by Hugh M. Lewis

Systematic Corroboration and the Calculus of "Confidence" The Autochthony Hypothesis Corroborative Evidence of the Sui Generis Origins of Vietnamese Civilization Archaeological Evidence Mythological Evidence

A more realistic picture of Southeast Asia may eventually emerge from the synthetic corroboration of data from alternative sources, bringing to focus the questions of the ethnohistorical comparability and commensurability of different and alternative data sources.

Two sources of data are considered, archaeological and folkloric or historical, as fitting candidates for the degree of congruence in an hypothesis of the sui-generis origins of Vietnamese civilization in the Red River Valley of North Vietnam.

What we know is always probabilistically conditioned by what we do not know. This relationship between the known and the unknown is not one of a simple dichotomous complementariness--"not known" is not synonymous with the unknown. Rather the complementariness between known/unknown can be said to be complex and governed by dynamic relations of conditional equivalence. This non-dichotomous relationship underlying our information systems permits us the flexibility to search, construct, simulate and test alternative hypothetical frameworks from the standpoint of a variable calculus of confidence.

The known and the unknown are not mutually exclusive subsets of the total range of possible knowledge--rather they are intersecting sets with overlapping complementariness and fuzzy edges. Thus there is a chaotic interaction between knowledge and the unknown, and there is a prototypicality effect of both the known and the unknown such that some kinds of knowledge are 'better known' and less conditioned by the unknown that others.

A lower level of significance for one set of data may lead to higher corroboration with other sets of data, thus an cumulative optimization and reduction of the net differences between data sets, while a higher level of significance may actually decrease the corroboration with other data sets.

If subsequent trials tend to randomly skew the known sample, this will be an indication of conceptual bias, or symbolic reification of the data. In a random sample, the least likely in a normal curve will be as likely as the most likely. This is because all knowledge is known and must therefore follow a normal curve of distribution. The failure of such data to do so will reflect a bias in the primary dimensions of relation rather than in the sample itself.

The presumption of the system of calculating confidence in the corroboration of fundamentally incommensurable data sets presented in this paper rests upon several premises. 1) The subset of the known tends to fall into a normal curve of distribution of variation. 2) The subset of the unknown is a complex set composed of the noise of the unknowable that is totally random and follows no normal distribution, and a subset of the knowable "unknown" that will tend to fall into a range of normal distribution--one that tends to be proportionately complementary and skewing of the curve of the known.

The gaps in our record of knowledge, and how we deal with these gaps, have a critical influence upon how we inter-relate our information and construct our hypothesis. There is a biased tendency to deal with such gaps in a "mythological" manner, which will have an affect upon how we conceptually frame and interpret our knowledge. The larger the gaps the more "random" the unknowable and the more skewed the likely relation between the known and the unknown. These gaps between knowledge points can be evaluated as relative "distances" in hypothetical, multidimensional space, upon which we can construct an operator-goal difference table. Plausible alternative hypothesis should work to reduce these differences in a complex, multidimensional way--the most probable set of hypothetical inferences being the optimal composite value that minimizes this distance.

This is offered as a viable, systematic substitute to the loose application of Occam's Razor. The discovery of subsequent data should work to confirm or disconfirm alternative hypothesis by predictably or unpredictably increasing/reducing this net distance. The greater the "skewing" effect of subsequent data, the less plausible the original hypothesis. The smaller the sub-sample, the higher the limits of confidence must be set and the lower the level of significance obtainable.

Corroboration in the lack of empirical evidence does not have to depend upon the researcher's own biased preconceptions, philosophical premises and rationalizations based upon the application of Occam's razor--human history has rarely taken the most direct course in its development. When multiple sources of information are available, even if the net cumulative information is insufficient, then a systematic approach based upon the relative distance between cumulative data points for each source will allow a less biased means for the construction and selection of alternative hypothesis.

It is apparent that we must separate the issue of the relative arbitrariness and non-arbitrariness and relative/absoluteness of data of data from the related issue of discrete/continuous or qualitative/quantitative scales of description. In general we may say that an arbitrary category is necessarily a relative or non-absolute category, but is not necessarily a qualitative as opposed to quantitative category. In general, quantitative categories may be relatively arbitrary and qualitatively categories may be relatively non-arbitrary.

Though this systematic quality suggests that the complexity of the problem of commensurable quantification of alternative sources of data may even be entered into a computer, the problems of counting, sampling, statistical description, and comparability, remains essentially qualitative problems of "confidence" in the normative decision-making and judgment involved in the assignment of discrete, absolute values to continuous, relative data sources. At some point in the decision-making process, a trade-off must be made between the empirical accuracy of the data and the reduction in the inherent complexity of the problem.

This point may be reached when the etic grid of arbitrary "tesserae" of measurement cross-cut the "natural" or basic boundaries of the aggregation of data in a minimally random manner, and this can be represented by a proportional ratio of fit between the grid and the data set. This "measure of confidence" can be used to combine and compare alternative sources of data by means of weighted and ranked averages.

The weighting and ranking of these proportional ratios of confidence may be done paradigmatically and alternatively, and sets up a systematic search-solution space for the comparison of different data sets, by means of the multi-dimensional scaling of the different ratios of confidence--the best choice being the solution set with the minimal net distance, or the maximal proximity, between combined data points, and the range of variation being the best boundary of plausibility for alternative solutions.

