The Peopling of East Asia Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics

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.

Introduction 1. Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis in the East Asian Context 2. From the Mountains to the Valleys: Understanding Ethnolinguistic Geography in Southeast Asia 3. The Origin and Dispersal of Agriculture and Human Diaspora in East Asia 4. Recent Discoveries at a Tapenkeng Culture Site in Taiwan: Implications for the Problem of Austronesian Origins 5. The Contribution of Linguistic Palaeontology to the Homeland of Austroasiatic 6. Tibeto-Burman vs. Indo-Chinese: Implications for Population Geneticists, Archaeologists and Prehistorians 7. Kra-dai and Austronesian: Notes on Phonological Correspondences and Vocabulary Distribution 8. The Current Status of Austric: A Review and Evaluation of the Lexical and Morphosyntactic Evidence 9. Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian: An Updated and Improved Argument 10. Tai-Kadai as a Subgroup of Austronesian 11. Proto-East Asian and the Origin and Dispersal of the Languages of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific 12. The Physical Anthropology of the Pacific, East Asia, and Southeast Asia:A Multivariate Craniometric Analysis 13. Genetic Diversity of Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples: Possible Relationship with Insular Southeast Asia 14. Genetic Analysis of Minority Populations in China and its Implications for Multi-Regional Evolution 15. Comparing Linguistic and Genetic Relationships among East Asian Populations:A Study of the RH and GM Polymorphisms 16. Hla Genetic Diversity and Linguistic Variation in East Asia 17. A Synopsis of ExtantY Chromosome Diversity in East Asia and Oceania

Laurent Sagart is Senior Researcher with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on Chinese dialectology, Old Chinese phonology and morphology, comparative Chinese linguistics, and the Austronesian languages.Roger Blench is an independent scholar and consultant working in international development but also on language and prehistory. He has edited Language and Archaeology Vols. I-IV (Routledge, 1997-9) as well as a book on the history of African livestock.Alicia Sanchez-Mazas is Professor of Population Genetics and Anthropology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her main research interest is the evolution of modern humans. She published many articles on worldwide genetic diversity and its relation to human peopling history.