Origins Of Thai People

[sbk]

Wow, lots of really interesting references. Looks like I am going to have to get reading

There was an article in the Prachathai online magazine that was a review/synopsis of Sujit's book, I think. www.prachatai.com/english/news.php?id=244

But the book being launched on that day, Historical Maps of Thailand (Siam), presents a different story of Thai history. Archaeological evidence shows that 5,000 years ago, there were already ancient settlements of people in the Suvarnabhumi or the Southeast Asian peninsula. However, it cannot be said for sure that they were the ancestors of the Thais as there is no written language to prove it, said Charnvit.

4,000 years ago, the native people knew how to produce metal to make tools in place of stones, and they held animist beliefs. Towns were formed along trade routes. After B.E.1, Suvarnabhumi was connected to the east and the west via the China sea and the Indian Ocean respectively. In B.E.500, there were small states, adopting Buddhism, Brahman, and also animism.

After B.E.1000, large states emerged, and the story began to converge with what has been considered the beginning of Thai history.

After B.E.1500, the indigenous states took control of trade, and the major trading languages were Javanese, Malay, Thai, and Lao. After B.E.1700, mass religions such as Islam and Theravada Buddhism emerged, while Brahman-Hindu was the religion of the elite. At this point, there were Thai people and Thai scripts.

After B.E.2000, there was Ayutthaya, a centre for international trade. People called their land ‘Mueang Thai', and themselves ‘Thai'. Later came Thonburi, Rattanakosin or the kingdom of Siam, and finally Thailand. This is the storyline in this book, Charnvit summarized.

Charnvit said that Thongbai's version of Thai history was based on modern Thai maps, and a story of kings and nobility, while this book is based on archaeological evidence discovered in the past 4-5 decades and anthropological findings which underlined the diversified ethnicity in the region.

However, Charnvit pointed out that this book presented just an outline, and suggested more work to be done: to conduct a whole new line of research on the origin of Thai people, as the Altai theory has become more and more unconvincing; and to study maps as technological tools of the colonialists and their purposes. There are two outstanding works that have paved the way: Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, and Siam Mapped by Thongchai Winichakul.

Assoc Prof Surapol Natapintu, Dean of Silapakorn University's Faculty of Archaeology, said that Thai people might have lived here in the first place, and not coming from the Altai, because skulls of Australopithecus dated hundreds of thousand years old were found in Ko Kha of Lampang province, and 12,000 year-old skeletons of homo sapiens were found at Lod cave in Mae Hong Son, and other civilizations were found in many areas.

In sites of ancient agricultural settlements, decorations made from sea shells have been found in the north, northeast and the central region, evidence of trading among communities in the region. Pre-historic 3,000-3,500-year-old copper mines were found in Lopburi, and major markets for copper products might have been the northeast and neighbouring countries, Surapol said.

The archaeologist said that people have lived here for 5,000 years, and during this time people moved in and out all the time.

[sabaijai]

Interesting article in the Free republic, taken from the Bangkok Post a few years ago:

BONES TELL STORY OF THAI ORIGIN

Bangkok Post ^ | Sunday November 05, 2006 | ANCHALEE KONGRUT

Posted on Sunday, November 05, 2006 10:22:03 AM by JimSEA

DNA tests on ancient skeletons in the Northeast suggest our ancestors may have migrated to this part of the region long before we first thought.

The tests were conducted by scholars and archaeologists at the Fine Arts Department in a bid to find the origins of Thai people. The team started its work in 2003, using the testing of mitochondrial DNA on skeletons in selected graveyards in Nakhon Ratchasima and groups of living people in China, and some countries in Southeast Asia.

Mitochondria are small energy-producing organelles found in egg cells which, unlike nuclear DNA that is equally inherited from both father and mother, is passed only from a mother to her children.

The result showed genetic similarities in the skeletons and people in China and Southeast Asia, which means migration might have taken place about 3,000 years ago.

There is more but it is interesting because the commonly held belief is that the Thai's migrated from China about 700 years ago.

Also, I am curious if anyone has read anything regarding Southern Thailand (not the deep South but the Middle South) and their origins. I see a great similarity in appearance between southern Thais and Filipinos. In fact, my husband is often mistaken for a Filipino by other Filipinos. Of course, he was also mistaken for a Mexican by Hispanics here in the US, that was kind of funny

This is nothing new. It has been known for decades that the Ban Chiang culture and associated cultures in Ban Prasat, etc, lived in NE Thailand 3500-8000 years ago. Homo sapiens have been in what is now Thailand a very long time, and in fact the peoples of that area were cultivating rice before the Chinese were, and their bronze culture is the oldest in the world.

Does that make them ethnically Thai? Well those bones will share some DNA with modern Thais, and most anthropologists agree that the Ban Chiang people were Austro-Thai. But the main identifier for any ethnic group is language, and we still don't know what sort of language the Ban Chiang civilisation spoke. They had no written language that has survived and obviously know native speakers still living .

