jw: Hi Mr Lindsay, where did the South Chinese come from? Are the Indochinese the same as the South Chinese?
The Vietnamese people came from Southern China about 4-5,000 YBP. There is a Vietnamese legend that says that the forefather of the Vietnamese people came from an area in Southern China near a large lake, the name of which escapes me now. I believe that legend actually lines up with the facts. There was a huge Southern Chinese Yue invasion of Vietnam 2,300 YBP.
There was also a huge movement of Chinese from Yunnan into Thailand 900 YBP.
There was some sort of similar large movement into Laos. In addition, in the last 300-400 years, there was a large movement of Southern Chinese Hmong people into the north of Laos. The indigenous people are composed of a number of small Mon-Khmer speaking groups in the southeast of the country. The Khmu are an example of such a group. The Lao people proper are very similar to the Thai linguistically and anthropologically.
The Indochinese people have a lot of Chinese blood in them, particularly the Vietnamese and the Thai. In both Thailand and Vietnam, the population is heavily mixed between an indigenous group of Paleomongoloids and the newer influx of Neomongoloid Southern Chinese. A good representative of the earlier stock of Paleomongoloids in Vietnam would be the rather primitive Montagnard people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
Thailand has a large Indian component mixed in. Cambodia also has a large Indian component, and their Indian admixture is greater than that of the Thai. The Khmer are probably Paleomongoloid indigenous + Indians + a smaller number of Neomongoloid Chinese. The Khmer may have the largest Paleomongoloid component of the four nations.
