Are SE Asians Australoids?

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Updated July 12. I am republishing this post, published earlier, because I added some new photos and text to it.

We have already dealt with this issue previously on this blog, but there is need to continuously revisit old issues that do not seem to be sinking in very well after we do our revisionist and rectification work here.

For instance, I do not really care about whether or not SE Asians are part-Australoid, but among amateur anthropologists, the notion is much in vogue. Furthermore, it is regarded as given by Chinese, which unfortunately includes Southern Chinese, who by this definition, would also be part-Australoid.

This issue needs to be dealt with because it is such a widespread myth, particularly among some of our best young minds out there in popular culture. Among anthropologists, the only folks saying that SE Asians are part-Australoid are wonderful folks like Richard Lynn, who wants to "phase out" inferior races. So I'm not sure that NE Asian Supremacists should make alliance with these guys.

The truth is clear. All of Asia, as far as we can tell, was Australoid up until 9,000 years ago or so. Further, some Caucasians were part-Australoid, and there is some evidence that all of them may have been at one point.

Take a recent comment by an excellent mind in my comments section, who states that all SE Asians are Australoids based on their lineage.

First of all, lineage doesn't really mean crap. In the lineage of Caucasians is African, Asian and probably Australoid, going back 45,000 years or so, and maybe more so in between, since India seems to be continuously injecting itself into the Caucasian mix from 10,000-45,000 years ago, and India was Australoid until 8,000 years ago, when it finally transitioned to Caucasian.

In fact, Caucasians may have been made up one part African from Masai and Tutsi-type Central African stock, and two parts NE Asian, which at 45,000 years ago was probably an Australoid that looked something like an Ainu. So Caucasians themselves are probably two parts Australoid in their mix going way, way back.

There are different ways of doing race, in places where anti-racist nuts have not outlawed it or shamed it out altogether. We can look at facial structure, or we can look at genes. There are no other ways of doing it that make sense.

Facial structure is a favorite among White racists, but otherwise it's ok. White racists despise genes, because too many other "non-White" Caucasians end up being too close to their precious European White Glory.

Lots of people hate genes because they give funny results. The exalted Hong Kong Chinese make up a taut subrace with the unknown Taiwanese Ami and the downtrodden and abused Filipinos. We can't have that.

Let's do faces instead, or skin color, the craziest of them all. We do skin color and we miss tight genetic units like Algerians and Nubians, one White and one Black group that are so closely related they can easily be called a minor race and even a closely-knit genetic family.

Faces are interesting, but genes are sort of where it's at in a way. Negritos and Ainu go to the surrounding Asians on genes, but to Australoids on facial structure. So where do we toss em? Fuegian Amerindians go Australoid on facial structure but Amerindian on genes, so which bin? I'm inclined to toss Fuegians into Amerindians on mere sense grounds, since saying they are Australoids lost in America is just too weird.

A classic Ainu man. Note the uncanny resemblance to an Amerindian. Ainus look Australoid on facial structure and Asian on genes. They are not Caucasian as many have theorized. One theory about why we have some Caucasian looking types in Asia is that the breeding together of an Australoid type with an Asian type can produce as Caucasoid type. That's just a shot in the dark, but it sounds appealing to me.

Some Amerindians, such as the Fuegians of Patagonia and the Pericu of Baja California also look like Ainu, as did the Paleoindians of the Americas, who are thought to be the first to come the continent, even before the Asian Amerindians that we know today. The Amerindians we know today may have shown up only 6,000-9,000 years ago, but they must have bred in with earlier groups.

So, we look at faces of SE Asians for Australoid structure, and we don't get much. Negritos, Melanesians, and sometimes Polynesians have Australoid faces. So do the Senoi, and possibly the Vedda (though not close to Aborigines), and we get the Tamils.

But Polynesians are Oceanians genetically, Senoi are SE Asians, and Tamils are Caucasians. Oh, what a complicated web we weave.

We don't see Australoid facial structure in SE Asians. In some, maybe we do. There are people with woolly hair and dark skin among the Taiwan aborigines and among the Malay and the Filipinos at least. These people do have some Negrito in them.

In most SE Asians, we just find that they have faces that look, well, SE Asian. It's a particular look of a face, and it's not Australoid or any such thing. I'm not sure what it resembles. It just resembles what it is - SE Asians have developed their own specific facial type, and it is what it is and you like it or you don't, but it owns itself.

If we go looking for Australoid genes in SE Asians, we pretty much come up empty handed. We find Papuan genes in some Southern Chinese, some coastal Vietnamese and some Malays and we find some sort of Australoid-looking genes in Indonesians, mostly to east.