As for groups that we can identify unequivocally as culturally Thai, there are many competing theories as to where they came from. The most up-to-date and best substantiated theories say that the first Thai cultures emerged near Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam. From there they migrated northwest, west and southwest, traveling to southern China, Laos and eventually Thailand.

The Thais are taught that their ancestors came from China, specifically Sipsongpanna (Xishuangbanna) but that's an oversimplification since by the time that particular Thai culture (predominantly Thai Lu) developed, there were several different Thai cultures spread across a broad diaspora from northern Vietnam to Laos and possibly Thailand.

One theory also suggests that the Ban Chiang and related cultures migrated northward to China, Laos and northern Vietnam. And then vice versa.

It's all pretty murky when you start analysing all the data but the DBP origins carry the most currency nowadays. The fact that there is shared DNA among the skeletal remains, the Chinese and the people in Thailand today doesn't tell us much because we don't know in which direction the DNA travelled.

As far as southern Thailand goes, it's a similar situation but there's more complete anthropological evidence ranging from linguistic to biological. A negroid race (sometimes called Proto-Malay) once occupied the Thai-Malay Peninsula and the oceanic islands to the east, ie, Indonesia and the Philippines. There was in-migration from Oceania to these islands as well so the main ethnicities in these areas today are descendants of the these two streams, the Proto-Malay and the Oceanic/Polynesian. The anthropological term typically used to represent this cultural and racial blend is Malay-Polynesian.

[sbk]

Are you referring to the Mani people, sabaijai? I thought there were still pockets of Manis in the jungles of Southern thailand and in Malaysia.

Also, I can see why they would consider a Polynesian mix as Southerners as a whole tend to be larger than those in the north.

[sabaijai]

Are you referring to the Mani people, sabaijai? I thought there were still pockets of Manis in the jungles of Southern thailand and in Malaysia.

Also, I can see why they would consider a Polynesian mix as Southerners as a whole tend to be larger than those in the north.

You mean the proto-Malay/negroid (also 'negrito') race? Yes there are still pockets of them on the peninsula, including the Mani (whom the Thais usually refer to as Sakai) in southern Thailand and in Malaysia orang asli.

[sibeymai]

The migrations of who went where and when are best referenced to climate change data (as a secondary reference.. the best accepted reference is still language), which does exist and is in plentiful quantity and accurate. Bear in mind that as far back as 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, and even as recent as several hundred years ago, human technology changed very slowly and technology was essentially related to making tools and weapons, growing food and herding animals. However, climate change was still occuring without the human carbon input of today and generally nature's climate changes occurred at a faster pace than human technology or knowledge changed. Therefore, migrations were usually the result of local climate change which negatively impacted on the people's ability to produce food in the area, or through disputes, wars or sometimes disease. As climates can change within a period of 500 years enough to force a migration such migration events were quite common. Generations were quite short (possibly less than half what they are now) so it would seem that people were able to remain in one place for many generations and develop culture specific to a locality.

Certainly the Thailand area and Southeast Asia in general has been populated for tens of thousands of years and periodically has experienced migrations from the west and north/northeast mainly, rarely from the south although this was more frequent as seafaring technology improved (influx of muslims especially). in some instances these migrations were assimilations. In other instances the migrations were exclusionary in that the existing inhabitants were forced to move or perish through incompatible cultures, inferior/superior technology, or disease. or climate would force a migrationary exit without a corresponding influx, floods, droughts, famines (pestilence) being the most common.

It would be great to have the definitive answers as no doubt our current theories about why things are the way they are will be as incorrect as similar hteories were a few hundred years ago. First person to invent a time machine is going to face a rush of customers.

Edited July 27, 2008 by sibeymai

[sylviex]

Interesting post, sibeymai.

I am interested in the "cultural incompatibilty" part. Can you elaborate ? I'd have thought migration might be based on more basic needs.

[PeaceBlondie]

Interesting post, sibeymai.

I am interested in the "cultural incompatibilty" part. Can you elaborate ? I'd have thought migration might be based on more basic needs.

If I may offer a Western example, the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century had to migrate or be exterminated. Very few remain in Europe. Far more in the New World and now in Africa. This may not apply to Thai history.

[sylviex]

Interesting post, sibeymai.

I am interested in the "cultural incompatibilty" part. Can you elaborate ? I'd have thought migration might be based on more basic needs.

If I may offer a Western example, the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century had to migrate or be exterminated. Very few remain in Europe. Far more in the New World and now in Africa. This may not apply to Thai history.

Indeed. I had rather assumed it was about power of other kinds, but there you go -- proof of the power of culture.

