Origins of Southeast Asian People as Viewed from Cranial and Dental Morphology

Abstract

Human skeletons of the Hoabinian period from Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam demonstrates those affinities of the cranial and dental morphology to the Autralo-Melanseians. These specimens, as well as other fossils from Tabon, Niah and Vietnam, were members of populationt hat originatedi n the late Pleistocene Sundaland, the ancestors of modern Australian Aboriginal peoples. On the other hand, particularly in the dental characteristics, similarities to the modern North/East Asians were observed in the subsequent Neolithic to modern populations in a part of Southeast Asian regions. This finding suggests that the migrants from the Asian Continent had expanded into its peninsula and the island regions of Southeast Asia since the Neolithic period, supporting the dual ancestry (hybrid) hypothesis for the population history of Southeast Asia.