In 2005, when I
started researching Vietnamese origins, I had two precious documents:
1. Genetic
Relationship of the Population in China by J.Y Chu et al: “60,000 years ago,
along the coast of the Indian Ocean, people came from Africa to Vietnam.
Staying here for 10,000 years to increase the population, 50,000 years ago,
people from Vietnam went to the Southeast Asian islands, occupied India and
reached Australia. 40,000 years ago they went up to explore China. 30,000 years
ago, from Siberia across the Bering Strait to conquer the Americas.”
2. Out
of Africa peopling in the world by Stephen Oppenheimer: “85,000 years ago,
humans left Africa for the Arabian peninsula. From here follow the coast of
India to the East. About 80,000 years ago, a group of people invaded India,
forming the first population on the subcontinent. Meanwhile, the migrants continued
to move to Southeast Asia. 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Sumatra
erupted, covering the Indian subcontinent with a thick layer of lava and a
nuclear winter for thousands of years. About 10,000 people were killed. About
70,000 years ago, from the west coast of Borneo, an influx of people came to
Vietnam. Others went on adventures to Australia and the islands of the South
Pacific. 40,000 years ago, people from Vietnam conquered China. From Southwest
China, an influx of people entered Northwest India.”
Two documents help
me visualize the way Africans came to form the Vietnamese population. For me,
they are extremely meaningful because they not only lead to rewriting history
but can also change the destiny of the Vietnamese people. But there is one question
that needs to be answered: who are the Africans come to Vietnam, of which race?
Only when known this will you know who the people born in Vietnam are, from
which to follow their journey. Fortunately, I have in hand the book The Anthropology of Southeast Asia by Professor Nguyen
Dinh Khoa. From a survey of 35 stone age skulls and 35 metal age skulls found
in Vietnam, Professor said: "In the Stone Age, on Vietnamese soil, two
great strains of Australoid and Mongoloid appeared. They interbred and then
their descendants continued to crossbreed, giving birth to four strains of
ancient Vietnamese, Indonesian, Melanesian, Vedoid, and Negritoid, belonging to
the same Australoid type group. In the Bronze age, the Mongoloid appeared and
became the subject on this land. The Australoid disappeared, whether by
migration or assimilation?" (1)
This means that, due
to the small number of Mongoloid people, during fusion, their genes are
recessive in the majority of Australoid genes, leading to their disappearance
in the community. Thus, during the Stone Age, they were absent from the area's
population. However, according to the laws of inheritance, the Mongoloid gene
source is not lost but exists in the blood of the ancient Vietnamese Australoid
strains.
Another question: where did the Mongoloids come from to
emerge in the Metal age and replace the Australoids? It's only possible that
they came down from China. But how and when did they come to China? Spencer
Wells suggests the Northern route: 45,000 years ago, humans traveled from
Africa through the Middle East, to Central Asia and then to North Asia!
Somehow, due to my instincts, I don't believe in this miraculous migration
route because I feel, crossing the high mountains in the middle of the ice age
will not be a wise choice. A coastal road that is both flat, warm, safer, and
with food available would be a reasonable choice. Read the suggestion of Chu et
al that: “Maybe the Mongoloid people also came from the South,” combined with
the Mongoloid skeleton 68,000 years ago in Liujang Guangxi in near Northern
Vietnam, I came up with the idea: "70,000 years ago, when they arrived in
Vietnam, most Mongoloid and Australoid
meet and fuse to form Australoid, but there are small groups of
Mongoloid that go to the Northwest of Indochina and live in isolation in this
cold area. 40,000 years ago, when the climate was better, they went up the
Western corridor to conquer Mongolia. After the last Ice Age, they lived a
nomadic life in North of the Yellow River. Due to the preservation of the pure
Mongoloid genome, it was later called the Northern Mongols. Meanwhile, the
ancient Vietnamese Australoid, mostly Indonesian, went to Guangdong and Guangxi
and from here spread all over China. From Southwestern China, an influx of
Indonesians moved to Northwestern India, becoming the regional Dravidians.
These are ideas born from imagination and reasoning. But
fortunately, when surveying the Ban Pha site belonging to the 7000-year-old
Yang Shao culture, I learned that for the first time, the remains of the
Southern Mongoloid race were discovered. My biological knowledge helped me
speculate: the Southern Mongoloid is a hybrid of the Northern Mongols and the
Viet Indonesians. One of the most important problems of East Asia's population
is solved. Archeology also said that at this time, the ancient Vietnamese
brought millet, wet rice and cattle to the Hoang Ha basin. Hong Son culture
creates an opportunity for contact to give birth to the most numerous race on
the planet. Because in the blood of the ancient Vietnamese people, there was a
Mongoloid gene from their ancestors 70,000 years ago, so when they met and
mixed with the Mongols and added the Mongoloid gene, their descendants crossed
the limit of the Australoid strain to become the strain Southern Mongoloid,
known as Modern Viet. Therefore, the modern Viet people rapidly increased in
number, mastering the Hoang Ha basin. Around the middle of the III millennium
BC, an influx of Chinese peasants from western China followed the Tibetan
corridor down to Burma and then into India, forming the Tibe-burman language
speaking community.
From the Yellow River basin, the Southern Mongoloid people
migrated to Yangtze River basin and Vietnam, converting the populations of
South China and Vietnam to the Southern Mongoloid strain. This is a long
cohabitation that leads to genetic transformation without the encroachment of
land replacing the population. The cemetery 4000 years ago at Man Bac site in
Ninh Binh has 30 bodies of Mongoloid and Australoid people buried together,
showing this.
