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.

A North-South Chinese Mix Cline in SE Asia?

A question from the comments about the Are SE Asians Australoids? article:

Aren't Khmer a little more Australoid than people in Vietnam (at least Northern Vietnamese), most Thai, and Laotians? There seems to be a clear cline in Southeast Asia, the areas bordering China seem to have more NE Mongoloid Admixture than those of the Malay archipelago and the Khmer. I'm basing this on appearance and not genes, which you pointed out, rightly so, as being misleading.

This question keeps popping up because so many folks are convinced, based primarily on appearance, that many SE Asians are part-Australoid.

First of all, the Vietnamese, Filipinos, Thai and Khmer are all quite close to the Southern Chinese genetically. Of these, believe it or not, the Filipinos are possibly the closest of all. The Vietnamese are also very close, but I don't have any figures. Both the Filipinos and the Vietnamese are very close to the coastal Southern Chinese of Fujian and Guangdong Province bordering the Taiwan Strait.

Next come the Thai, Lao and the Khmer. These groups are much closer to the Southern Chinese than Malays or Indonesians. All of them are about the equidistant from the Southern Chinese. Filipinos are much closer to the Southern Chinese than these three groups.

The Thai and Lao are primarily a Southern Chinese group called the Tai that came down into that area in a massive wave about 800 years ago. To some extent they bred in with whatever people were already there. This Tai group came from Yunnan.

The Vietnamese are very closely related to the Southern Chinese. A huge wave of Southern Chinese poured into Vietnam 2,200 years and bred in with existing people. This group came from the Taiwan Strait - the area north of Vietnam along the coast.

The Khmer came down into the area possibly 5,000 years ago with the first wave of Austroasiatics. They also came from Southern China, probably Yunnan once again, but longer ago than their neighbors the Thai, Lao and Vietnamese. The Austroasiatics are considered to be some of the original people of the SE Asia.

The Zhuang of South China are probably the purest relatives of the original Austroasiatics. They came from Central China (possibly originally as the Dai) to Yunnan about 5,000 years ago. One line went to the Zhuang in Guangxi in Southwest China and another line went to the modern Tai-Dai in Yunnan.

Also, the Khmer bred in much more than their neighbors with people from India who came about 1,500 years ago. So, the Khmer contain more of the original Austroasiatic group and less of recent Southern Chinese mixture than the Thai, Lao and Vietnamese. This accounts for their appearance.

Filipinos are closer to Southern Chinese (Guangdong) than any of the groups above except maybe Vietnamese. They are also very close to Taiwan aborigines. Most people have a hard time understanding this because they look so different from most Southern Chinese. But there are Chinese from around Fujian and Hong Kong who look quite dark and, to my mind, SE Asian-looking.

Malays are Taiwan aborigines in large part (Austronesians), and are also are made up of Southern Chinese who came down 4,000 years ago as Austroasiatics.

The Austronesians came through the Philippines, down into Borneo and Sumatra and then up into Malaysia about 2,000 years ago. The Malay do have some Papuan genes, but so do the Southern Chinese and the coastal Vietnamese. Once again, the Malays have less recent Southern Chinese admixture and more archaic Southern Chinese admixture (Austronesian and Austroasiatic).

Malays also definitely have Australoid ancestors in the Semang, the proto-Malay and the Senoi, although we can't see it in their skulls or much of it in their genes.

The Indonesians in the Center and East of the country have quite a few Melanesian Australoid genes, but the ones in the West have almost none. The ones in the West appear to be Taiwanese aborigines similar to Filipinos.

It's really a common fallacy that there is such a cline in SE Asia, with folks becoming more Australoid and less Chinese as you go south. What there is is that in some places, you find more recent Southern Chinese mixture and towards the South, you get more archaic Taiwanese and archaic Southern Chinese mixture.

A modern Southern Chinese woman from Chengdu Province. Isn't she beautiful? God I love this kind of woman. It's possible she may use some sort of skin whitener to make her skin look more white, or she may just stay out of the sun. White skin has been highly valued for a long time, and my blogging colleague Dragon Horse (feel free to check him out - he's smart as Hell) notes that it had been highly valued long before Chinese even knew much about Europeans.

