The Austro - Asiatics and Austronesians

Abstract

The ancient inhabitants in northern Vietnam lived in the mountainous area from the Hoabinhian to Bacsonian Stone Ages. The Indonesiens or Proto Môn gradually advanced to lower areas, first to the middle stream of the Red River in present-day Viet Tri - Phu Tho. They maintained close relations with the other groups of people who founded the archaeological cultures of Mai Pha (Lang Son) and Ha Long (in the coastal area of present-day Quang Ninh). From around the Bronze Age, these people started to move down to occupy the lower part of the Red River Delta, experiencing the four periods of Phung Nguyen, Dong Dau, Go Mun (Bronze Ages) and Dong Son (Iron Age), when a large number of bronze drums were casted.

As for the Dong Son stage, archaeologists have excavated around 200 sites in both the northern and central Vietnam. These sites often shared the following similar characteristics:

1. Similar burial rites: often earth tombs without coffins, the dead body lied stretching on his back, sometimes on his side. If there was a coffin, it was often a "boat" - shape coffin or a chiseled tree trunk. Lang Ca has 311 earth tombs, Chau Can has eight "boat" tombs, Thieu Duong has 122 tombs of the Dong Son type and 25 tombs the Han type.

2. Having known the bronze casting technique, the Dong Son people manufactured and used a series of bronze objects such as drums, tools, weapons, jewelers, musical instruments, and so forth.

3. Discovering about the iron metallurgy from about the fourth century BC, people began to produce and use such iron objects as hoe (at Chien Vay), tool, sword (at Phu Luong).

4. The development of the other productions such as rice cultivation, plain and glutinous rice, textile, ceramics.

5. Through the relations between the sites of Mai Pha, Ha Long, and Phung Nguyen, we can easily recognize the signs of relationship between the Delta people and the other groups in the mountainous areas, the region of the Tay ethnic. Lang Vac site of the Dong Son period reveals the relations between the Dong Son inhabitants with the people of the Austronesian Culture.

Various date of the Dong Son sites or at least Dong Son levels in several sites (Quy Chư: 2520-55 BP; Chau Can: 2375-60 BP; Chien Vay: 2350-100 BP; and Lang Ca: 2285-100 BP...) reveal the fact that the period from the fourth to the third centuries BC was the peak of the development of Dong Son Culture.

The Dong Son period marked a turning point in the history of the Viet ethnic. The Viet language was formed on the basis of the indigenous language of the Indonesians-Proto people who lived in the Red River Delta and endowed a part of ancient Tay and a part of Proto-Austronesian, which was separate and independent from the so-called Baiyue (in Chinese) or Bach Viet (in Vietnamese).

Despite the presence of the Austronesian maritime culture in several archaeological sites (for instance, Lang Vac) in northern Vietnam, there is virtually no evidence of the influence routes. I hope that researchers will focus their interest on this topic in the future research projects.