Terminal Pleistocene human skeleton from Hang Cho Cave, northern Vietnam: implications for the biological affinities of Hoabinhian people

Abstract

An excavation at the cave site of Hang Cho in northern Vietnam resulted in the discovery of a terminal Pleistocene human skeleton in a relatively good state of preservation. The material culture from this site belongs to the pre-ceramic Hoabinhian period. An AMS radiocarbon date on a tooth sample extracted from this individual gives a calibrated age of 10450 ± 300 years BP. In discussions of the population history of Southeast Asia, it has been repeatedly advocated that Southeast Asia was occupied by indigenous people akin to present-day Australo-Melanesians prior to the Neolithic expansion of migrants from Northeast Asia into the area. Cranial and dental metric analyses were undertaken in order to assess the biological affinity of early settlers in this region. The results suggest that the Hang Cho skeleton, as well as other early or pre-Holocene remains in Southeast Asia, represent descendants of colonizing populations of late Pleistocene Sundaland, who may share a common ancestry with present-day Australian Aboriginal and Melanesian people.

Mid-Holocene Hunter-Gatherers ‘Gaomiao’ in Hunan, China: The First of the Two-layer Model in the Population History of East/Southeast Asia

“…In the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene of Southeast Asia, several sets of human remains exhibit Australo-Melanesian characteristics, and it has been argued that an indigenous population possessing this morphological form occupied Southeast Asia. These skeletal data demonstrated significant genetic discontinuity between pre-and post-agricultural populations, suggesting that dramatic agriculturally driven demic expansion occurred in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) beginning in the Neolithic period (see Matsumura and Zuraina 1999;Matsumura and Hudson 2005;Matsumura 2006;Matsumura et al 2008aMatsumura et al , 2008bMatsumura et al , 2011aMatsumura et al , 2011bOxenham et al 2011;Matsumura and Oxenham 2013a, 2013b. This population history scenario for Southeast Asia is known as the 'two-layer' or 'immigration' model, a scenario of human population movement that was first postulated in the middle of the last century (q.v., Jacob 1967).…”

Population history of northern Vietnamese inferred from nonmetric cranial trait variation

“…Regarding the first hypothesis, a close affinity between the late prehistoric northern Vietnamese and recent Vietnamese, together with the distinctiveness of early prehistoric northern Vietnamese, as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, appears to fit the two-layer model emphasized by Matsumura (2006Matsumura ( , 2011a and Matsumura et al (2008aMatsumura et al ( , b, 2011a. The result shown in Figure 2, moreover, suggests that migrants from an outside source, for example Weidun and Zhou/Han populations from the lower Yangtze, had a strong influence on the pattern of morphological variation of the late prehistoric and subsequent northern Vietnamese.…”

“…Turner, 1990;Bellwood, 1997;Shi et al, 2005; The HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium, 2009). The recent fossil record and archeological analyses ostensibly favor a complete or nearly complete replacement model (Bellwood, 1997;Matsumura et al, 2001Matsumura et al, , 2008aMatsumura et al, , b, 2011aMatsumura and Hudson, 2005;Matsumura, 2006Matsumura, , 2011a. This model, the two-layer and replacement model, assumes that the indigenous inhabitants of Southeast Asia trace their phenotypic and genetic ancestry to an Australian-like lineage.…”

New Perspectives in Southeast Asian and Pacific Prehistory

“…This is known as the 'two-layer' hypothesis, and is a common hypothesis used to explain the population history of this region. Most recent studies based on the morphological analysis of new skeletal discoveries, as well as dental characteristics, strongly support the twolayer hypothesis Matsumura 2006;Matsumura et al 2008aMatsumura et al , 2008bMatsumura et al , 2011aMatsumura et al , 2011b. This hypothesis has gained theoretical support from the fields of historical linguistics and archaeology, which have linked the dispersal of language families, including Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Daic, Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao, etc., with the expansion of rice farming societies during the Neolithic period (Bellwood 1987(Bellwood , 1991 Higham , 2001 Bellwood and Renfrew 2003;Zhang and Hung 2010).…”

“…In the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene of Southeast Asia, several sets of human remains exhibit Australo-Melanesian characteristics, and it has been argued that an indigenous population possessing this morphological form occupied Southeast Asia. These skeletal data demonstrated significant genetic discontinuity between pre-and post-agricultural populations, suggesting that dramatic agriculturally driven demic expansion occurred in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) beginning in the Neolithic period (see Matsumura and Zuraina 1999;Matsumura 2006;Matsumura et al 2008aMatsumura et al , 2008bMatsumura et al , 2011aMatsumura et al , 2011bOxenham et al 2011;Matsumura and Oxenham 2013a, 2013b. This population history scenario for Southeast Asia is known as the 'two-layer' or 'immigration' model, a scenario of human population movement that was first postulated in the middle of the last century (q.v., Jacob 1967).…”