Abductive historical logic arguing backwards from the effects to the cause makes possible alternative plausible hypothesis that would not be possible in forward deductive logic. The selection of alternative hypothesis in historical reasoning therefore depends critically upon the estimation of likelihood and weighting of probabilities of alternative antecedent events. Though ultimately a relative procedure, the assignment of values is anchored in the relative availability/paucity of evidence, and in the degree to which alternative, and relatively independent sources reveal consensus or support one hypothesis versus another.

Abductive historical reasoning is a modified version of inductive inference. Such inference is guided by the most likely values available in a given sub-sample, and permits alternative inferences that are defined by only one basic constraint--as long as a inference is not definitely contradicted by counter evidence--the criterion of falsifiability--that all swans are white until one black swan is discovered. Hence, inductive reasoning is inherently tautological, or internally unfalsifiable. Abductive reasoning is internally false, as it involves a modus tollens fallacy of arguing from the consequent. But both modes of reasoning are very useful and indispensable in scientific and empirical research.

When given gaps in the record, and no firm idea of the total population or the relative size of the sub-sample, we tend to fall back upon internal arguments of non-contradiction and parsimony, i.e. Occam's razor, in construction of our hypothesis. But the chaotic complexity and multi-determination of historical patterns and processes tends to undermine the value of applying Occam's razor and tends to obfuscate the "mythological" filling in the gaps with arbitrary and alien frames of reference/inference. A systematic substitute for this process of accounting for the "gaps" in the record is outlined as a way of coming to terms with, rather than implicitly denying, the inherent complexity and problematical quality of the phenomena involved. This method relies upon the development of measures and a calculus of "confidence" that relies upon the relative weighting of alternative sets of data and the cumulative summation of the relative distances of alternative sources of data when plotted in multi-dimensional space.

This method relies upon the observed fact that the curve of distribution of any sub-sample tends toward a normal Gaussian distribution, whatever the overall skewing of the original population, and with the Bayesian conditionality of the relative cultural consensus of multiple data points that is robust with even a relatively small sub-sample of elements. This entails that the multidimensional correlation of different sets of data in a common space will tend to reflect the strength of interdependent historical relationship, and that the greater the clustering of these points in multidimensional space, the greater the strength of correlation between them.

Furthermore, on the basis of this kind of scaling, it becomes possible to construct a set of alternative reference/inference frames in which the probable direction of determination is based upon the relative inference strength, or confidence value, of arguing in one direction versus any other plausible direction.

It is possible to further systematize this process of inference frame construction and exploration by means of setting up a discrimination and operator-difference table based upon the probabilistic calculation of the total paradigm of alternative possibilities of inference. The most likely pathways through the resulting N-K network graph can be summarized as an inferential rule, which in turn can be used to build an inference engine for driving a computer based system of knowledge.

The conclusion to be drawn from this combination, if it can be implemented, is that inferential confidence can be probabilistically based upon systemic coherence that is in turn based upon a limited, given set of information, and that relative coherence can be based upon estimations of conditionality and consensus of alternative sets of data.

Such an approach, while complicated and ultimately arbitrary in the determination of its initial values, would permit the systematic exploration, simulation and comparison of alternative hypothetical frameworks that would clarify the process of filling in the gaps in the record and that would thus reduce the likelihood of external subjective bias in the construction of frameworks. The success of such a system would depend upon the relative weighting of the initial values, a process which itself can be anchored in empirical data and tests, and rendered systematic in a similar fashion, such that a range of alternative weightings can be calculated and compared.

Each set of initial values will generate a search space of alternative solutions, which can be narrowed to the most probable pathways based upon the presumption of a normal distribution. Alternative sets of inputs will thus generate multiple spaces. It is argued that these spaces will themselves be normally distributed, and that this distribution will constitute a basis for the estimation most plausible values.

An extension of this approach would be to "frame" the gaps and to plug in alternative "additional" evidence to generate alternative "scenarios." This would allow the investigation of the "gaps" that would allow us to make predictions, again based upon the presumption of a normal distribution, about which lines of research should be pursued and which kinds of evidence would support what kinds of hypothesis.

Archaeological and historic-folkloric sources of evidence are compared for the case of the sui-generis origins of Vietnamese civilization. Evidence suggests patterns for a few, successive, gradual and periodic mass-migrations of groups over the Southeast Asian region along a North-South axial gradient, overlaid by a greater cumulative frequency of many, omni-directional mini-migrations of smaller groups. The net consequence of this pattern of human movement in the region presents a picture of surface complexity overlying and obscuring larger regional and structural continuities.

This suggests a relatively deeper history for many Southeast Asian cultures than is apparent when considering its surface character as an historical and interregional cross-roads. We can conclude that Southeast Asian civilization is not so much a hybridization of South, Oceanic and East Asian civilizations, as it consists of its own autochthonous core rooted in its peninsular-insular regional character.

Furthermore, we may speculate that Southeast Asian civilization may have been at least an early source influence upon the development of both South, Oceanic and East Asian civilization as the reverse case.

The notion of autochthony; has certain implications of a long-term continuity and embedded quality of identity in a certain region, a notion of precedence that underlies one's sense of attachment, belonging. It might also imply a form of congruence of different kinds of data in the confidence of relating divergent or different forms to the same origin point in both time and place. It is a presumption that the degree of cultural ecological integration and adaptation will be high, and will tend to be posited in certain basic and recurrent forms that are highly elaborated.

