Prostitution in the Muslim World: A Survey

North Africa (includes Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt): I am not aware of much open prostitution in any of these countries. There is definitely prostitution in Egypt (both male and female – male being much more common!) but I do not think that the female prostitution in places like Cairo is so open. In the rest of the lands, I am not aware of much prostitution at all.

Sahel: I don’t know much about these countries, and I’m not aware of much prostitution there.

Eritrea and Ethiopia: There is some prostitution here, but it is not that open. But these land are 50-50 Muslim-Christian.

Palestine, Jordan, Iraq: Little open prostitution. There was little prostitution under Saddam either. There was a case where Uday had ~300 prostitutes murdered. There is a lot of honor killing in these places too, and that tends to discourage prostitution to say the least.

Syria: There has traditionally been some prostitution in Syria in nightclubs. In recent years, many Iraqi women are working there. But Syria is a very secular society. There is some honor killing here though.

Lebanon: For sure there is prostitution in Lebanon, but how open it is is not known. Lebanon has a huge Christian population that liberalizes things.

Turkey: Apparently there is prostitution in Turkey, but how open it is, I have no idea. Turkey also has  legal pornography and it’s supposedly even on TV late at night. But Turkey is a very secular European type society.

Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Azerbaijan: Prostitution levels and openness are not known, but these are pretty open, Europeanized, secular Muslim societies, and Azerbaijan is Shia.

Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain: My understanding is that prostitution is nearly nonexistent in all of these places, but I stand to be corrected. Anyway, it is certainly not open. There is a lot of honor killing in Yemen.

UAE: There is quite a bit of prostitution in Dubai anyway, but the girls are almost all foreigners, often Europeans or Russians.

Iran: Discussed earlier. There is quite a bit of prostitution in the religious city of Qom sanctioned under the temporary marriage gambit. There is also more than you might think in Tehran, especially in the more rundown outskirts.

The mullahs have been mulling over making prostitution legal under the rationalization of temporary marriage on the grounds that the girls need to be in houses in order to be better protected. Women arrested for prostitution are often sent not to jail or prison but to houses run by women for rehabilitation under a compassionate interpretation of Islam sanctioned by the mullahs. Iranian Shiism believes that Islam must be constantly updated with the times, and the mullahs can rationalize all sorts of accretions under this theory.

Afghanistan: There is some prostitution, but it is certainly not open, and it is quite hidden. But I was always surprised at how much there was, and I wondered how Hinduized Afghan Muslims were.

India: Prostitution in the Indian Muslim community is not known, but it may be as prevalent as in Pakistan.

Bangladesh: Prostitution levels are not known, but they may be on the level of Pakistan. Bangladeshi Muslims are heavily Hinduized, maybe worse than Pakistani even.

Thailand: I understand that prostitution is known among Thai Muslims, and it may be as open there as elsewhere in Thailand.

I have seen photos online of Thai Muslim prostitutes in the South. I know a Thai Muslim woman on a social networking site, and her sexual openness stunned me. She has married a variety of sociopathic Muslim males, typically Arabs. If you look at her public photos, she is acting very dirty in many of them, posing very sexually. There are even some nudes and partial nudes of her in there! But she is very much a Muslim, and there are photos of a Muslim man and teenage boy there, one holding what looks like a bomb and the other holding an automatic weapon. The juxtaposition between her dirty pics, her nudes, her murderous looking Arab lovers and the armed Islamist jihadis was something else!

I conclude that Thai Islam has a lot of pre-Islamic accretions in it, and furthermore that Thai Muslims may be a highly sexualized people, like the rest of the country.

Malaysia: Prostitution levels not known, but may be relatively open. I understand that most of the prostitutes are Chinese though, who are not Muslims.

Indonesia: There is a lot of prostitution here, and it appears to be pretty open. But Indonesian Islam is full of a ton of accretions from local and pre-Islamic traditions. In addition, they are an easy going tropical Asian people who tend to have loose and relaxed attitudes about sexual matters.

