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From: boyle@netcom.com (Joseph Boyle)
Subject: Origin of Agriculture and Bronze in East Asia
Message-ID: <boyleCzsFDA.3uC@netcom.com>
Organization: Boyle, Boyle, toil and trouble
References: <rsavageCyt0CM.5L7@netcom.com> <CzLKIF.D7@inter.nl.net> <petrichCzo33v.GtE@netcom.com> <Czox76.8Ct@inter.nl.net> <sarimaCzrD2x.CLL@netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 1994 19:55:58 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:33057 sci.archaeology:15376

sarima@netcom.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>Relevent to this is the fact that on the basis of genetics the
>chnese people should be speaking an Austro-Tai language. This
>means that Sinitic must, in some way, have been intrusive.  The

Sinitic is certainly intrusive in southern China, within the last 2000 
years. Its age in northern China isn't clear, but all the recorded 
civilizations are thought to be continuous, making a late arrival unlikely.

It's not clear what genetics says about northern China. Cavalli-Sforza's 
work treated China as a unit and may have only sampled southern Chinese. 
(Again, please correct me with the details)

>arrival of bronze technology and agriculture long after they
>appeared in Mesopotamia - and about the time that the collapse
>of the earliest civilizations suggest the existance of extensive
>tribal movements - is a good candidate for this arrival.

The Spirit Cave excavation in Thailand found bronze and agricultural
remains at a much earlier date, suggesting that they may have originated
in Southeast Asia independent of Mesopotamia and spread north. (Does
anyone have more details on this?)

>In this model the Proto-Macro-Caucasian area would be eastern
>Anatolia and southwards, and the Proto-Sino-Tibetan region would
>be the eastern Zagros.

Why so far south?