The Autochthony hypothesis; has certain other implications of the originality of Southeast Asian civilization--perhaps a place for the domestication of rice, pigs, dogs, chickens, perhaps one of the first centers of the Neolithic revolution, perhaps a place of early origin of boats, perhaps the location of the invention of bronze, and maybe even iron metallurgy. We can legitimately refer to the original and seminal achievements of Southeast Asian civilization, an hypothesis that looks beyond the more conventional, Western point of view that regards Southeast Asia as largely a passive recipient of foreign influences, a cross-roads of perennial acculturation, and that neglects to consider either the originality nor the deep rooted sense of unity which may characterize Southeast Asian peoples.

What does it mean to be deeply rooted as a cultural tradition and as a people to a fixed place time immemorial. What does the claim of autochthony, if genuine, imply for our understanding of such peoples and their culture.

An autochthonous civilization implies sui-generis cultural continuity in a local region from a very early point in time. The question of autochthony may very well be an impossible one to answer because of its inherent relativity. We are forced to ask how old, compared to whom and at what point in time that the sui-generis birth took place. Probably few extant cultures on earth can claim the prehistoric depth and undisturbed cultural continuity and conservatism as the Aborigines of Australia. We must also always ask who came before. It is clear that before the Polynesians arrived in Hawaii, these Islands were always uninhabited by humans. And yet the depth of the Polynesian presence on these Islands is sufficiently shallow that if we wish to find the origins of the Hawaiians. A claim of 1,000 years BP does not have the same magnitude of a claim of 10,000 or 40,000 years, though the sense of local connection may be as deep and as strong in the former as in the latter case.

This is a difficult claim to make in light of the prehistory of movement and settlement of so many peoples. The genetic stability or transitivity of local human populations must always be held in question--replacement of earlier groups by invading peoples may have been total or partial. There should always be presumed some minimal degree of miscegenation between populations. But the question is not one of racial identity with the remote past, but rather of cultural continuity--the cultural lifeways, values, customs, folklore and symbology are all connected and interwoven with the region in which it is found. The people may not be of exactly the same genetic frequencies as the original founders of the tradition, but they will be the legitimate native inheritors of that tradition.

The linguistic roots may remain somewhat anomalous, as the connection with other far-flung languages may be tenuous and the result of extensive borrowing, or evidence of linguistic dispersion and divergence from a point of origin. The argument for an autochthonous civilization stemming from a deeply rooted cultural tradition would in most cases be a difficult, if not impossible one to make.

Many indigenous populations may in fact have a very shallow history in an area, or else may be the original, but only very recent inhabitants. Another important factor that needs to be taken into account in our formulas for autochthony are the vast cultural changes which have also been continuous time immemorial. Just as the present culture-bearers may little resemble their primitive fore-bearers in many physical characteristics, it cannot be expected that the language or the cultural patterns will actually have many deep connections or unaltered survivals. We could not really say that the culture that exists in the same region today is very much similar to its ancestral varieties.

What core features would characterize the peoples of an autochthonous civilization? Several candidates come to mind. A deeply rooted but difficult to pinpoint sense of the people of their connection with a remote past, a firm but unmarked pride in their cultural heritage, a strong connection to a sense of the homeland, an elaborate symbology that is intricately enmeshed with the features of its regional homeland, a deep tradition of mythology and folklore which points to local features, and which are lacking in foreign features, a mosaic patterning of different cultural adaptations side-by-side that encompasses a broad spectrum of the very old and the very new. From a linguistic point of view, there is a tendency to view a point of origin as most highly fragmented and dialectically varied. There is a local complexity of patterning that does not exist in surrounding regions, and that is indicative of a long history of local divergence, borrowing, invasion and amalgamation. Peripheral to these centers will may exist pockets of extremely conservative and changeless isolates. A recent historical record of dramatic, possibly violent cultural upheaval as the result of strong acculturative and developmental pressures.

The picture of what an autochthonous peoples look like becomes clearer by contrast with peoples whose culture has been definitely dislocated from its point of origin. Local adaptations may be accompanied by the presence of modified core cultural value which were rooted in another place and time. There is likely to be a biological, cultural and linguistic boundary separating it from neighboring groups. But in both cases of clearly autochthonous or non-autochthonous groups we should have some sense of a geographical/historical isolate surrounding in a sea of foreign cultures.

Perhaps the only way of firmly establishing autochthony of a people to a region, as the birthplace of an ethno-nation, is by means of the cross-corroboration of multiple lines of evidence all of which may seem to point to the same place, or at least in a similar direction, and which shows some sort of an emergent picture--a chronic collage--of the sequences and periods of emergence and development of the people.

Various lines of evidence must corroborate in a clear and unambiguous way. We can look to evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, from language, from cultural values and patterns, cultural ecology, symbology, mythology and folklore, and the more these alternative lines of evidence seem to indicate a similar point of origin, the greater the inference strength of an autochthony hypothesis. Exceptions and discontinuities that appear to occur should not necessarily contraindicate an autochthony hypothesis, but rather should point to the presence of some kind of foreign influence.

