1. Origins

2. Distribution

3. Evidence
    Linguistic  Genetic  Anthropological 

4. Genetics

5. References

6. Further reading

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//Austro-Tai languages">Austro-Tai languages}}

Tai-Kadai languages

Austronesian languages

The Austro-Tai peoples consist of both the Austronesian and Tai peoples. Today, the Daic (Tai) peoples live in southern China (Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Guangdong), the Southeast Asian mainland countries of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, as well as parts of northeastern India (not limited to Assam) descend from Ahom people. The Austronesian peoples can be found in the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Madagascar, Oceania, and various other locations throughout the Pacific Rim.

Origins

The Austro-Tai Urheimat (or original homeland) is in southern China, likely the coast of Fujian and Guangdong in southeastern China.^[1]

Another possible Austro-Tai homeland would be the Wu River region of modern-day Guizhou, China, which is populated by the Gelao people.^[2][3] Over 2,000 years ago, the upper Wu River valley was home to the Yelang (夜郎) kingdom, whose inhabitants were likely the ancestors of the Gelao and Dong peoples. The Chinese exonym for the people of Yelang was Liáo (僚), from which the modern Chinese names for the Lao people (Chinese: 寮 liáo) and various Chinese ethnic minorities (Mulao, Gelao, etc.) probably derived from. Today, other than the "Gaoshan" or Taiwanese aborigines, the Gelao are the only officially recognized ethnic group in China with Austronesian-like numerals^[4] (see Kra languages).

There are several explanations of how the ancestors of today's Austronesians had migrated to Taiwan from southern China.^[2]

1. From Guizhou or Sichuan, the proto-Austronesians migrated eastward along the Yangtze River, followed by a southward coastal migration down Zhejiang and Fujian to Taiwan.
2. From Guangxi or Guizhou, the proto-Austronesians migrated eastward to Guangdong and Fujian, and later on to Taiwan.

In any case, based on linguistic evidence, the proto-Austronesians would have reached Taiwan around 3,200 B.C., about 2,000 years before the Shang dynasty.^[5] Furthermore, archaeological sites along the Fujian coast bear many similarities to the ones found in Taiwan, suggesting that the coast of Fujian may have been originally populated by Austronesian speakers.^[3] However, by the Han dynasty, Fujian had already been mostly Sinicized, eliminating any traces of Austronesian languages.

While the Austronesians' languages probably have remained relatively the same, the Austro-Tai populations left behind in China would have adopted many Chinese morphological and grammatical features into their languages, giving rise to the Tai-Kadai languages of today (a more recent example can be seen in the Tsat language of southern Hainan, a Chamic language that has been heavily Sinicized).^[6] Throughout the centuries, Chinese expansion accelerated the migrations of Tai peoples southwest into modern-day Yunnan, Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand, which were originally occupied by Austro-Asiatic speakers such as the Khmu and Wa. Further pressured by events such as the 13th-century Mongol invasion of Yunnan, the Tai peoples would go on to found many powerful kingdoms in Indochina, including Lan Xang, Lanna, Sukhothai, and Ayutthaya.^[7] By this time, the Austronesians would have already settled a broad swath of territory extending from Madagascar to the Polynesian islands of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island.

However, French linguist Laurent Sagart argues for a homeland in Taiwan based on the Tai-Kadai languages' alleged similarities with the Malayo-Polynesian languages.^[8] Lawrence A. Reid of the University of Hawaii at Manoa has also suggested that the Tai-Kadai peoples may have been descendants of a back-migration from the northern Philippines.

Distribution

Evidence

In recent years there has been a remarkable amount of evidence from various disciplines supporting a common ancestry for the Austronesian and Tai-speaking populations. Nonetheless, this proposal has remained controversial, since some scholars still group the Tai peoples either separately by themselves or together with the Sino-Tibetan peoples. The Austronesian peoples are usually placed into a separate group, and have sometimes been linked with the Austro-Asiatic peoples. The predominating view in China is to group the Tai peoples with the Sino-Tibetan peoples due to cultural and linguistic similarities, while the Austronesians are considered to be a separate group unrelated to the Sino-Tibetans. However, most Western scholars argue that similarities between the Chinese and Tai peoples was due to contact rather than common descent.

Linguistic

While the Austronesian languages are generally disyllabic and atonal, the Tai-Kadai languages are usually monosyllabic and always tonal. This is because the structures of Tai-Kadai languages have been heavily influenced by Chinese and possibly Tibeto-Burman and Hmong-Mien languages due to prolonged contacts and interactions.

According to the Austro-Tai hypothesis, even though the structures of Austronesian and Thai languages have diverged very much, many basic vocabulary words have not changed much. Usually, the Tai-Kadai word would have only the last syllable of its proto-form, although the Kra and Kam-Sui languages often still have disyllabic basic vocabulary words.

The table below lists 20 Thai words with their respective transliterations and Austronesian cognates that have not deviated from Proto-Austronesian. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian forms reconstructed by Robert Blust are also given. The Austronesian languages are given by Tagalog, Ilocano, and Malay, all of which are major lingua francas in Southeast Asia today. The words given below can also be found in Swadesh lists.

Note: For Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, "*q" is a glottal stop, not a uvular sound.

Genetic

Recent genetic studies have shown that many Austronesian and Daic speakers both share the same paternally inherited Y-chromosome genetic marker, namely O1a-M119 (O1a is the haplogroup name, while M119 is its defining mutation.).^[11] For instance, 69%^[12]-90%^[13] of all male Taiwanese aborigines carry the O1a-M119 marker, while 8%-58%^[14] of all male Hlai (a Daic ethnic group from Hainan, China) carry the genetic marker.