Bigfoots are Found in Most of the World

Warning: Long, runs to 52 pages.

Bigfoots or relict hominids range over much of the planet, mostly in heavily forested regions or in very high mountains.

In North America, Bigfoots range from the Mexican border to Alaska, across the Canadian Arctic and even the Canadian Islands, down to Labrador and Prince Edward Island over to Greenland. They are probably most common of all in the Lower Fraser River area of British Colombia and in the Mt. St. Helens area of Washington and just across the border along the Colombia River and southwest of Portland.

40,000 Bigfoot sightings have been reported, and tens of thousands of tracks have been found, some extending for miles. Countless track casts have been made. Bigfoot scat from Ohio was examined, and it was determined that it came from a nonhuman digestive tract.

A giant Bigfoot, 12 feet tall, was seen at Pitt Lake in British Colombia in July 1965.

The Eskimos say that there was a large race of hairy relict hominids living in the area when the Eskimos showed up. They were not as smart as men, and they fought amongst themselves all the time. They made primitive bone and stone tools and lived in primitive circular encampments of large stones with whale rib and skin roofs. When seen by Eskimos, they were shy and retiring. Eskimos to this day call them Toonijuk.

The Toonijuk existed into the 20th Century in Greenland but were driven into deep and inaccessible valleys by the Eskimos. They preferred rotten meat and did not know how to dry skins, but wore them wet as clothing. They also used skins as bedding. They were reported by Rasmussen as late as 1910.

Scherman records them as late as 1902 on Southampton Island in Canada. Toonijuk lived in underground homes. They had a type of primitive cooking pottery and some primitive weapons. They were excellent hunters who could call game by voice or gesture, and they were extremely strong.

The ruins of a Toonijuk village was found by Scherman on Bylot Island, Canada in 1955. They found sleds, a burial zone with huge rocks over the bodies and large earthen mounds. They also found utensils, bow and arrows, strings, darts and lances, most of them carved of bone. The people were very small, only four feet tall.

The Toonijuk type in Alaska is called Arulataq. They differ in having long, flowing hair as opposed to the short, thick hair of the Toonijuk.

A race of tiny, hairy, 2-3 foot high people is said to live on Hawaii. They were called Menehune. They seem to have been non-human. In 1786, under the reign of King Kaumaulii, 2,000 people lived in Wainiha Valley. Of these, 65 of them Menehune. In 1940, a school superintendent and two classes of kinds, 40 in total, saw a Menehune on Waimea. Sightings have continued up until 1989 on Kauai. Existence dubious.

A race of tiny, hairy, gnome-like people is said to exist in North America and Mexico all the way down to Honduras, where they are called the Duende. They are mostly known from Indian folklore, but some Indians insist that they are real. The only evidence is sightings, mostly in the New Mexico-Colorado area, but those seem to have died off since the 1930′s. They are said to live underground. Tiny arrowheads have also been found, but it is not known who made them. They are said to be hostile to humans.

A 14 inch skeleton is known from California, but it is not known what it is. There is one recent sighting from New Mexico. It was described as “not human.” A smaller type, the 3-5 ft. Duende, is found in Yucatan, Guatemala and Belize. Footprints were found in Guatemala in 2004. In Belize, they live in jungles in the south of Belize. Existence probable.

In Mexico, this type is called the Aluxob. It lives in Yucutan, where it is mostly seen by Mayans but also by Mexicans and US tourists. The most recent reports are from 2007. They are not hairy. The Maya say that the Aluxob are their ancestors. It is not known whether or not the Aluxob are fully human.

Relict hominids have been reported in Latin America. They are found along the highlands from Chiapas south to the Andes, and from Colombia south to Bolivia and Chile. Some are also found on certain Chilean islands and in the Guyana Massif.

However, in the Yucatan, Guatemala and Belize region, the Indians talk about a creature named Sisemite or Ulak, which is a Bigfoot type. It ranges along the highest mountain peaks. The locals is described as just another animal in the forest. Approximately 5-6 feet tall, it is covered in hair that grows almost to the ground.