We can hypothesize for autochthony that: 1) a people have never been entirely supplanted or displaced from their native birthplace. 2) a people have never distantly emigrated from their point of origin. 3) subsequent infusions of foreign peoples and cultures never entirely erased or supplanted their local identity or identification. 4) the culture should be characterized by a very conservative core of linguistically, traditionally and culturally embedded values, views, beliefs, and symbolisms, surrounded by a sheath of an extremely flexible hodge-podge of characteristics that were the result of cultural amalgamation and acculturative borrowing. 5) the ecological patterns and knowledge of the local region will be detailed, intricate, and deeply interwoven with unique cultural, religious and linguistic patterns. 6) that the people will have culturally a deeply rooted sense of ethno-national identity that is firmly rooted to the local region, expressed through their folklore, mythology, and aesthetic and religious symbolism.

From the standpoint of a definition of civilization as opposed to culture as an inherently trans-cultural phenomena, it is perhaps self-contradictory to speak of an autochthonous civilization with the implication of the birth of a pristine High tradition. We must recognize that an autochthonous civilization may not have had to be an imperialistic one, extending itself in distant directions. An autochthonous civilization may have been a passive recipient of foreign influence, imbibing such influence in a creative fashion to produce its own unique concatenation. What marks a civilization from a culture is the amount of contact it may have survived from other cultures, as the Brits survived and eventually incorporated the Romans, despite the fact that being an Anglo-Saxon during the Roman Empire meant being nothing more than a slave-animal. Such contacts provided stimulus for the local development and elaboration of the culture.

We must refer back to Alfred Kroeber's definitions of civilization as being characterized by the relative frequency or presence or absence of unique cultural genius, and of distinctive style-patterns that were the tidewater-marks of cultural development. To count as "Civilization" in any significant since, such stylization and realization of the human capacities for culture must have been disproportionate to the average. In archaeology we inevitable associate such civilization with some degree of focal involvement, artistic elaboration or craft-specialization. There is also a sense that socially and historically a people with a shared culture achieve a sense of a regional" identity as opposed to just a local identity--that local totemism and tribalisms are somehow transcended in the imagination of the people to look to a broader cultural horizon. Such a distant horizon becomes most visible in the worldview of a people only when a since of foreign presence looms largely upon that horizon.

What are the factors that lead to some civilizations becoming "hot" and other cultural traditions remaining "cold." The peoples of the New Guinea highlands are possessors of an autochthonous cultural tradition, but they have never apparently achieved the level of cultural development that we would call a "Grand Tradition" of civilization.

We are left to consider a basic historical dialectic in which civilization as the process and consequence of foreign acculturation comes to interplay either neutrally, destructively or constructively with autochthonous processes of local cultural traditions and ethno-cultural identification to produce a unique synthesis of style patterning.

The hypothesis of Autochthony is evaluated in reference to the hypothetical sui-generis origins of "Dai-Viet" civilization in the Northern Highlands of Southeast Asia and Southern China. Evidence for the autochthonous origin in South China-North Mainland Southeast Asian Highlands will be considered, as possible a contiguous area of settlement for "Austric" speaking peoples; more recent origins in the Highlands of North Vietnam and Laos for the Dai-Viet civilization.

Multiple lines of evidence will be reviewed and reconsidered in light of this hypothesis of the autochthonous origins of the Dai-Viet speaking peoples in the Northern Highlands of the Southeast Asian Mainland. The cultural and linguistic map of peninsular Southeast Asia presents a very complicated and confusing picture that suggests an extended history of cross-cultural contact, migration, diffusion and intermingling in the region. Despite this historical complexity, there exists a surprising degree of corroborative evidence suggesting remarkable cultural continuities of indigenous peoples with the remotest past.

In trying to interpret the ethno-linguistic mosaic of mainland Southeast Asia, we are left with a number of questions. What are the motive factors that would propel one group, such as the Thai, to suddenly begin to spread out and take over the territories of other groups, when previously its residence among many other groups remained apparently dormant and unobtrusive. We may ask this question not only of the Thai, but of the Burmese, of the Vietnamese, and earlier yet, perhaps of the Malays and Austronesian speaking peoples who spread out across the Pacific Ocean. Why do some groups wax while others seem to be on the wan, and why do others seem to maintain a "steady-state" time immemorial.

Evidence in the north of Thailand and from Northern Vietnam suggests the presence of early modern humans on the Southeast Asian peninsula. (15,000 BP). Wilhelm Solheim III has written of evidence for an independent Neolithic agricultural revolution in Southeast Asia, possibly as much as 5,000 years before.

In archaeological sites in Northern Thailand and Northern Vietnam, evidence suggests a prehistoric continuity stretching back in time as much as 10,000 BP of a series of cultural sequences anticipating the arrival of the Chinese and the sinicization of the "pre-Vietnamese". Excavations at Spirit Cave, Ban Na Di, Non Nok Khe, Oc Eo and Khok Phanom Di and Angkor Watt reveal the image of a prehistoric process of a gradual emergence of an indigenous Southeast Asian civilization based upon an early "planting-fishing-dog-pig" complex, and later upon the independent domestication and cultivation of rice and the independent invention of metallurgy.