From there, I determined the way of forming the Vietnamese
and Eastern populations as follows: about 90,000 years ago, people from Africa
went to the Arabian Peninsula. Here they mated with Neanderthals, receiving
part of this human gene to bring to the East. 85,000 years ago they went along
the coast to South Asia. 80,000 years ago several groups invaded India. At some
time and at a some place along the way, a group of people walked quickly,
ahead, to the Guangxi Zhiren Cave and the Furen Cave Hunan about 80,000 years
ago. But unfortunately, the climate turned cold, these people were destroyed,
leaving only a few bones at Zhiren Cave and 47 teeth at Furen Cave. 74,000
years ago, the Toba volcano erupted, wreaking havoc on the Indian environment,
destroying the people who were born here. Meanwhile, the slow-moving group was
fortunate to escape from South Asia, arriving in Vietnam 70,000 years ago. This
is the only successful group that gave birth to the ancient Vietnamese.
According to this scenario, I have solved the population
formation of the Eastern peoples. Particularly for the Indian population, it is
more complicated. After the Toba disaster and atomic winter, it took time to
restore the habitat. Then people from around reconquered India.
About 50,000 years ago, the ancient Vietnamese haplotype M
including three strains of Indonesian, Melanesian and Negrito passed through
Laos, Thailand, Myanmar to India. In migration, they tend to follow racial
groups. The Indonesians occupied present-day Bangladesh and spread to the East
Indies, becoming the Dravidian majority. Along with people from Vietnam, there
are people from West Asia. 80,000 years ago, while the entire M group and part
of the N group traveled to the East, the remaining N people lived on the
Arabian Peninsula. About 52,000 years ago, when the climate was better, the N
haplotype and their R variant traveled up the Middle East, to Western Asia.
About 50-40,000 years ago, from West Asia they reconquered western India.
I. assume the following Indian population formation
scenario:
i. 80,000 years ago, African migrants entered India. The
first modern human population was born. 74,000 years ago, the Toba volcano
erupted, destroying the environment and killing about 10,000 people in India.
ii. 50,000 years ago, three races of ancient Vietnamese,
Indonesian, Melanesian and Negrito from Vietnam came out to occupy the islands
of Southeast Asia. An influx of Negritos came to the Philippines and from there
to the Andaman and Nicoba Islands. An ancient Vietnamese lineage of haplotype M
passed through Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, infiltrated Bangladesh and then
spread to all of India.
iii. About 50,000 years ago, haplotype N and its variant, R,
entered India from western Asia.
iv. About 40,000 years ago, an influx of ancient Vietnamese,
mainly Indonesians, from Southwest China invaded northwestern India, becoming
the Dravidian community in this area.
v. In the Holocene, the Southern Mongoloid from the West of
the Yellow River basin passed through Myanmar to invade India, forming a
Tibe-burman-speaking community.
vi. Around 2000 BC, from Vietnam and South China, the
Southern Mongoloid people moved to India, forming an Austroasiatic-speaking
community.
vii. Around 2000 BC, the Yamnaya nomads, on their way to the
East, invaded India, brought bronze and contributed to the creation of the
Indo-European community.
In 2012, Stephen Oppenheimer retracted his 2003 statement,
arguing that humans left Africa 72,000 years ago, not 85,000 years ago. This
did not stop me from wondering. Oppenheimer is a great author, so changing his
opinion must be carefully thought out. However, I see that perhaps the Oxford
professor was methodologically wrong. Relying solely on the molecular clock to
determine when humans will be out of Africa is an adventure. Molecular clocks
are not always reliable. It should be compared with more reliable documents
than archeology. Many believe that the earliest migrant was through the Levant
125,000 years ago. From here people passed through the Middle East and then to
North Asia. But according to my research, this path is not real. Not just
because it's hard to go, but because the archeological data doesn't support it.
The earliest remains of modern humans in North China are those of a man at
Tianyuan Cave 40,000 years ago. But genetics confirmed, it was a person with
haplotype M from Hoa Binh Vietnam. The earliest Mongoloid skull on Mongolian
soil is only 39,000 years old, 30,000 years later than the 68,000-year-old
Mongoloid Liujiang skeleton. And as mentioned earlier, human traces in Zhiren
Cave, and Furen Cave belong to the migration 90,000 years ago. They are
failures because their DNA does not exist in the blood of East Asians today.
With that in mind, I refuse the Northern path.
I also affirm that, the earliest migrants to India on Asian
soil, but due to the Toba disaster, they were exterminated. As a result, India
has no the population of its own but is made up of many sources of immigration.
The heat of the lava burned all the remains of the bones of those who appeared
before the disaster. Meanwhile their Paleolithic tools are indistinguishable from
the works of their predecessors.
Due to the receipt of reoccupiers from Vietnam and Western
Asia about 50,000 years ago, the remains of modern humans in India are not only
late but also few: the earliest skull bones on the subcontinent in Nepal are
only 28,000 years old. Compared with Southeast Asia, you will find a
68,000-year-old Liujiang skeleton and 63,000-year-old Tampalin skull. Not only
that, on Vietnamese soil, more than 30 Stone age skulls were found. This shows
that it is not possible for people to go from India to Southeast Asia and then
to Australia.
The ideas above I presented in the book Out of Vietnam
Explore In The World
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BL6NBGD?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
Reference
1.
Nguyễn Đình Khoa. The Anthropology of
Southeast Asia. University and Professional High School Publishing House. Hanoi,
1983
