relationships of the language phyla of East Asia can now be tested against the findings of geneticists and archaeologists. Recent results on the domestication and spread of rice and millet in particular are taken up both in the archaeological and linguistic papers. Particular hypotheses discussed in the linguistic section include the validity of the Austric hypothesis, the relationship between the Daic languages and Austronesian and the overall links between East Asian language phyla. The chapters on genetics focus particularly on the genetic structure of East Asian populations and the origins of the Austronesian peoples of Taiwan and the minorities of China. Physical anthropology is also considered with a multivariate analysis of East Asian and Pacific populations. The archaeological chapters take a broad view of East Asia and the potential of the ''farming dispersals'' hypothesis, as well as the more specific archaeology of Taiwan. The book should be of great interest to scholars of all disciplines working on the reconstruction of the East Asian past.

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Table of contents : Introduction Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas 1. Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis in the East Asian Context P. Bellwood 2. From the mountains to the valleys: Understanding ethnolinguistic geography in southeast Asia Roger Blench Appendix to 2 Roger Blench 3. The Origin and Dispersal of Agriculture and Human Diaspora in East Asia T. Lu 4. Recent discoveries at a tapenkeng culture site in Taiwan: Implications for the problem of Austronesian origins C.H. Tsang 5. The Contribution of Linguistic Palaeontology to the Homeland of Austroasiatic G. Diffloth 6. Tibeto-Burman vs. Indo-Chinese: Implications for population geneticists, archaeologists and prehistorians G. Van Driem 7. Kra-dai and Austronesian: Notes on phonological correspondences and vocabulary distribution W. Ostapirat 8. The Current Status of Austric: A review and evaluation of the lexical and morphosyntactic evidence L. Reid Appendix to 8 L. Reid 9. Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian: An updated and improved argument Laurent Sagart 10. Tai-kadai as a subgroup of Austronesian Laurent Sagart 11. Proto-east Asian and the origin and dispersal of the languages of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific S. Starosta 12. The physical anthropology of the Pacific, East Asia, and Southeast Asia: a multivariate craniometric analysis M. Pietrusewsky Appendix to 12 M. Pietrusewsky 13. Genetic diversity of Taiwan's indigenous peoples: Possible relationship with insular Southeast Asia Marie Lin, Chen-Chung Chu, Richard E. Broadberry, Lung-Chih Yu, Jun-Hun Loo and Jean A. Trejaut 14. Genetic analysis of minority populations in China and its implications for multi-regional evolution Chu J.Y. 15. Comparing linguistic and genetic relationships among East Asian populations: a study of the RH and GM polymorphisms Estella S. Poloni, Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, Guillaume Jacques and Laurent Sagart 16. Hla genetic diversity and linguistic variation in East Asia Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, Estella S. Poloni, Guillaume Jacques and Laurent Sagart 17. A synopsis of extant y chromosome diversity in East Asia and Oceania Peter A. Underhill Appendix to 17 Peter A. Underhill