We don't seem to find any at all in Taiwanese, Lao, Khmer, the rest of the Vietnamese, Thai or western Indonesians. Anyway, we only find a tiny amount in those groups, indicating that it's nonsense to say that they are part Australoid. It's just a tiny ancient remnant - that's all.

When we go looking at Polynesians and Micronesians, things get way more complicated. For a long time, analyses were finding that these people have up to 50% of what look like Australoid genes from Melanesia or Papua, and about 50% some kind of Austronesian genes from Taiwan.

A paper has recently come out showing that Polynesians and Micronesians are almost all Austronesian from Taiwan, and the Papuan - Melanesian connection is minor or even nonexistent. Even this paper showed that Melanesians had a heavy Papuan element, with a small Austronesian element mostly limited to eastern Indonesia. Download a paper looking at the matter on my site here.

Whatever the meaning of these studies, a close look at genetic charts tends to show Oceanians such as Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians lining up right alongside Papuans and Aborigines, who are themselves vastly far apart.

Clearly there is an Australoid Race. Clearly Aborigines and Papuans are too extremely distantly related aspects of that race, or maybe even separate major races on their own.

Including Melanesians is difficult. While some treatments now are finding an Oceanian Race separate from Australoids, others are finding a fairly close link between Melanesians and Australoids such as Papuans. It is probably best to say that Melanesians are Oceanians with a fairly close, but still distant, relationship to Papuans. Whatever relationship Micronesians and Polynesians have to Papuans, it is much more distant.

When we line up Aborigines to SE Asians such as Khmer, Malay, Filipinos, Thai, and Southern Chinese, we do not get a thing. The relationship is very, very distant. In many charts, the closest relative will be Polynesians (the connection above again) and then we will find Japanese, Koreans and even NE Chinese.

This is probably due to an Ainu-Gilyak Australoid element that was generalized all through NE Asia at this time.

In my opinion, the Ainu and the Gilyak are the remains of the proto-NE Asians. They probably go back to Lake Baikal around 35,000 years ago. At some point they may have gone to Thailand, then over to Japan, and at 20,000 years ago, they must have gone to Australia. At around 16,000 years ago, Ainu types left the Altai Mountains and traveled to the Americas, possibly via a coastal route on boats. Their ancestors today, other than Fuegians and the Pericu.

Look at those really long fingers on that woman. That looks so strange.

I have seen photos of modern day Gilyaks on Sakhalin Island and they look pretty Japanese. There are projects underway to record and possibly revive their very strange language, which is somehow still alive. These were very much a fishing people, living on the coast and heavily involved in salmon fishing, drying and consumption. They also eat a lot of seaweed. The Japanese diet resembles this in some ways.

Keep in mind at proto-NE Asians (Ainu types) colonized Australia 20,000 years ago and created one of the major inputs into the Aborigines.

A classic Aborigine, possibly from Coon in the early 20th Century. Coon made a number of good studies on Aborigines at that time. An Ainu type called Murrayians is thought to have colonized Australia 20,000 years ago. Around that time, Ainu types were in Thailand and Japan. They seem to have gone from Thailand to Japan around this time as the Jomonese, probably on boats. Surely they must have used these same boats to go to Australia.

On the way down to Australia, they seem have made up the proto-Australoids, a strange and little-known group from the Philippines that is thought to be the second arrivals after the Negritos. The description of the proto-Australoids sounds like an Ainu type, and their ancient arrival on the islands fits in well with a very early arrival in Australia.

It is true that SE Asians were probably still transitioning from Australoid to SE Asian maybe as late as 5,000 years ago, but NE Asians were making that transition only 9,000 years ago.

According the commenter, SE Asians are Australoids because that is sort of what they were 5,000 years ago. But why should we not include NE Asians, since they were Australoids only 9,000 years ago? Why not include East Indians, since they were Australoids until only 8,000 years ago?

Hell with lineage. Humans were ape-men not too long ago. Maybe even 200,000 years ago, we were still pretty apelike. Hell, Amerindians were still pretty Australoid up until 9,000 ago, and in Colombia even up until 3,000 years ago.

In the Fuegians and in the Pericu of southern Baja California, there were physically Australoid types until contact and even afterwards, even though the Pericu went extinct.

Truth is, lineage doesn't really matter. We look at things as they are today. Some things came from other things a long time, but the existing things of today are not the things that they transitioned from long ago, nor are they part of what they used to be.

Instead, they are whole new things, moving from one existence and creation to a new creation all of their own. I am not my ancestors, nor am I even part of my ancestors. But they are part of the creation story that is me and my kin, and that is a wonderful trail of a tale all on its own.

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