| Abstract: |
The aim of this chapter is to explore the local population history of northern Vietnam, specifically the relationship between the Man Bac sample and mid-Holocene Da But (represented by the cemetery site Con Co Ngua) and late Pleistocene/early Holocene Bac Son/Hoabinhian communities. Additionally, any potential relationship with Metal period Dong Son and present-day Vietnamese is explored. Moreover, this study will also provide a test of the Two-layer hypothesis. For nearly a century it has been argued that Southeast Asia was initially settled by people akin to present-day Australo-Melanesians that, in the later neolithic, underwent substantial genetic modification due to the influx of immigrants associated with the spread of agriculture from southern China (Callenfels, 1936
Mijsberg, 1940
Barth, 1952
von Koenigswald, 1952
Coon, 1962
Thoma, 1964
Jacob, 1967, 1975
Brace, 1976
Howells, 1976
Brace et al., 1991). A number of recent archaeological reviews conclude that food producing communities spread south from the Yangtze Basin into mainland and island Southeast Asia (Bellwood, 1987, 1997
Spriggs, 1989
Glover and Higham, 1996
Bellwood et al., 1992). In order to test this scenario, the biological relationships between neolithic and preneolithic communities throughout Southeast Asia need to be examined in more detail. The Man Bac sample provides a crucial data set in such an examination (see also Chapter 3). Along with the above-mentioned aims, this chapter compares Man Bac metric and non-metric dental data with early and modern samples from East/Southeast Asia and the west Pacific.
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