Wilhem Solheim's model of the cultural sequences based upon the Archaeological evidence suggests and early "Lithic;" period, referring to the early use of chipped stone implements, and ending around 40,000 BC The next period he calls "Lignic" (40,000-20,000) and equates with the early "Hoabinhian" sequences. "Hoabinhian" gets its name from the early artifacts first unearthed in the 1920's in the mountains near the town of Hoa Binh in North Vietnam. "It is part of my hypothesis that during this period tools made of wood--particularly those made of bamboo--became more important to peoples of Southeast Asia than tools made of stone...." (Solheim, 1972)

"Hoabinhian" culture is perhaps the earliest cultural sequence yet unearthed in Southeast Asia. It was a very stable cultural complex. Many such sites have been found in the northern mountain reaches of Southeast Asia--"almost always in small caves not far from streams..." These earliest sites between 10,000 and 5,000 BC yield at all the levels from this span a similar pattern of artifacts: simple stone tools "representative of a Southeast Asian hunter's and gatherer's culture" There are found throughout many of the levels of these earliest sites remains of peper, butternut, almond, candle nut, betel nut, cucumber, bottle gourd, Chinese water chestnut, "and certain legumes: the pea (Pisum), either the beanor the broad bean (Phaseolus or Vica), and possibly also the soybean (Glycine)." Some of these may or may not have been cultivated. "....I suggest that what is called middle Hoabinhian was a culture or cultures whose adherents were experimenting with many different kinds of wild plants for many different reasons. At some point, probably around 13,000 BC, somewhere in the northern reaches of Southeast Asia, such experiments culminated in the domestication of some of these plants and the consequent appearance of horticulture as a new means of food procurement. (Solheim, 1972)

The third period Solheim refers to as the "Crystallitic" that ended somewhere around 8000 BC. This is the phase when distinctive local cultures began to "crystallize" in Southeast Asia--containing cultural elements still found locally today. "....I suggest that it was the late Hoabinhian culture, as it is represented in these levels, that achieved the transformation from horticulture to generalized plant and animal domestication and that also achieved the invention of pottery. In different parts of the region different plants would have been selected for cultivation. The same was probably true of the animals involved: the pig, the chick, and possibly even the dog..." (Solheim, 1972). This cultural sequence is known as the "Bac Sonian." It derived its name as well from the region in which its vestiges were first uncovered in the Mountains North of the Red River.

This sequence is characterized by grinding and polishing of stone implements, possibly used in the clearly of forest. These bifacial "celts" (axes and adze-heads) are relatively more symmetrical than earlier implements and entirely smooth. They have neatly beveled edges and many have tangs for hafting to a handle. Other noteworthy objects of this sequence include stone rings, ground by bamboo sections (possibly bracelets), square butted "bark cloth beaters," small shell or stone trinkets, and, last but not least, abundant pottery, characteristically incised, cord-marked or mat-marked designs on the surface. Most of these are wide-mouthed dishes or bowls, some with stands. These traits are usually associated with agricultural peoples and have been found throughout Southeast Asia.

There are indications of "rudimentary" agricultural development. "Life in the Red River valley must have been that of a primitive agricultural people whose cereal diet was supplemented by hunting and fishing. The valley was still largely jungle, abounding in beasts such as elephants, rhinoceroses and tigers, and the no less dangerous insects that have survived. The rice fields were temporary, won from the jungle by fire, a practice that still survives among the Mois and other mountain people in Vietnam, but the fields already yield two crops a year under the care of a people that was slowly developing the qualities of physical and spiritual endurance characteristic of the peasantry of Asia...." (Joseph Buttinger, The Smaller Dragon: A Political History of Vietnam 1958: pg. 12) There was a practice involving elaborate burial rituals. Numerous skulls have been found portraying "Melanesoid-Australoid" and Indonesian elements. These people settled in caves and grottos of the limestone formations but did not venture near the coast. Bac-Sonian culture is considered "transitional" between Mesolithic and Neolithic eras.

The fourth period Solheim calls "Extensionistic" (lasting from approximately 8,000 BC until the beginning of the Christian Era), referring to a major trend of migration out from the mountain slopes onto the neighboring plans and beyond into the river valleys and deltas. "The Extensionistic trend....led the mountain peoples not only into the many other hospitable habitats of the mainland but also beyond them; the mountain peoples traveled by overland routes or by water in virtually every direction..." These inhabitants of the Sunda Shelf who retreated to the coast of South China and North Vietnam were possibly the ancestors of the Malayo-Polynesian to the sea about 4,000 BC and who eventually settled the entire Oceania.

During this phase, local cultures that were distinct from the earlier Bac Sonian evolved and people began fanning out. Mountain peoples began occupying the adjacent piedmont regions--enough of an environmental difference to lead to a shift in cultural ecological patterns toward a more sedentary settlement pattern. Such a transition is still underway. Even peoples in towns and cities collect wild plants and hunt and trap wild animals.

This cultural sequence is associated with the Phung Nguyen sites in Northeastern Thailand--cultural ecological adaptations on the middle courses of small tributary systems. Rice is found cultivated well before 2,000 B. C. on both sides of the Annamite Cordillera. Vietnamese Archaeologists have excavated more than fifty settlement sites in the "middle country upstream of the Red River delta. Three Thai sites in the middle Mekong River Valley, on the western slopes of the mountains, Non Nok Tha, Ban Chiang and Ban Na Di, also have been excavated and all these sites demonstrate the early occupation by agriculturalists, but real no evidence of earlier habitations by hunter-gathering peoples. The earliest of these sites is dated to 2,400 BC, covering only a hectare in areas and estimated to have held no more than a hundred occupants. The economic patterns of all these sites were similar--rice grown seasonally in flooded river valleys; cattle, pigs and dogs, augmented by hunting and fishing. "...The pioneer farmers chose slightly elevated ground for their villages, locales with easy access to low, regularly flooded wetlands. The terrain inland from the Red River delta was ideally suited to such settlement. Numerous low hills command a stream that is tributary to the region's major waterway. The excavations at one of these middle-country sites, Phung Nguyen, show that the settlers combined rice cultivation with animal husbandry and hunting. They were also excellent potters and proficient workers in stone. The site's name has been given to the transitional Neolithic culture of the entire middle country region that extended from about 2500 to 1800 BC Only the most recent layers of a handful of Phung Nguyen sites hold small fragments of metal; they are bronze. (Higham, 1984). The independent development of bronze metallurgy proceeded during this period.

