Heinz-Murray 2E.book

54 Part I: Land and Language

Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. When the last glaciation receded, some of

them must have moved up into the headwaters of the Yangzi, Brahmaputra,

Irrawadi, and Mekong around 4000 B.C.E. (Matisoff 1991). From there, one

subgroup, the Tibeto-Burmans, followed the Brahmaputra into the Tibetan Pla-

teau, or followed the Irrawadi and Salween south into Burma, where their lan-

guages continued to diverge. But another subgroup moved northeast, into the

Huanghe and Wei River Valleys. These were the Chinese speakers.

These proto-Chinese speakers were surely not the original inhabitants of

this central Huanghe region. The Chinese have no tradition of a migration

C H I N E S E

T I B E T A N

MUNDA BURMESE

KAREN

MON

KHMER

MIAO-YAO and T’AI

Austro-

Tai

NAGA

KACHIN

South

China

Bay Sea

of

Bengal

Proto-Sino-

Tibetan

A

N

N

A

M

ES

E

Language

Migration

Map 2.2 Hypothetical distribution of Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Austro-Tai.