Reconnecting Genes, Languages and Material Culture in Island Southeast Asia: Aphorisms on Geography and History

Abstract

The Holocene history of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) is dominated by the ‘Out-of-Taiwan’ hypothesis and derivatives, such as the spread of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic. According to these ideas, approximately 4500–4000 years ago, farmer-voyagers from Taiwan migrated southward into ISEA to subsequently acculturate, assimilate or displace pre-existing inhabitants. These processes are considered to have produced a consilience between human genetics, Austronesian languages and the archaeological record within ISEA, although recurrent critiques have questioned these putative correspondences. These critiques have proposed that each line of evidence should be independently evaluated and considered, rather than assumed to correspond. In this paper, the authors advocate a fuller engagement with and a deeper understanding of the spatial and temporal processes that structure archaeological, genetic and linguistic distributions within Island Southeast Asia. Geography and history are often marginalized in discussions of the Holocene history of ISEA, yet both are fundamental to the interpretation and reconciliation of multidisciplinary data within the region. These themes are discussed using aphorisms that are designed to be illustrative, namely to promote thought and reflection, rather than to be comprehensive.

Genetic relatedness of indigenous ethnic groups in northern Borneo to neighboring populations from Southeast Asia, as inferred from genome‐wide SNP data

“…This north‐to‐south direction of migration has been questioned, and a south‐to‐north migration from the islands of Southeast Asia toward mainland Southeast Asia (e.g., Thailand and Cambodia) and southern China has been proposed (The HUGO Pan‐Asian SNP Consortium, ). The “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis has been debated, despite the fact that it was derived from multidisciplinary data (as discussed by Denham & Donohue, ). Nevertheless, it is commonly accepted that Southeast Asia was initially populated by the Austro‐Melanesians (Barker et al., ; Détroit et al., ; Matsumura & Pookajorn, ).…”

Editors’ Note: Five Years of Language Dynamics and Change

“…ldc is, thus, proud to have emerged as a forum for work which employs emerging methods to reach new historical conclusions (Jansson et al, 2015), evaluates such methods so that linguistics and allied disciplines can better understand how to apply them effectively to particular research questions (Denham and Donohue, 2012), or presents detailed discussion to motivate and document possible revisions to common methodological practice (Jäger, 2013). We further believe that, as a journal centered within the field of linguistics but with strong connections to other domains, ldc has an especially crucial role to play in ensuring that work like that just described above is thoroughly reviewed by experts with the requisite linguistic, interdisciplinary, and methodological expertise.…”