In 1898, a Sisemite was killed in Honduras, and another was shot dead in Panama in 1920. As of 1967, they were said to still exist in the Sierra Madre Occidental, Chiapas, Guatemala and Costa Rica. There have been sightings in the past 40 years in Honduras in the Guaranta Mountains north of the lower Rio Coco. Existence probable.

The variety in Ecuador and Colombia on the eastern slopes of the Andes, the Shiru, is small, 4-5 feet tall. There is also a type in this region that is 6 feet tall. In the 1800′s, a Shiru was shot dead in Colombia and another was shot dead in Ecuador. Existence unknown to extinct.

The Guyanas variety, the Didi, is larger, 5 feet tall. It has red hair, is bulky and makes “hoo” sounds. The Didi is known from Guyana, Suriname and the Brazilian uplands. In 2005, a Didi reportedly abducted two children, a boy and a girl, in Guyana. Local reports indicate that the Didi has claws, which seems impossible for a hominid. At the moment, the Didi seems highly cryptic. Existence unknown to possible.

From the high Andes of Peru, Bolivia and Chile, there is a very large relict hominid, 6-9 feet, tall. They are called the Ucu, Ucumar or Ukumar-zupia. There have been many sightings since 1950, and local people had stories dating far back before that. It is fond of a plant called the Payo, the inside of which is like a cabbage.

A race of little people is sometimes seen in the Amazon. They are called pygmies, dwarves or leprechauns. They are probably just a race of very short Indians, but they may be another species. The evidence for their existence is poor.

The hominids from the Amazon in Brazil, mostly the states of Mato Grosso, Acre and Pará, the Mapinguary or Maricoxi, are said to be huge, up to 15 feet tall. The best reports come from northeast of the Paresis Range in Mato Grosso near the border with Santa Cruz Province in Bolivia. It has red hair, long arms, a sloping forehead and “bottle” footprints. It smells bad and makes roars and booming noises. It is reported to rip the tongues out of cows when it kills them.

In one report by a Western explorer, the Mapinguaries were found in a village. They used horns to make calls, lived in villages with primitive shelters, made bows and arrows, and killed and eats the local Indians.

According to one theory, the Mapinguary is nothing but the supposedly extinct giant ground sloth. It was quite large when it stood upright. However, it went extinct 13,000 years ago. Existence uncertain but possible.

Also in Mato Grosso is a shorter type that kills local Indians for food and slow cooks them over a fire on sticks.

There is yet another group called Morcegos, Cabedullos or Tatus that lives in caves in the ground and is nocturnal. They have a very highly developed sense of smell that almost seems like a sixth sense. The most recent sighting was from Acre in December 1998.

The Salvaje is a giant bipedal ape 3-5 feet tall that lives in Venezuela. Its existence is quite uncertain due to it’s being tied in with the Loy’s Ape, which was nothing more than a hoaxed photo of a spider monkey.

Relict hominids exist in Russia, where they are known as Almas, among other names. Two types, the Almas and the Golub-Yavan, are found mostly in the area from Altai down through the Tian Shan to the Pamir Range, encompassing parts of Mongolia, China, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In the high mountains, they mostly live at 8,000-12,000 feet, sometimes descending to raid crops.

The ones in the Pamirs are called Golub-Yavan. The Golub-Yavan live in the Pamirs and Tian Shan Mountains and in Eastern Kazakhstan, where they are called Ksy-gyik. They may extend to the Kunlun Range in China, the Karokorams in north Pakistan and the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. They live in caves.

A Golub-Yavan was shot dead in 1925 in Tajikistan and was buried under a pile of rocks. Another was shot dead and buried in 1967. A traveler, Johannes Schiltberger, journeying through the Tian Shan Mountains in the 1402 reported two captive Golub-Yavan.

