Farhan Ali
Recent study shows DNA evidence pointing to an original migration pattern of humans from Southeast Asia to China believed to have happened about 20,000 years ago
Photo courtesy of Salon
The Chinese are the dominant group in Singapore and recently, a senior government politician encouraged Chinese Singaporeans to find out who their ancestors were and where they came from. There is also the current heated debate over the learning of Mandarin by those whose ancestors did not speak Mandarin.
Thus, it is relevant that in a study published just this week in the influential journal Science, the Han Chinese (and other East Asians) have been shown to have originally come from Southeast Asia. Instead of being natives of China, the Han Chinese were in fact immigrants who descended from mainland and island Southeast Asia, the latter historically known as the Malay Archipelago.
This recent study is massive and involved a 40-institution, multi-national (though largely Asian) research team that sampled DNA from over 70 populations throughout Asia. The paper used genetic markers called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which are differences in the chemical ‘lettering’ of DNA, in order to infer patterns of ancestry. And whilst the techniques used were esoteric, this collective pan-Asian effort had an aim close to everyone’s hearts: to recover the lost memory of where we came from.
Southeast Asians Top the Family Tree
Two major findings of this research are worth discussing, the most important being the family tree that was reconstructed by the authors that provides direct evidence that modern Han Chinese came from Southeast Asia. In the tree, all of the Han Chinese populations were descendents of Southeast Asians who formed the top of the tree (analogous to how our great-grandparents would be right at the top in a family tree).
Whilst this has been suggested for almost 10 years, the present study brings the most convincing data and analyses to the table yet. As to when this migration occurred, although the present study did not address this important issue, evidence from other past studies suggests the migration of the Chinese from Southeast Asia probably occurred around 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The Southeast Asians, in turn, originally came from the southern coasts of Asia which were ultimately populated by humans from East Africa.
The second set of findings pertains to genetic diversity which refers to how similar or different the DNA make-up of individuals in a population are. The genetic diversity is highest in archipelagic Southeast Asia (e.g., Indonesia) with more homogenous (similar) DNA make-up as one goes further North into China.
These findings are important as they provide strong corroboration of the linguistic data from anthropologists and linguists who have discovered an astounding level of linguistic and ethnic diversity in island Southeast Asia, which have hundreds of ethnic groups and languages. The region’s predominant Austronesian language family (which includes Malay) is the world’s most widespread native language family with speakers spanning from Madagascar in Africa to the islands in the Pacific such as Fiji.
(left) The Asian ‘family’ tree with Southeast Asian populations and languages in green, blue and red, and East Asians generally in
purple and yellow. Numbers on branches represent statistical support.
Hard to Accept, But Research is Conclusive
While many Chinese Singaporeans are familiar with the various dialect groups in China, geneticists and linguists know that the diversity of Han Chinese is comparatively low. While some may have elaborate socio-political theories involving the political unity of China, the role of the First Emperor of China and so on, a much simpler and likelier explanation is that diversity, both genetic and cultural, declines as a function of migration. When groups from the ancestral population migrate out into new regions, they bring with them only a very small sample of the original diversity and this is the pattern we find among the Han Chinese. Indeed, even in the modern age, we find this to be true: for example, Asians in America are far less diverse as a group than those in their original homeland.
(left) source: L. Jin et. al. Science
For some, this recovery of the lost memory of the various races in Singapore may be enlightening. For others, it may be as much of a shock as being told one’s father is not his/her real father. But the scientific conclusion is clear, the Chinese in China were immigrants whose ancestors lived in Southeast Asia. The Chinese arrivals in the 19th and 20th century in Singapore and Malaysia were actually a return to an ancestral homeland that had been long abandoned, to live with descendents of their ancestors who had long been forgotten, and to relearn a daughter of the ancestral language, Malay – now all but unlearned by the present generation.
The present findings (and others) dispel the notion of any one monolithic “race”. Instead, all of humanity is a cohesive genetic pool with extensive mixing among populations that are changing fluidly. Such mixing among Southeast Asians giving rise to Chinese populations has left indelible marks on our DNA and these marks of our deep shared heritage, remarkably unsullied by divergent recent histories, are a silent but truthful witness against modern self-serving essentialist propaganda proclaiming the contrary.
Reference
Abdulla, M.M. et al. (2009). Mapping human genetic diversity in Asia. Science, 326, 1541-1545. A non-technical summary is also given in the same issue: Normille, D. (2009). SNP Study supports southern migration route to Asia. Science, 326, 1470.
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Migration must have taken place from Africa to India than SEA and up north to China.
This can be proved, even through later stages.