And it may well apply to Thai culture. I remember being told, many years ago, that Thais took great pride in never having been colonized. Whether it's a myth or not, the notion is interesting.

[Johpa]

Some here are intertwining several distinct historical threads. One can talk about genetic history, linguistic history, or cultural history as distinct trends or talk about how they combine in complicated fashions to arrive at distinct modern cultures. 'Thai' genetics include several layers of migrations into Southeast Asia over the millennium. Clearly the Ban Chiang people pre-dated the arrival of Tai people and even Mon Khmer (Austro-Asiatic) people by at least a millennium or two, but their gene pool must clearly be represented in todays Thai population. The origins of the Thai language are still a topic of debate amongst linguists. The Tai-Kadai hypothesis leads some to suggest that Hainan Island, not Taiwan, as a source of origin. Taiwan is argued as the origin of the Austronesian languages such as Malay. Modern Thai culture clearly derives from the migrations of Tai people southwards in response to Han (Chinese) migrations south of the Yangtze. The large presence of Chinese in Southeast Asia today is a far more modern migration. Classic Thai "high" culture is borrowed, or derived, almost entirely from Khmer culture, which borrowed heavily, as did the Mon, from India, thus leading to Coedes tome The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, a must read for all fellow history geeks. On the other hand, local village culture shares traits with other neighboring peoples and probably pre-dates the Tai migrations. I would suspect that Tai culture is better preserved up amongst the "tribal" Thais living around Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam rather than anywhere in Thailand.

Bottom line is that people migrate all over the place, they take their culture, their genes, and their languages, and then due to universality of hormonal drives that care not a whit about language or genetic purity, get things all mixed up.

[justSumGai]

http://www.angkor-planet.com/UK-hase.html

[sabaijai]

There may have been at least one culture in Lampang that pre-dated Ban Chiang, see:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2742887

Earliest Radiometrically Dated Artifacts from Southeast Asia

Paleoanthropologists are virtually unanimous in recognising that hominids must have reached mainland Southeast Asia before they spread into China and Indonesia …

[dannyman]

READ YOUR HISTORY. MONGOLIA !

[PeaceBlondie]

....Bottom line is that people migrate all over the place, they take their culture, their genes, and their languages, and then due to universality of hormonal drives that care not a whit about language or genetic purity, get things all mixed up.

Johpa's excellent post is summarized at its end. It reminds me of an early lesson in sociology: endogamy and exogamy. As surely as you cannot marry your sister, you cannot marry a stranger who looks nothing like your sister. That rule against marrying stranger is broken by hormonal drives, until there is no perfect race, and there never was any race except the human race. No culture is pure, either.

[dutchguest]

interesting and instructive topic with many good links.

I thought (and still think) the mainstream and most recent of movements of people is from South-China (Sichuan, Yunnan) into what is now Thailand (about 1700 years ago). There is a great similarity in culture and mentality in e.g. Jinghong and many Thai places.

In the book (fiction based on historic facts according the preface) "The edge of the empire" by Sanya Polprasid the wars between the cultured Chinese and barbaric nature tribes of Thais are described. Wars which forced many Thais to move southwards.

[sibeymai]

The generally accepted migration trend through Asia is southwards in successive waves, possibly triggered by climatic events at the migrant's previous location. Where migrants possessed superior technology the existing inhabitants were usually displaced. Assimilation was probably not common due to cultural differences, though it would have occurred in some instances where mutual benefit was possible. The competition for scarce resources in any given location meant that migrants weren't usually welcomed. The choice would be to either repel the migrants, which would be difficult if they possessed superior technology (which migrants from the north usually had), or move away. As most conquerors did some women were probably spared and taken as slaves/concubines resulting in the combining of genes between the two groups.

Given that today's accepted origin of modern man is Africa there's only one route out of Africa: northwards into Europe and left turn across the land bridge to the Americas or right turn to Asia. Both migration paths then take a southerly route. Logical enough; nowhere else to go and the unfavourable climate from being so far north would have prompted a southerly movement, if not immediately (because the northern lattitudes were much warmer at times in the past than they are now) then when the climate started to get colder and food became more scarce.

Australia was peopled while it was still connected to Asia and then became isolated as sea levels rose. This means that at least one major migration to the southern-most points of SE Asia was completed around 50,000 years ago. The relative short distances between mainland Asia and the Indonesian archapelago saw the development of seafaring skills which over time allowed migrations of longer distances resulting in journeys to New Guinea and further to the Pacific islands (island hopping). Australia became an island just a bit too far (200km or more) and the prevailing east/west trade winds allowed relatively easy east/west travel but didn't encourage journeys in a southerly direction hence the relative isolation of the Australian aboriginies for 40,000 years.

[sabaijai]

interesting and instructive topic with many good links.

I thought (and still think) the mainstream and most recent of movements of people is from South-China (Sichuan, Yunnan) into what is now Thailand (about 1700 years ago). There is a great similarity in culture and mentality in e.g. Jinghong and many Thai places.

