Peopling of Southeast Asia
[1] Anatomically modern humans are suggested to have reached Southeast Asia twice in the course of the Southern Dispersal migrations during and after the formation of a distinct East Asian clade from 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.
[5] In 2007, an analysis of cut marks on two bovid bones found in Sangiran, showed them to have been made 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago by clamshell tools.
In addition to the discovery in Laos, there are also a number of human remains and related artifacts found across mainland Southeast Asia in which it suggests the new ideas of the regional Late Pleistocene development as well.
[10]: 50 During the last glacial maximum, the sea level decreased and promoted human migrations that increased genetic admixture among Southeast Asian populations.
Due to their use of ocean-going outrigger boats and voyaging catamarans,[a] Austronesians rapidly colonized Island Southeast Asia, before spreading further into Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Madagascar[b] and the Comoros.
Originating from southern China, where many languages of these families are still spoken, they expanded southwards into Southeast Asia in historical times around the second half of the first millennium CE.
[9] Territorial principalities in both Insular and Mainland Southeast Asia, characterised as Agrarian kingdoms[21] had by around 500 BCE developed an economy based on surplus crop cultivation and moderate coastal trade of domestic natural products.
[24][25] Intensive wet-rice cultivation in an ideal climate enabled the farming communities to produce a regular crop surplus, that was used by the ruling elite to raise, command and pay work forces for public construction and maintenance projects such as canals and fortifications.
[24][22] Though millet and rice cultivation was introduced around 2000 BCE, hunting and gathering remained an important aspect of food provision, in particular in forested and mountainous inland areas.
The oldest source derives from mainland Hòabìnhians, who share ancestry with present-day Andamanese Önge, Malaysian Jehai, and the ancient Japanese Ikawazu Jōmon.
The authors concluded that East Asian-related ancestry expanded much earlier into Maritime Southeast Asia than previously suggested, long before the expansion of Austroasiatic and Austronesian groups.
[36] Another study about the ancestral composition of modern ethnic groups in the Philippines from 2021 suggests that distinctive Basal-East Asian (East-Eurasian) ancestry originated in Mainland Southeast Asia at ~50,000BC, and expanded through multiple migration waves southwards and northwards respectively.
