Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Evolution of the Proto-Asians

A commenter, lakanino, a Filipino, comments on the Are Southeast Asians Australoids? post:
Australoid seem to be pretty spread all over Asia (even the whole world) and this may be even true before the Mongoloid showed up. Do you think its possible that before there were any Mongoloid, that a group of these Australoid, say somewhere near the Tonkin Gulf or maybe a little north of it, may have evolved much faster than the other Australoid settlements and evolved to which are the, lets say, proto-Mongoloids?

Now, this evolution, whatever caused it (natural selection, artificial selection, or diet, etc) gave this improved Australoid a higher cognitive ability.

They made better tools and improved gathering of food, less famine, and with these advancement, the population exploded (relatively). And this population growth led to faster movement of people going to the North and mixing with less evolved Australoid settlements like the Ainus, & South mixing with settlements in Island Southeast Asia.

I’ve been reading a lot of papers lately and I can’t help but noticed this trend. Although this idea maybe far fetch, especially, with genetic studies showing coalescence of certain genetic mutations that may go against this idea.

What are your thoughts?

I believe that all Asians evolved from Australoids in the Tonkin Gulf region. That line goes back 53,000 years at least. The northern lines - one to NE Asians and another to Japanese - appear shortly afterward.

So the NE Asians - Japanese /Koreans - SE Asian split goes back a good 50,000 years or so. It is very deep.

I'm not sure about your theory. It looks instead the Ainu are remnants of this early Asian Australoid type that went to proto-Mongoloid. 9,000 years ago, in NE Asia, Ainu types transition to classic modern NE Asians. Of course, some older Ainu types remain on the scene and these are the present day Ainu.

About population replacement, I am not sure. However, from 9,000 YBP a more modern type radiates out of NE Asia and replaces most of the archaic Australoid types, with only the Ainu being unreplaced.

In the South, a modern SE Asian type evolves and rapidly spreads out across the region, replacing Negrito types in Southern China, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines and possibly semi-replacing Melanesian Australoid types in Indonesia. It stands to reason that they were more advanced than the Negritos they replaced, as the replacement process is well-documented in SE Asia.

Therefore, lakanino's theory may be correct, but the replacement occurred much later, on the order of 5,000-9,000 years ago instead of 53,000 years ago.

There was some southward movement of NE Asian types down into Southern China and this trend has continued to this day. The modern high IQ NE Asian type (including Vietnamese and S. Chinese) has an intellectual profile that is not dated. We do not know when they became so smart. For all we know, it may have occurred only in the past 200 years or so.

Replacement was gradual. Ainu types went to modern NE Asians in the north 9000 years ago and Negrito types went to modern SE Asians in the South 5000 years ago or so. There are movements of highly intelligent S. Chinese types down into SE Asia, especially Vietnam, but also into Indonesia and Philippines.

We lack knowledge of the IQ's of ancient Asian types. IQ testing of the Senoi and Semang in Malaysia, the Negritos of the Philippines and Andaman Islands and the Ainu of Japan would be helpful to shed some light on this subject.

I would like to say one more thing about the SE Asian = Australoid thing. This theory is based on observation of the facial features of modern-day SE Asians. Such observation reveals a resemblance to Australoid types. Modern SE Asians, otherwise, do not resemble Australoids in skulls or in genes.

Negritos and the Senoi of Malaysia are exceptions to the rule, since their skulls look Australoid. No modern SE Asians cluster genetically with Australoids. Senoi genes look Malay and Negrito genes resemble whatever modern types they live near.

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