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.