Indian influence on culture, names and religion and language has travelled through SEA and China.
The oldest religion Hinduism has up till today, existing in Bali. In a majority Muslim Country of Indonesia. Even the Indonesian,Thai and Malaysian culinary has got Indian similarities.The languages are derived from the ancient Sanskrit language, used in Malay, Tagalog and Thai languages. Names of people in these countries have close similarities to Sanskrit names – such as Rajah, Rani, Amritpal,Anisha,Riya,Melati(Malay and Indonesian names) – for Thai names they have such as Anucha, Niran,Thurian, Virote, Anuman,Pundit, Rajani,Rama. These Sanskrit names have been used since early civilization in their respective countries. Thai letterings have close similarities to Indian letterings, with all those curves.
Ancient Hindu temples like the Angkor Wat and Buddhist temples can be found all over Asia. Indian customs like clasping of hands in greeting is commonly used in Thailand, Indonesia, and Indo China till today, for hygienic and modesty reasons.
Most SEA countries use clean washed hands to consume food, which is a common custom in India. Today the West and the World are consuming food with their
finger-likin, Colonel Saunders Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Even in China, the women use the pottu(coloured tiny dot) to beautify themselves.
Not forgetting Buddhism which has travelled through Japan, China and Korea.
Farhan Ali:
Thank you for your response. However, I must state that I am not conflating morphological diversity with genetic diversity, especially since my original comment (i.e. #45) on island theory was on language diversity. For my analogies from biology, I used the term ‘biological diversity’ and ‘biological evolution’, and I had not made any particular reference to genetic diversity.
My point on Malay is that no one knows for sure what the actual language of the Southeast Asian ancestors is. Parsimoniously, it should be the ancestor of all languages spoken by the descendant Asians (whether in Southeast Asia or East Asia, so that includes Austronesian,Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Sino-Tibetan and Altaic). However, there is historical and archaeological evidence to show that Malayo-Polynesian (i.e. the Austronesian branch containing Malay) arrived from Taiwan. So, it is not a native remnant, but a reintroduction from Taiwan. It is true that ultimately Malay is still a daughter language of the ancestral Southeast Asia language, but then, so is Chinese! I suppose your original point in the article was to point out that the notion of Chinese superiority is baseless, but I do find the example of Malay somewhat weak (in the ironic sense).
That said, migrant minorities usually learn the dominant language of whichever area they settle in: Chinese in Java speak Javanese or Sundanese, as well as Bahasa Indonesia; Chinese in the Philippines speak Tagalog; Chinese in Thailand speak Thai, and so on. Is it ironic that Chinese are relearning whatever daughter language of the Southeast Asian ancestors? I doubt people are really that surprised about the more distant ancestors (perhaps except for some Chinese who believe that the Chinese descended from Peking Man rather than from African ancestors).
The Chinese have evidences in their written language that their characters evolved from the time of Eden. Can South East Asia prove it?
A lot of things going on, but I just want to say that the article and my write-up have nothing to do with which group or which language is more superior; it’s simply an attempt to trace human history using more objective data. Attributing superiority is a nonscientific endeavor and the current article’s findings can be used creatively to support superiority of any one group if you want to.
Fox argued that the greater genetic diversity in Southeast Asian populations is due to greater admixture. Admixture (e.g., intermarriages) is, of course, an important element of human history but such scenarios can be statistically tested and have been rejected in this paper as well as in others. E.g., a simple admixture scenario would predict that the closer geographically the populations are to the sources of admixture (India and China, in this case), the closer the genetic distance to populations in the sources and the greater the genetic diversity. There is no correlation between geography and genetic distances, and contrary to prediction, there is in fact a reduction in genetic diversity as one gets closer to India and China (e.g., Thailand, South China, etc.); the highest diversity is found in Indonesia which is the farthest away from India and China by land (little evidence of long-range maritime migrations in prehistory).
Fox also brought up the interfamily language diversity in mainland Southeast Asia. I’m not familiar with the intricate details of classifying languages, but I suspect it is as arbitrary as genus, family, etc. classifications of organisms. What defines a language family? There are elements that unite Austronesian with Austro-Asiatic but why are these separate families and not one? There are also elements that unite Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family, but why it is a branch as opposed to a distinct family? In biology, the answer is that it arbitrarily depends on which guy happens to study that group of organisms, and this is probably the case for languages. In any case, in biology there are different levels of phenotypic diversity. It can be phylodiversity in which case, arbitrary higher level classifications matter and there is species diversity which depends only on species definitions (which are less arbitrary). Using mutual unintelligibility as the criterion of language ‘speciation’, it is true that island Southeast Asia has much greater language ‘species’ diversity.
