The Austroasiatic Urheimat: the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis

Abstract

The Austroasiatic language phylum is situated in the heartland of MSEA and yet today is remarkably fragmented, its individual branches scattered from Northeast India to the Malay Peninsula. Interwoven territorially with much more geographically coherent phyla such as Daic and Hmong-Mien, the narrative of its dispersal is central to our general understanding of the ethno-cultural history of Southeast Asia. Although comparative Austroasiatic linguistics is now more than a century old, limited progress has made towards a consensus on the homeland or Urheimat of Austroasiatic languages. The Austroasiatic phylum is generally considered to be the oldest identifiable language grouping of that region (excluding perhaps Andamanese). A model for its origins and migration paths that could account for the present distribution of the languages is crucial for the linguistic history and ethnography of Southeast Asia. However, the linguistic literature relating to this too often presents confident claims that invoke unpublished materials, paying little heed to evaluating alternative hypotheses. Published studies are not always transparent, especially problematic when they lack adequate data that readers might assess and analyse for themselves. In this chapter we focus on linguistic arguments for a likely Austroasiatic homeland, and possible correlations with the - still emerging - archaeological record. The orientation of the chapter is linguistic; we assume no necessary equation between linguistic entities and archaeological assemblages or genetic profiles. It is evident that the ethno-history of Southeast Asia has often involved multilingualism and various radical language shifts among communities large and small, and this must also have occurred among prehistoric communities, especially in the context of the early expansion of agriculture. Consequently, when we talk about a linguistic homeland or Urheimat, we do not wish to imply that the cultural complex which radiated from that centre necessarily largely originated in that location, only that it began to diversify and spread from there. In other words, it is the last location in which the speaker community presented a linguistic unity.