In other words, Chinese were not trying to look like White Europeans - they hardly even knew who they were. A preference for lighter skin was simply an independent development in China based on their own considerations and values. Many will look at this woman and say she has a NE Asian facial type. Well, that may be so, but Caucasians are closer to NE Asians than she is as a Southern Chinese. The genetic distance between Southern Chinese and Northern Chinese is vast.

We only find a few Australoid genes in SE Asians and even then only in Southern Chinese, coastal Vietnamese and Malays. Skull-wise, nothing exists, except that the Senoi of Malaysia do have Australoid skulls.

I guess people say this based on appearance. There is a SE Asian native type characterized most prominently by Malays, Khmer, Filipino, Western Indonesians, etc. that people think looks a bit primitive, and they associate that with Australoids.

Really it's just a native indigenous development, although it does seem to represent a more archaic type - either archaic Taiwanese or archaic South Chinese - and has nothing to do per se with Australoids.

Recall however that the whole region slowly transitioned from Australoid types to modern SE Asian types about 5000 years ago, and that's later than most groups. Maybe that is what people are seeing. But there's nothing we can measure in genes or skulls.

Thai, Lao and Vietnamese don't have any NE Asian mixture that we can see. There is a Southern Chinese look that can resemble Northern Chinese, but the two groups are very far apart. Even Southern Chinese don't have much northern mixture, but there are some groups that are more northern than others.

The Wa (Va) of Yunnan and Burma are about 50-50 Northern and Southern Chinese, and the Hmong have more Northern Chinese than other Southern Chinese groups.

A Hmong woman. We have a huge Hmong population here in the Central Valley. By and large, they are good people and I like them a lot. The Hmong are interesting among Southern Chinese in that they have more Northern Chinese than most of the rest of the Southern Chinese. They also have a unique genetic line going back up to 42,000 years (!). It's pretty incredible that some sort of proto-Hmong have been evolving for that long.

The website I got this off described Hmong as partly Australoid, but I think that's silly. They are saying this by looking at the faces and saying that the face looks somewhat Australoid. The Hmong are probably less Australoid than that Chengdu woman above.

I find some of these Hmong women, like this one, to be really beautiful. They definitely look different. They have round, moon-shaped faces, and short, stocky, bodies. Character-wise, they are very Chinese-like.

Their IQ in the US is only 82.5 (lower than US Blacks) but that must be due to language difficulties. Their verbal IQ was insanely low, while their performance IQ was quite high. The Hmong have also been living like hillbillies for centuries, so there is probably a lot of potential for Flynn Effects in the US. That's a traditional costume she is wearing.

Caucasians are closer to Northern Chinese than Southern Chinese are.

A classic NE Asian, in this case a Manchu woman. What's interesting is that these people are genetically very close to Caucasians (while Southern Chinese are extremely distant). They don't have any Caucasian genes, but when we plot them on graphs, their genetic structure is quite close to Caucasians. The Caucasians that they most resemble are Northern Turkics such as some of the people in the Altai and the residents of the Stans.

They are part of what I call an Asian-Caucasian Divide, where these two great races are so close that it is often hard to tell which category to throw them into. This divide ranges from Turkey through the Stans, to Mongolia and out to Chukotka.

I can't see much difference in phenotype between her and the Southern Chinese beauty above, but maybe folks who understand Asian phenotypes better can see these things. These people are also quite close genetically to Amerindians. Koreans, Japanese and NE Chinese are all quite genetically close, although I guess they mostly hate each other and would not want to believe that.


A Tajik man. Boy, does he look Jewish or what? These people are quite closely related to NE Asians and also to Northern Indians. They are closest to Iranians. A very interesting people, they are thought to be the original Aryans. Funny how Aryans White Power types go back to Aryan dudes who look like nice Jewish boys. Wonders never cease.

People base so much popular anthropology on superficial appearances, but that's not really scientific.

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Are SE Asians Australoids?

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

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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