This was superceded by a more advanced cultural complex referred to as the "Dong S'on," characterized by occupation sites that "covered tens of thousands of square meters and accommodated thousands of inhabitants." These larger settlements consisted of the gradual aggregation of hamlets and clans, suggesting a communalistic social arrangement. There occurred a transition of rapid population increases and fissioning of smaller hamlets from larger settlements, the process demonstrated in historical times during the Vietnamese "march south." "In any event, as seems to be the case around the world, the early farmers' settled way of life was followed by a period of population increase, the growth of hamlets into larger villages, and the establishment of additional settlements in a kind of continual fissioning." (Higham, 1984: pg. 143). This period witnessed the development from an earlier social network of semi-autonomous settlements into a system based upon "a few large central places" and the rise of chiefly authority. "....With one possible exception, the various cultures of the region seem to have shared much of the same kind of economic base and to have enjoyed contact with one another but to have remained politically independent. The exception is the culture of the region of what is now North Vietnam and the adjacent parts of China; during the second millenium BC a centralized authority that was quite independent of the imperialistic dynasties of northern China may have arisen in these areas." (Solheim, 1972).

The earlier communalism broke up into a more hierarchically stratified society based on relatively small villages of family groups, culminating in the "Dong Son" that Vietnamese archaeologists date to the 7th to first century A.D. The graves of the elite are rich in bronze burial goods. "They show that the ruling-class people had by this time established a clear distance between themselves and the people they ruled." Bronze plowshares, Bronze drums, bronze weapons such as the pedi-form axe, symbolic of royal authority, were found in the graves of these elite.

It appears that the Dong-S'on may have been the result of the synthesis of two peoples, one from the highlands and the other a coastal people. "...Dong-S'on civilization was a cultural synthesis achieved by peoples inhabiting a single geopolitical environment. These peoples came from both the mountains and the sea. The society they shared eventually superseded their mutual differences. We can surmise that the Vietnamese people originated in a concerted human response by diverse peoples to a particular geographical setting, the plains of northern Vietnam." (Keith Taylor The Birth of Vietnam. 1983) The bronze pedi-form axe is depicted in an Austronesian artistic tradition, the same form which, according to Vietnamese historical tradition, was wielded by a lineage of kings bearing Austro-Asiatic titles.

Evidence suggests that the Dong Son economy was based upon the development of double-cropping of rice for which the Red-River climate is ideally suited. (Higham, 1984: pg. 145.) It is at this point that we have evidence of legend and history that will be considered in the following sections.

The origin myths and historical legends of Vietnam are first considered, though it is likely that legends are available from a number cultures that may help to corroborate or test the hypothesis of autochthony. Memories of pre-Chinese Vietnamese civilization survived, along with the language, the two millennium of Chinese domination and acculturation.

Vietnamese tradition begins with the 15th Century compilation of lore "Linh-nam chich quai."They begin with the ruler Viem of Xich Qui that was located somewhere south of the Yangtze whose son became Lac Long Quan or "Dragon Lord of the Lac," who retired to "the Palace of the Waters" to leave his kingdom without a leader, and who founded the reign of the Hung Kings of the Van-lang kingdom, after he came to the Hong plain from the sea, teaching civilization, and rice cultivation, and then retiring back to the sea. When invaders from the north came, the people of the Hong plain called for Lac Long Quan's help, whereupon he kidnapped "Au Co" the intruder's wife (or daughter), and took her to the top of Mount Tan-vien. Au Co gave birth to the first of the Hung Kings.

The Vietnamese origin myth has the story of the fairy queen, Au Co, of the mountains, and the dragon lord of the sea, Lac Long Quan, who married and gave birth to a sac of flesh containing one hundred eggs, which after five or six days hatched one hundred boys, 50 of whom went to reside with the mother in the mountain, and 50 who went to reside with their father in the kingdom of the Sea in the South. Another legend has it that the dragon, associated with mountains and water, was the procreator of the Vietnamese stock. The dragon is vital symbolism not only of the geo-political integrity of the Vietnamese, but a synthesis of the basic antagonism between the land and the sea.

This mythology is held to reflect a maritime cultural base with political accretions from continental influences. "This idea was later elaborated by Vientamese literati into a genealogy of Lac Long Quan and Au Co that brought together the southern aquatic line and the northern continental line. This basic antagonism between the land and the sea can be found in many Southeast Asian countries.

Yet another legend describes the son of Au Co and Lac Long, known as the Mountain Spirit that dwelled on Mount Tan Vien after returning from the sea. One legend concerning the Tree spirit is held to be virtually identical with a legend from North Borneo. Another legend about a three year old boy, Ong Giong, who grew into a giant after eating hoards of rice, ascending to heaven and returning to succor his people, is similar to a legend told in Indonesian Lore. The battle between the lord of the mountain and the lord of the sea, who were once friends but had a falling out over a Hung princess over which the lord of the Mountain finally prevails and the Water Spirit unsuccessfully attacks the Lord of Mount Tan Vien.

