The Southeast Asian prehistoric house: a correlation between archaeology and linguistics

Abstract

Austroasiatic languages are spoken from Southeast Asia to central India, and their divergences evidence a considerable passage of time since speakers of the proto language spread south from the lower Yangtze region. Proto-Austroasiatic etyma for the house and its component parts have raised the possibility of their validation through matching archaeological data. It is found that there is a correlation between linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence that involved the expansion of Neolithic rice farmers who brought with them a cultural package of agriculture, pottery, domesticated animals and housing structures, and who integrated with the indigenous hunter gatherer communities they encountered.