Whether this diversity means superiority or whether we should force everyone speak the same Sino-Tibetan language is a question of power and not a question of scientific fact.
Farhan Ali,
The thing is, your article did imply some of these cultural and social ideas, and did not merely focus on the scientific. Readers can infer (or rather misinfer) your intentions.
As far as I know, language families are groupings of languages that readily show similarities with each other (through lexicon, regular sound correspondences, typology etc.) and can thus be confidently assessed as genetically related (of course, not in the biological sense). The branches are subgroupings with higher similarities within themselves, and lower similarities between. This is why Malayo-Polynesian is one branch out of around ten. Raising Malayo-Polynesian to the level of a language family is indeed possible, but that means the other nine have to be langauge families of the same level as well. So, yes, it is somewhat arbitrary. And why Austronesian and Austroasiatic not one family is because the link has not be established firmly. Austronesian has also be linked to Tai-Kadai, but the jury is still out on either of these two hypotheses. Even higher level classifications are very tentative, due to the difficulty in reconstructing the protolanguages.
On a different note, I would like to suggest that the notion of a monolithic Chinese race is not everything to the Chinese. Rather, language and regional culture is quite important too. Each ‘dialect’ of Chinese (e.g. Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka) is equivalent to a language simply due to the criterion of mutual intelligibility, hence the frequent comparison to the Romance language family by linguists. Politically and historically, they have classified as dialects instead. So, there is a common mistaken view is that the Chinese are actually one single monolithic culture/ethnicity/race. Of course, this is not so, and various Chinese groups hold differing attitudes to other Chinese groups, whether in China or Singapore. There may be some blurring of cultural lines in Singapore (where the so-called dialects are dying out and Mandarin is replacing these as the Chinese language amongst Chinese Singaporeans), so this may contribute to the illusion of a single Chineseness. Perhaps this is the complexity r was referring to, albeit it is definitely more cultural and social than anything biological.
Oh, an add-on to Fox’s point on interfamily language diversity on mainland Southeast Asia (and south China).
As mentioned earlier, language families are constructed using comparative linguistic methods usually involving data such as lexicon and phonology. Problems do include borrowings and influence from other languages. Vietnamese, for example, has been highly influenced by neighbouring languages (particularly from Chinese), so its lexicon is filled with Sinitic loans, and with its typology (isolating morphemes, tonal system), it was formerly classified as Sino-Tibetan. It was later found to be a Mon-Khmer language after recognising the problems. For example, Vietnamese developed tones as a result of an areal influence; consider its sister language, Khmer (Cambodian), which does not have tones.
So, using all the tools available to the linguist, it has been recognised that there is a great variety of languages belonging to various language families in mainland Southeast Asian (there is Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Mon-Khmer, Sino-Tibetan, and Tai-Kadai). Insular Southeast Asia on the other hand has only Austronesian and Papuan language; Papuan languages being restricted to the vicinity of New Guinea, with familial affinities unknown.
It seems reasonable to say that the more similar the language, the more related, and the more recent the divergence. Mainland Southeast Asia have these various language families, which seem to be quite ancient, whereas the Austronesian languages in insular Southeast Asia appear to be have only emerged recently in comparison. So, the linguistic diversity is shallower in Austronesian languages in insular Southeast Asia, despite the greater number of different languages.
Farhan Ali and Maque,
Actually, the paper does mention that in their phylogenetic tree, Austronesian speakers do cluster with East Asians higher up the tree which points to an expansion from East Asia to SE Asia. Negritos and Papuans are closer to the bottom of the tree. This suggests that Malays are descended from recent immigrants (~a few kya) to SE Asia from E Asia.
See p. 41 of http://genwiki.eva.mpg.de/uploads/Main/2009_human_genetic_diversity_asia_som.pdf
Maque,
A reasonable explanation for the reduced linguistic diversity in insular SE Asia is that there was a sudden expansion of Austronesian speakers into insular SE Asia who introduced rice agriculture and maritime technology into the region and in the process, imposed their language on the ancestors of today’s Negritos and other more ancient populations.
You can have language replacement by cultural diffusion rather than wholesale population movements. You see that in other parts of the world. For example, the British speak a Germanic language (English) although they are mostly descended from Neolithic migrants from Iberia.
S.E.A. and Chinese evolved from Indians…
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL19Df03.html
Given the current trend of the out of Africa theory, then into/out of India, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine the East Asians may have evolved from Malays or other austronesion peoples if you then think about how people got subsequently lighter the more north they went. Then it can also be said, the earlier the population, the more primitive looking they were and are.
well…we’re the world