17 inch Golub-Yavan footprints were seen in the Altalinsky Mountains of Kyrgyzstan in 2001. Golub-Yavans have long been known in this region. They prey on mountain goats and rodents and live in the highest peaks of this country. They have even been known to ill wolves. A possible Golub-Yavan graveyard with huge bones was found in a cave in Tajikistan in the early 1900′s, but locals fled in fear that the Golub-Yavans would come back and attack them.

There may be both short and tall varieties of the Golub-Yavan, as a 4’9 one was recorded from the southern shore of Balkhash Lake in Eastern Kazakhstan in 1963. The most recent sighting in Kazakhstan was in 1981. There are many sightings around the Balkhash Lake region.

Golub-Yavans are also found in Afghanistan in the Badakhshan region where Afghanistan, Tajikistan and India all come together. The last sighting was in 1949.

A Golub-Yavan was sighted in Kashmir in 2003.

The hominid type found in Yakutia is called the Mulen. Many Mulen were killed during the Russian Civil War when people moved into uninhabited areas.

There is another hominid type in Tajikistan called the Gul that may or may not be the same animal as Golub-Yavan.

There are many reports of Almas from Mongolia. The most recent sighting was in 1974.

In 1939, two Almas were shot dead in Mongolia during skirmishes between Soviet and Japanese forces. The bodies disappeared. Russian pediatrician Ivan Ivlov saw a family of Almas in the Mongolian Altai in 1963. He observed them at a distance of one mile through his binoculars. He later asked some of his patients about them and received many detailed reports.

People in Soviet Central Asia say that in the past there was a long war between the humans and the Almas, with the humans winning. The result of the war was that the Almas retreated into the most remote areas. Almas are smaller than Bigfoots. Usual height is about 5-6.5 feet.

Almas are also known from the Caucasus, where we have many reports, including reports of recent breeding with humans in the late 1800′s, photos of 1/4 Bigfoot human offspring and a skull of a 1/4 Bigfoot human from Abkhazia. There are 500 sightings in Karbardino-Balkaria alone.

In the Caucasus, they are mostly found in the southern part of Kabardino-Balkaria, mainly in the higher elevations. Before the 1960′s, they were much tamer and had fairly good relations with the local humans. Shepherds living alone in their shacks sometimes took up with Almas females. Children were sometimes produced by these relations. One shepherd tried to leave his Almas, and she become so angry that she killed him.

The Almas of Mongolia and Siberia are also said to breed with humans on occasion. The offspring are often very ugly – moreso than the the Almas themselves. But they are often very gifted and talented in many fields, possibly more than most humans.

The people of the region often leave food for the Almas, whom they pity. In the small town of Elbrus high in the mountains, everyone has seen an Almas. People put food out for them every night. Around Elbrus, the Almas have become more common in recent years with the collapse of the grazing economy. Almas have taken to living in some of the abandoned shepherd sheds.

Almas of the Caucasus look more human than most other relict hominids types. Their faces are hairless and appear more human than the North American Bigfoots. Almas are reportedly to be extremely strong.

They are covered in hair, which is often reddish. However, the long, pendulous breasts of the females are hairless. The females sometimes throw their breasts over their shoulders as they run. Almas, especially the females, sometimes steal clothes, which they somehow manage to put on. Some female Almas wear a sort of loincloth over their waist. An Almas was seen in recent years wearing a dress with a large hole in the back. Local human women fear the Almas women, who reportedly try to tempt local human men into sexual relations with them.

There was a long decline in Almas numbers from the 1960′s-early 1990′s, but since 1993, the numbers seem to have stabilized, and there is no longer a decline. Many young Almas have been seen. Almas in the area are stealthy are rarely seen. They live in the many caves of the region. In the past, they appeared on the outskirts of towns. Around World War 2, one Almas lived in a village garden for an entire summer.

Almas are generally not dangerous, but locals are still afraid of them. The local humans in general do not harm the Almas. The Almas are primitive and have no known language, though they can repeat phrases in a parrot-like fashion. There are suggestions that they may be a relict Neandertal type. They are called by some experts “retarded Neandertals.” They seem incapable of advanced human reasoning, but they are great at hiding. They communicate only with loud “boom” noises.