The following is a phylogenetic tree of language families and their corresponding SNP markers, or haplogroups, sourced mainly from Edmondson as well as Shi, et al.^[15][16]

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Anthropological

British anthropologist Roger Blench also notes that the Daic and Austronesian peoples had many customs in common.^[19]

1. Facial tattooing was practiced by both the Taiwanese aborigines and the Gelao of Guizhou, China. Ancient Chinese records also describe the ancient Yue (越) tribes as having tattooed faces. This practice is also still common among various modern-day ethnic groups of Borneo and Polynesia.
2. Dental ablasion (dental evulsion or tooth removal) was practiced by both the Taiwanese aborigines and the Gelao of Guizhou, China.
3. Teeth blackening occurred among the Tsou, Paiwan, and Amis of Taiwan, as well as the Vietnamese and various ethnic minorities of Yunnan.
4. Intertwined snakes are frequently depicted in both Taiwanese aboriginal and Zhuang art, since snake cults were common in pre-colonial Taiwan and southern China.
5. Jaw harps are found all over the world, but multi-tongue forms are not commonly found in East Asia except in specific regions of Taiwan and southern China. In both regions, they are used in courtship rituals.

Further evidence that has not been given by Blench is listed below:

1. Burial customs. Both the Gelao of Guizhou and Gelong (仡隆; also known as Cun or Ngao Fon) of western Hainan bury their ancestors and relatives within their own courtyards, a custom not practiced by the Han Chinese.^&91;20&93; The Puyuma of southeastern Taiwan also used to bury their dead under their own houses, although this practice was banned by the Japanese in the early 1900s and is no longer practiced today.^&91;21&93; This custom has also been observed in various archaeological sites in Taiwan, such as the Huilaili site in Taichung.^&91;22&93; In the northern Philippines, the Itnegs of Abra also bury their dead under their houses^&91;23&93; (see also: Funeral practices and burial customs in the Philippines).
2. Singing. Both the Dong people of eastern Guizhou and the Bunun of interior Formosa are well known for their polyphonic choirs. Courtship by singing is also common among many Daic and Formosan peoples. Various forms of mor lam (หมอลำ), still popular today among the Lao of Laos and the Isan region of Thailand, involve courtship by singing, with the male and female performers taking turns.^&91;24&93;
3. Bamboo dances are popular among the Hlai of Hainan,^&91;25&93; Filipinos (known as tinikling),^&91;26&93; various ethnic groups of Sabah in northern Borneo,^&91;27&93; Thai (known as grà-tóp mái รํากระทบไม้),^&91;28&93; Lao (known as krathob mai),^&91;29&93; Amis and Taroko of Taiwan,^&91;30&93; and Dong of Guizhou in southern China.^&91;31&93; It is also practiced by the nearby Khmer,^&91;32&93; Vietnamese (known as múa sạp),^&91;33&93; Mizors of Mizoram in northeastern India,^&91;34&93; Chin of western Myanmar,^&91;35&93; Karen of eastern Myanmar,^&91;36&93; and Miao ethnic groups of southern China. These ethnic groups, which are not Austronesian or Daic-speaking populations, most likely adopted the bamboo dances from Daic speakers on the southeast Asian mainland.

Genetics

The following table of Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup frequencies of Austro-Tai peoples (i.e., Tai-Kadai peoples and Austronesian peoples) is from Li, et al. (2008).^[37]

References

Further reading

• Blench, Roger. 2004. [https://web.archive.org/web/20110721174117/http://www.rogerblench.info/Archaeology%20data/East%20Asia/Geneva%20China%20paper%202004%20published.pdf "Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology?" (PDF)] Paper for the Symposium : Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence. Geneva, June 10–13.
• Blench, Roger. 2008. The Prehistory of the Daic (Tai-Kadai) Speaking Peoples. Presented at the 12th EURASEAA meeting Leiden, 1–5 September 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20111021005105/http://www.rogerblench.info/Language%20data/Daic/Daic%20prehistory%20paper%20EURASEAA%202008.pdf
• Blust, Robert. 1996. Beyond the Austronesian Homeland: The Austric Hypothesis and Its Implications for Archaeology. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 5, Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific (1996), pp. 117–158. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1006623
• Edmondson, Jerold A. The power of language over the past: Tai settlement and Tai linguistics in southern China and northern Vietnam. Studies in Southeast Asian languages and linguistics, Jimmy G. Harris, Somsonge Burusphat and James E. Harris, ed. Bangkok, Thailand: Ek Phim Thai Co. Ltd. http://ling.uta.edu/~jerry/pol.pdf
• Li D., Sun Y., et al. 2010. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20485445?dopt=Abstract Genetic origin of Kadai-speaking Gelong people on Hainan island viewed from Y chromosomes]. Department of Biology, Hainan Medical College, Haikou, Hainan, China. J Hum Genet, 55(7):462-8. Published online 2010 May 20.
• Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench & Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, eds. The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. London: Routledge Curzon, 2005.
• Thurgood, Graham. 1994. "Tai-Kadai and Austronesian: the nature of the relationship." Oceanic Linguistics 33.345-368.
• Wyatt, David. Thailand: A Short History (2nd edition). Yale University Press, 2003. {{ISBN|0-300-08475-7}}.
• Zhengzhang Shangfang [郑张尚芳]. 1990. "Some Kam-Tai Words in Place Names of the Ancient Wu and Yue States" [古吴越地名中的侗台语成份]. In Minzu Yuwen 6.

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