The topic of Việt origins is one that many people find interesting. However, it is a topic that requires that one constantly update one’s knowledge.
Over the past 10 years, a lot of new knowledge about Việt origins has been produced, so I am writing this post to give people a sense of what recent work in archaeology, genetic science, and linguistics is now telling us about that topic.
Over the past 10-20 years, there is a view of the prehistory of East and Southeast Asia that most scholars in archaeology, linguistics, and genetics have come to agree upon.
That view is that 1) anatomically modern humans (AMH) migrated from Africa to Asia, that 2) rice was first cultivated around the Yangzi River Valley, and that 3) this led to a “Neolithic expansion” that pushed people southward.
As part of that southward expansion, agriculturalists migrated into the area of Mainland Southeast Asia from the area of what is now southern China first around 2,000 BC, and then people who had knowledge about metalworking seem to have entered the region starting around 1,000 BC.
This understanding of the early history of the region is known as the “Two-Layer Model.” It argues that Vietnam was populated at two times.
The first people to populate the area were some of the earliest people to arrive in Asia from Africa. The second people to populate the area were agriculturalists who migrated into the region from the area of what is now southern China during the Neolithic period.
The scholar who has produced the most information about the Two-Layer Model is Hirofumi Matsumura of Sapporo Medical University. Matsumura has employed various techniques to examine ancient human remains from across Asia, and each one of his studies has provided more evidence for the Two-Layer Model.
Further, Matsumura has not worked alone. Instead, he has collaborated with colleagues in Vietnam, Australia, and China (please view the names in the image above).
This is important to note because what it means is that one cannot dismiss the Two-Layer Model as a “Japanese perspective” (or a “foreign/international perspective”) because leading scholars from the main places that the model refers to – Vietnam and China – have collaborated with Matsumura in these studies.
As such, the Two-Layer Model is not a “perspective.” It is the globally-accepted current state of knowledge about the peopling of Mainland Southeast Asia.
So, how exactly do scholars like Matsumura know that there was a migration into Mainland Southeast Asia starting around 2,000 BC?
To simplify a complex topic, they compare skeletal remains that date to around 2,000 BC with earlier skeletal remains and find differences between the shapes of skulls, and differences in teeth, and things like that.
In the case of Vietnam, the earliest inhabitants are referred in international scholarship as “Hoabinhian peoples.” What Matsumura has found is that when you compare the skeletal remains of Hoabinhian peoples with later skeletal remains, you discover “significant morphological discontinuity,” which is the scholarly way of saying “the two types of skeletons are very different.”
Further, the later skeletal remains resemble modern-day Vietnamese much more than the ancient Hoabinhian skeletal remains do.
Finally, alongside the skeletal remains that have been dated to around 2,000 BC, Matsumura and others have also found archaeological evidence of agricultural activities.
Therefore, there is evidence from around 2,000 BC in Vietnam of 1) different types of humans (as demonstrated through the different types of skeletal remains), and 2) agriculture (rice cultivation).
Given that archaeologists have demonstrated that rice cultivation first began in this area of the globe around the lower Yangzi region, the appearance of a new type of people and rice cultivation in Vietnam around 2000 BC is the kind of evidence that Matsumura employs to support the Two-Layer Model.
While the archaeological evidence that Matsumura and his colleagues in Vietnam, Australia, and China have presented is very convincing, recent genetic studies have provided yet more evidence that supports the Two-Layer Model.
In addition, genetic studies have started to provide more details about what happened when agriculturalists from the area of what is now Southern China migrated into Mainland Southeast Asia starting around 2,000 BC.
In particular, they have demonstrated that some of the ethnic minority groups in Vietnam today have some genetic ancestry from Hoabinhian peoples, which suggests that the ancient ancestors of these peoples may have been some of the earliest migrants into the region, and in the process, inter-mixed with Hoabinhian peoples.
By contrast, recent genetic studies have discovered that the majority Kinh/Việt population in Vietnam does not show signs of genetic ancestry from Hoabinhian peoples, suggesting that the ancestors of the majority Kinh/Việt may have migrated into the region later.
Like the archaeological studies, this work in genetic science has been conducted by teams of researchers from countries around the globe, including Vietnam.
Let us now turn to linguistics. Over the past 20 years, a large amount of linguistic data has become available to linguists, and much of this is available in online databases. This has enabled linguists to advance their knowledge significantly, particularly as it enables them to comparatively examine multiple languages in a language family and to attempt to reconstruct the “proto,” or earliest version of a language family.
Linguists argue that the agriculturalists who started to migrate into Mainland Southeast Asia around 2000 BC likely spoke some form of proto-Austroasiatic (the earliest form of Austroasiatic [Nam Á] languages). Linguists still debate where exactly the Proto-Austroasiatic homeland was, but they argue that the agriculturalists who migrated into northern Mainland Southeast were Proto-Austroasiatic speakers.
While there are various linguists whose scholarship is important, I find the work of Mark Alves to be particularly helpful, such as his recent “Historical Ethnolinguistic Notes on Proto-Austroasiatic and Proto-Vietic Vocabulary in Vietnamese.”