An Almas corpse was found in 2000 near Elbrus, but the finder buried it, and subsequent trips to look for it were not successful. In 2007, A British researcher organized a trip to the region to search for the Almas. They did not see any, but they came back with scat, hair and bones which they intended to try to sequence for DNA.

Two Almas have been killed in Chechnya during the fighting in recent years, one by government forces and one by rebels. Almas have done well during the fighting and are often said to increase their numbers during wartime for some reason. In 1941, Soviet soldiers captured an Almas in Dagestan. It was covered in hair but was unable to speak, yet they felt it was human. They shot it, fearing it was a German spy. The body vanished.

The people of the Caucasus, similarly to the people of Soviet Central Asia, say that in the past there was a lengthy war between the humans the Almas, with the humans winning. As a result, the Almas retreated into the most forbidding areas.

The yetis in the north of Russia are called Gyona Pel.

Those in Siberia are called Chuchuna. In the 1920′s , Tatyana Zakharova and other Evenki villagers saw a 7-foot tall Chuchuna wearing a deerskin eating berries at Khoboyuto Creek. It ran away when it saw the humans. In the northern region of Russia, yetis are often described as a whitish-grey. The yetis north of the Arctic Circle are said to be as white as a polar bear.

Russian scientist Maya Bykova saw a Chuchuna in 1987. It was black with a white patch on its arm. These types are called “marked hominids.” They have been known to approach humans, trade with them, and communicate with them nonverbally.

Almas in the Altai region are found in Altai Province, Tuva Province, Khakass Province, and the Kazakh Altai, in and around the Altai and Sayan Mountains. Almas have recently moved out of the Altai and over to the Shoria Mountains in the Kuzbass due to forest fires in the Altai. Sightings in the Shoria Range date from 2010.

Similar to people in the Caucasus and Soviet Central Asia, the people of the Altai tell of a long war in the past pitting the humans against the Almas, with the humans winning. The result was that the Almas withdrew to the most remote regions.

An Almas was captured along the southern border of Altai Province in the 1830′s. It was kept for one day and then freed. In the Kazakh Altai in the late 1800′s, another Almas was captured. Around the same time, a hunter found some Almas children in a cave. The parents returned quickly and attacked the hunter. He fired his gun at them.

Long ago, residents of the Altai used to leave food out for the Almas at night. Tracks showed that an Almas collected the food. In 1938-39, an Almas was caught in Khakass Province and brought to Abakan, where he was kept in an iron cage as a show. It is not known what happened to him. Tracks were found in the Sayan Range in 1952. In 1962, scat was found on Abakan Mountain at 7500 feet and was so unusual that it was brought to Moscow for testing.

The Tuvans refer to the Almas as their ancestors, but say that they are dangerous and that they carry humans off.

Yetis are known from the Crimean Peninsula, the lower Volga, the area around Moscow, Kostroma Province, Arkhangelsk Province, Kirov Province, the Komi Republic, Karelia, the Kola Peninsula, Chelyabinsk Province, Tyumen Province(mostly the far north and far south), and the western part of Krasnoyarsk Province to the Yenisei River and over to Yakutia where they are found from the Lena River east to the Indigirka River, mostly in the Verkoyansk and Polousnyy Mountains, especially the former.

In the Komi Republic, they are found from the Pechora River east and north of the 60th Parallel.

A Yeti was captured in Sartov in the lower Volga in 1989, but it escaped. In 1989, a Yeti was seen in Sudislavl, 200 miles northeast of Moscow in Kostroma Province. In Arkhangelsk, the most recent sighting is from 1992. Possible signs of Yetis were found near Petrozavodsk in Karelia in 1993.

Nine crosscountry skiers died on Mount Otorten in the Urals in 1959. Mount Otorten is located where the Komi Republic meets with Tyumen, Perm and Sverdlovsk Provinces. Three were apparently killed by being squeezed to death, which caused rib fracture. Two others had broken skulls, and one had her tongue torn out. Another four died of hypothermia. One theory is that they were killed by a Yeti. Another theory says that they were killed by UFO aliens. The mystery remains.