Another legend of "Nhat Da Trach" or "One Night Marsh," comes from the southern part of the Hong River plain, a low swampy area near the sea. A Hung princess named Tien Dung was exploring the deltaic plains when she met a naked young man named Chu Dong Tu. They married and the couple established themselves near the sea with luxuries of sea-borne merchants. The Hung king sent an army against it, but the palace disappeared in a night into the swamp. This legend contains similar elements to the founding myth of what the Chinese called Fu-nan, in the lower Mekong.

The Hung Kings of the Van-Lang Kingdom are held to be descendants of the Au Co and Lac Long, and are a cherished tradition. "Hung" is derived from an Austroasiatic title of chieftainship that persists until today in the mountain dwelling Mon-Khmer speaking peoples, as well as among the Muong and even the Munda of northeast India. The name "Van-lang" has been phonetically associated with similar words among the languages of minority peoples throughout the region bounded by the Yangtze and the Mekong which mean "people" and "by extension 'nation'." (Taylor, pg. 2-3) Joseph Buttinger writes that the Muong called their feudal quan-lang, the title of the sons of the legendary king Hong. According to 14th and 15th century Vietnamese Historians, Van-lang was a decentralized feudal state whose inhabitants burned the forests and tilled the soil with hoes, lived on rice, used bronze, were fishermen and seafarers, and tattooed their bodies with pictures of crocodiles, dragons, snakes and sea animals. They chewed betel and blackened their teeth. (Buttinger, 1958: p. 116)

Though these legendary sources of the Hung Kings are controversial and unreliable, historical documentation locates Van-lang and its territory in the very heartland of the Phung-Nguyen culture complex (Davidson, pg. 113). The existence of the Hong-Bang and Hung-Vuong dynasties are attributed by Henri Maspero to the Van-Lang Kingdom. According to Maspero, the customs of tattooing sea monsters by fishermen to confer protection against 'crocodiles', the chewing of betel nut, the blackening of teeth, were common customs of the kingdom of Van Lang. A mythical king ordered the fishermen to tattoo sea monsters upon their arms to protect them from crocodiles. Throughout Oceania, fishermen tattoo themselves to achieve magical protection against drowning and sharks is a common trait throughout the Pacific. Vietnamese kings later had dragons, symbols of their royal authority, tattooed on their chests well into the second millenium, A. D.--as late as Tran Anh Tong (1293). The crocodile was the totem of the Chinese and Vietnamese, symbolic of the dragon.

Similarly, in old Vietnam, as until recently in Indonesia and Malaysia, betel nut played an important role in social and religious life. "A marriage proposal was always preceded by presents of betel nuts and leaves." (Buttinger, pg. 115.)

The earliest source, Viet su Luoc, reads:

"In the time of King Chuang of Chou [696-682 B. C.] in Gia-ninh, there was an extraordinary man who was able to cause the submission of all the aboriginal tribes by using the magic arts. He styled himself Hung King, established his capital at Van-lang, and named his realm the kingdom of Van-lang. He used simplicity and purity as the basis for customs and knotted cords for government. The realm was handed down through eighteen generations and each ruler styled himself Hung King." (VSL, I, IA, Keith Taylor, 1982: pg. 309)

Gia-ninh was a toponym referring to "the old Me-linh area at the head of the Hong river plain, where the Hong is joined by its three major tributaries." That Van-lang was an ancient Kingdom is attested to by Chinese sources as early as the Tang, and Hung as a royal title occurs as early as Chin in the Historiographies. This "golden-aged" affirmed by 14th century writers was probably based upon well-established, but poorly articulated oral traditions "rooted in the prehistoric culture of the Hong River plain." Ngo Si Lien of the 15th Century gives a much earlier date to the rise of the Hung Kings--2879 BC.

Me-linh; on the Hong River plain is not far from the Vietnamese mountain of mythological origin "Tan-Vien" and "Mount Hung." This culture apparently had a early technique of irrigation--using the ocean tides to affect the water levels in the flat delta. Early irrigation and sedentarism lead to feudal stratification that was rooted in the disposition and control of the arable land, "a power always formalized as right, with a claim to some supernatural sanction.

The authority of the Chiefs of this region was symbolically represented on the famous Dong S'on bronze drums. According to tradition, the Hung Kings directly controlled the Me linh areas. Beyond this they were dependent upon the cooperation of the Lac Lords, whom they protected from invasions from the Mountains, while the Lac Lords supported the Hung kings with their manpower and wealth.

According to Maspero, this was a hierarchical society based on hereditary privilege, mutual obligation and personal loyalty. People lived in small kinship communities under the Lac Lords who enjoyed different levels of privilege and authority, from village headmen up to regional leaders who advised the Hung Kings. The Hung Kings maintained their prestige with a prosperous court life facilitating peaceful relations with neighboring mountain tribes (Taylor, 1983: pgs. 12-13).