In this article, Alves identifies and discusses vocabulary that he argues can be traced to either Proto-Austroasiatic and/or Proto-Vietic (the earliest form of a Vietic language). His findings can provide yet more evidence of the migration into Mainland Southeast Asia of agriculturalists.
Alves has found, for instance, that there are words pertaining to agriculture in Vietnamese today that can be traced to Proto-Austroasiatic. This means that these same words can be found in other Austroasiatic languages, as these terms were present at a very early time before members of this language family dispersed into different areas and developed distinct linguistic terminology.
These are words like gạo (husked rice) and chày (pestle).
He then has found that there are other words that are not Proto-Austroasiatic, but instead, only exist in Vietic languages, and which he, therefore, traces to a Proto-Vietic. What this means is that these terms could have been developed in say the Red River Delta after some Proto-Austroasiatic-speaking agriculturalists migrated into the region from an original homeland.
These are words like nắm and vắt (a handful), and ruộng (rice-field).
Such linguistic information makes sense in the context of the archaeological and genetic information that documents the migration into Mainland Southeast Asia of Proto-Austroasiatic-speaking agriculturalists. The early migrants shared very basic agricultural vocabulary, terms like gạo (husked rice) and chày (pestle), with other Proto-Austroasiatic-speaking peoples.
Then as some of these peoples stayed in the area of the Red River Delta, while others migrated to other places, the ones that stayed developed more specific terms, such as the measurement terms, nắm and vắt (a handful), as well as ruộng, a term for a rice-field.
While the Two-Layer Model is now the standard way of understanding the early history of Vietnam (and other regions of Mainland Southeast Asia), and while numerous Vietnamese scholars have contributed to the studies that have documented this explanation of the past, I don’t see this knowledge getting written about in the world of Vietnamese scholarship, or in the Vietnamese media.
Instead, as I wrote about here (How Vietnamese Genetic Scientists are Erasing the Past), the norm in Vietnam has been to talk about this period in general and vague terms, to just say that things were “diverse” (đa dang).
However, the combined archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence discussed above (and there are numerous other works we could/should cite) provides a very clear picture of where the Việt came from.
Indeed, there is really no longer a reason to say that Việt origins are not clear or are debatable. They are very clear now, the clearest that they have ever been, and this topic will undoubtedly get even clearer in the years ahead.
Finally, the people whom we today call the “Vietnamese” (người Việt Nam) are, of course, very very different from the people who lived in the Red River delta region 2000+ years ago, the people I’m calling here the Việt (người Việt), but that is another story. . .
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First, let me quote an example that everyone recognizes. The [dao] (knife) sound in Vietnamese is derived from the word “Đao 刀”. I consider language to be math too, so in certain cases D = Đ (I could list a lot of examples, but that’s for later). Thus, at some point in history, Vietnamese people read the word “Đạo 稻” as [dạo].
The second is the character “Yểu 舀”, which is now read in Beijing as [yǎo]. This is the ladle to scoop water in Vietnamese: [gáo].
From here I go back to the word “Đạo 稻” which clearly affirms that “Hòa 禾” indicates meaning, and the word “Yểu 舀” indicates sound. If “Yểu 舀” has become [gáo], it is clear that [gạo] has the same root as “Đạo 稻”.
And yet, reading together with the “Yểu 舀” sound, there is also the word “Đạo 蹈” which is the root of the [dạo] sound (đi dạo = walking). You must have seen “Túc 足” indicating the leg.
In other words [gạo] in Vietnamese is a variant of the middle ages sound [yǎo] and most likely [yǎo] is Hanyin (Hán âm 漢音) because Đạo is Tangyin (唐音).
Vietnam language researchers in the West may be completely wrong to think that Vietnamese is of Austroasiatic origin or Mon Khmer. We’re talking very ancient Han Tang written vernacular (漢唐白話) and are completely traceable if the Vietnamese language proficiency is deep enough.
@ Trương Thái Du
Your post is much instructive , I wait for more examples ,as you said , of ” Chinese – VN derivative words ” ( đọc trại )
VN language is grosso modo one third pure Nôm words , one third false nôm / real Han ( đọc trại ) and one third
Hán việt .
I think the “đọc trại ” words came with Chinese colonists under Tchao Tuo ( Triệu Đà ) Their pronunciation is akin tto today Mandarin
Han Viêt words came with the Tang literati who fled the north ( China ) after the fall of Tang empire .
Nôm words express concepts with low sophistication level ( nôm na )
After Deng siao Ping attacked VN in 1979 , the VN government tried to replace HV ( chinese ) words with nôm words
but the move turned out to be impractical : first , due to the low sophistication of nôm words ; then , the three components of VN language are completely intertwined in every day talk , it’s impossible to speak VN with only nôm words . Besides , when one talks or writes in sophisticated domains , 80% of the words are HV
Bernhard Karlgren , the ^pope of Chinese linguistics in his landmark ” Analytic dictionary of Chinese and Sino -japanese words ” classified Chiese pronunciations in 3 main groups : Mandarin , Cantonese and Ancient Chinese ( or Tsin – Tang pronunciation )
HV words come from the Tang refugees , their pronunciation is much similar with Ancient Chinese ;
Tang poems told in VN are more musical , more harmonious to the ear than told in Mandarin ( which is Manchu
pronunciation of Chinese language )
May the truth come out and win over the liars.