In the book (fiction based on historic facts according the preface) "The edge of the empire" by Sanya Polprasid the wars between the cultured Chinese and barbaric nature tribes of Thais are described. Wars which forced many Thais to move southwards.

The Tai cultures of Yunnan that you refer to (1700 years ago) appear to have developed later than Tai cultures in northern Vietnam, so it is doubtful they originated there. More likely an intermediate migratory focus.

[Felt 35]

Cambodia.

[ai kwaan]

Interesting read.

[Kilgore Trout]

The most fascinating origin in Thailand is that of the Pattaya tribe: The maternal DNA is Issan, and the paternal genes are property of the US Navy. Anthropologists estimate the origin to be primarily in the late 60s but continuing to this day with an expanded donor base. Once an insignificant fishing village Pattaya has become a Phishing hub for a very successful cottage industry.

In addition there is also a large contingent of "homo-erectus" in this area.

Edited October 27, 2010 by Kilgore Trout

[nellyp]

I have it on good info that a man with no road sense from one village married a woman who couldn't give directions from another.....hey presto :D

[h90]

My wife (from the south) claims that in the south Indian people settle down, as well Indonesians and all are mixed....

[travelmann]

Yeah I heard they all came out of Africa Black as a coal house..................there that should make Thais happy..........humph, were all people who cares.

Lets go back even further..............were all related to the first single cell organisms, how's that!!

Edited October 27, 2010 by travelmann

[tim armstrong]

The migrations of who went where and when are best referenced to climate change data (as a secondary reference.. the best accepted reference is still language), which does exist and is in plentiful quantity and accurate. Bear in mind that as far back as 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, and even as recent as several hundred years ago, human technology changed very slowly and technology was essentially related to making tools and weapons, growing food and herding animals. However, climate change was still occuring without the human carbon input of today and generally nature's climate changes occurred at a faster pace than human technology or knowledge changed. Therefore, migrations were usually the result of local climate change which negatively impacted on the people's ability to produce food in the area, or through disputes, wars or sometimes disease. As climates can change within a period of 500 years enough to force a migration such migration events were quite common. Generations were quite short (possibly less than half what they are now) so it would seem that people were able to remain in one place for many generations and develop culture specific to a locality.

Certainly the Thailand area and Southeast Asia in general has been populated for tens of thousands of years and periodically has experienced migrations from the west and north/northeast mainly, rarely from the south although this was more frequent as seafaring technology improved (influx of muslims especially). in some instances these migrations were assimilations. In other instances the migrations were exclusionary in that the existing inhabitants were forced to move or perish through incompatible cultures, inferior/superior technology, or disease. or climate would force a migrationary exit without a corresponding influx, floods, droughts, famines (pestilence) being the most common.

It would be great to have the definitive answers as no doubt our current theories about why things are the way they are will be as incorrect as similar hteories were a few hundred years ago. First person to invent a time machine is going to face a rush of customers.

I'm interested in the migration angle too. Its not been well researched but it is now known that Australian Aboriginals didn't just stay in Australia for 40,000+ years. Particularly those in the Northern Territory to Queensland traded and visited places as far away as southern India. They were not technically advanced, but had a keen interest in nature and exploration. They were doing this '000s of years ago, not hundreds. For sure if you sit on a local beach in East Timor, Bali or southern Thailand you will see kids that look very Aboriginal.

Its a bit off the original question, but to me as a country boy from Oz, in another life, I'm fascinated also by the migration of domestic animals, particularly dogs, horses and some cattle. They obviously moved with the people. I see the same dogs all over Asia, as in dingo type breeds. The same ponies immortalized in bronze sculptures by the Chinese 2,000 years ago can still be seen in many places, including Thailand. So, I guess as travel became easier Thailand had many inward migrations to its productive land and especially given its location, as a trading centre.

[elcent]

a German research done two decades ago suggests the origin in Mongolia, from there to central China, forced to move to South of China, kicked out there and then entered Siam.

[sibeymai]

SBK, for the complete picture on the peopling of the world (out of Africa) read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel".

His conclusion reached by tracing linguistic similarities was that there were successive waves migrating south out of China. Don't quote me but I think he says for at least the last 5,000 years.

[MrBrad]

If you care to spend $100, the National Geographic Society in the US will map your DNA lineage. Then, assuming the study is accurate, you will know where you and your people came from. I, myself, did this and so did a Thai friend. Our families went our separate ways somewhere in the Middle East many centuries ago. His people headed east toward India and eventually Thailand, mine went north into Europe and on to Minnesota.

A not-too-specific map can be seen here, at the Genographic Project.

[tim armstrong]

See the latest news today about the discovery of human remains in China that seem to be around 100,000 years old.