The oldest descriptions by Chinese sources of the third and fifth centuries A. D. describing the Hong River plain supported by an economy based upon tidal irrigation of paddy fields known as "Lac fields." Lac Lords designated the ruling class. According to Buttinger, "Lac" was the first ethnic denomination by which the Vietnamese became known to the Chinese. "Lac" is also the name of the "culture hero to whom Vietnamese tradition ascribes the introduction of agriculture." The name "Lac" may be derived from the Vietnamese "lach" or "rach" meaning "ditch, canal, waterway." The construction of drainage ditches was certainly the first step toward making the swampy plains of northern Vietnam suitable for agriculture. Canals and ditches with water gates would have been essential for using the tides for to control water. "The Lac fields, as described in the texts, were surely dependent on some kind of water-control system. We must nevertheless bear in mind that the Chinese texts cite the practice of tidal irrigation by way of explaining the name Lac and that Lac society may well have been based on a diversity of agricultural methods, of which tidal irrigation was but one." (Keith Taylor The Birth of Vietnam 1983: p. 10)

During the time of Lac Society, coastlines would have been inland more than ten miles and tidal influences may have reached much further inland. These influences may have been strongest in the Tay-vu area, downstream and beyond the pathways of the Hong River, between the Cau and Hong rivers "at the foot of Mount Tam-dao." This would have been a fertile region of lakes, rivers, hills and plains, "bounded by moutainous terrain on one side and soggy delta lands on the other; it was heavily populated from a very early time." This area was also accessible to river valleys from the north. "A recent study of the ancient geography of this area suggests that this was where the Lac-field society was based. (Taylor, 1983: pp. 6-8)

Working eastward from the Me-linh area, the Hung kings would have gradually extended their authority over the Tay-vu area and Lac society. The Chinese associated the Vietnamese with the "Hundred Yueh" tribes of Southeastern China. The term "ou," a Chinese pronunciation of the Vietnamese word "au," as found in "au lac" may have designated a "style of leadership" as well as a "borderland." The kingdom of Van Lang was superseded by the Kingdom of Au Lac. The Chinese interpret the expression of "Yueh" roughly as barbarian or "uncivilized" and they applied it to all peoples towards the south who lay upon the perimeter of their Classical civilization. Thus "Nan Yueh" which is the early root of "Nam Viet" can be interpreted as the "Southern Barbarians." "The Chinese Historians referred to the Vietnamese as 'Lac Yueh,' or merely 'Yueh,' or even "Lac is another name for Yueh. The Chinese assumed that the different 'barbarian' peoples who were fortunate enough to have been conquered would eventually be 'civilized'--in other words, would become Chinese. Any name expressing a people's distinctive identity, such as Lac, was diluted with broader terms, such as Yueh, which were employed as synonyms for "barbarian." (Keith Taylor The Birth of Vietnam 1983: pg. 42.)

The mythology of Vietnam; reveal themes that recur in the folklore of all Southeast Asian peoples who share a mythology based on basic thematic contrasts between mountain and sea, winged beings versus water beings, men of the mountains versus men of the coast. But the dominant theme is that sovereign power came from the sea, a theme which shares elements found in Island and coastal Southeast Asia, and, according to Taylor, is the first evidence of the Vietnamese as a distinct people or nation.

Jean Pryzluski ("La Princesse a l'odeur de poisson et la Nagi dans les traditins de l'Asie oriental" Etudes Asiatque, Publications, E'cole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient, vols. 19-20, 2:265-285. Paris, 1925.) showed the idea that the king's power came from the sea is directly opposed to the continental cultures of the Indo-Aryans and the Chinese and attributed it to a prehistoric maritime civilization of Southeast Asia "whose hearth was not localized but whose force of expansion was considerable," which spread into Southern and Eastern China and into the Indian sub-continent exclusive of the Indus Valley (Keith Taylor "Madagascar in the Ancient Malayo-Polynesian Myths" in Explorations in the Early Southeast Asian History: The Origins of Southeast Asian Statecraft edited by Kenneth R. Hall and John K.Whitmore, 1976: pg. 27).

Valerio Valeri notes a similar contrast between an autochthonous female authority connected to fertility of the soil, agricultural and natural rhythms, and an immigrant, noble and "male" authority found in many societies in the area, reflecting "a deeper contrast: that between the most fundamental, most unquestionable grounds for social existence (relative to which all are ultimately equal) and the noble values (wealth, military force, ability to attract, generative potency, etc.) that are unequally distributed and which allow those who have them most to weave and reweave around their persons hierarchical networks defined by relationships of client-ship, alliance, descent, debt and even servitude." (Valerio Valeri "Afterword" in J. Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali 1991: pg. 137)

A modification of the same theme dates with the rise of Indo-Aryan and Chinese civilization at their borders with the "central coast of modern Vietnam"--these myths have the theme of the marriage of a powerful newcomer with a local princess, thus founding a royal dynasty. Vestiges of this theme come from the Former Han of China, the "Yueh" of South Cina, the Nan-Choa kingdom of Yunnan, the Viets of the Red River delta, Champa, Fu-nan, the Khmer empire, Laos, the Thai of the Menam basin, the Mons of Pegu and Thaton, the Burmans of the Irrawaddy Basin, the Munda of northeast India, the Pallava and Cola dynasties of South India, the Srivijayan traditions of the island world. Keith Taylor relates similar thematic elements of maritime origin, fertility and sovereignty in the myths of Madagascar and Easter Island.

The picture that emerges from the consideration of the various sources of data are that no single line of evidence is by itself sufficient or without major holes and discrepancies. When taken together, though the picture may be confusing and even at points contradictory, there occurs a process of non-parametric "covariance" that strongly suggests a common origin.

Southeast Asian Sources: Critical Essays in Culture Historical Reconstruction