Yetis are also known from the Kola Peninsula, and there are a few reports from Karelia. In 1988, there were many sightings around Lake Lovozero on the Kola Peninsula. The sightings were continuous, such that authorities placed a closure area around the lake. Yetis had been sighted on the peninsula far into the past, so they were well known, but recently they had gotten bolder and were hanging around human habitations. The yeti was aggressive, attacking cabins to try to get the humans to leave.

Kola Peninsula yetis are very large – 9-10 feet tall. They are grey to white in color. Sightings continued until 1992. Hair, scat, partially chewed berries, etc. were brought back to Moscow for testing. The hair tested “no known animal.”

In Tyumen Republic, they are found from the Komi border to the border to Krasnoyarsk north of the 60th parallel. They are also found in the south of the republic. They are found in Chelyabinsk province next to southern Tyumen Province. In the Komi Republic, they are found all year except the two coldest months of winter. In Yakutia, they are found only in summer, and they disappear in the winter. Some say they hibernate in holes in the ground here. Siberian Yetis are good sized, 6’5″-7 feet tall.

Over in the Far East, aside from the Altai region, yetis are also known from the Primorksy region to the east of Vladivistock near China.

The Gulebany is the Almas of Azerbaijan, found in the Talysh Mountains. They have kidnapped humans before. Last sighting was in 1947.

Almas types are reported from the Zagros Mountains in Iran. They are also reported from the mountains of the northeast. The people of Iran, similar to the Russians, tell of a long war in the past pitting the humans against the Almas. The humans won the war, and the Almas retreated to the most remote regions. Almas are surely extant.

The Chinese version is called Yeren or “wild man.” It is 6-9 feet tall and has a heavy coat of red-brown hair. It has human eyes, an apelike face and large ears. It is similar to a Yeti, larger, stronger and less human than an Almas or Nguoi Rung. These Chinese have discussed these Yeren for thousands of years.

Four were shot or otherwise killed between 1940-1967. In 1940, one was killed in Gansu. In 1961, another was killed in Yunnan. Soldiers killed and ate a Yeren in Yunnan in 1962. This one was small, only four feet tall.

In 1976, Chinese scientists examined Yeren hair, and found that it differs from humans. Examinations reveal an exact match for Bigfoot hair from the US. The Yeren are commonly seen in one remaining area of central China that is heavily forested, the Shennongjia region of Hebei Province. There may be 1,000-2,000 of these creatures in this region.

In 1953, a Yeren kidnapped a woman in Shennongjia, had sex with her, and she had a child. The 1/2 Bigfoot was videotaped in 1986 at age 33. He was 6’5″ and had a body that had Bigfoot proportions. He did not speak any language.

They are also found in Shanxi and Sichuan Provinces. The last observance in Shanxi was in 1950. One was captured in Sinkiang Province near Tibet in 1913 but died after a few months of captivity.

They are reportedly totally vegetarian. The most recent sightings were in 2010. Extant.

A relict hominid type creature is said to exist in Japan. It is called the Hibagon. Its existence is uncertain.

In addition, a Hobbit type called the Koropokkuru is reported by the Ainu as being the first inhabitants of Japan. They were only 2-3 feet tall, were covered with hair and smelled bad. They lived in pits in the ground over which they built huts. They fashioned small knives. They generally avoided the Ainu, but there was some sporadic trading under the cover of night.

At one point a war broke out between the Ainu and the dwarves, and the Koropokkuru were exterminated. Archeologists do report finding pit dwellings all over Japan that are not consistent with the Ainu. In 1879, archeologists dug up a site called Ōmori. There they found pottery that was not consistent with Ainu culture. Some Japanese archeologists associate this site with the Koropokkuru.

A relict hominid, the Kapre, is said to exist in the Philippines. They live on Luzon. There are recent sightings. They often live in caves and are good sized. Residents say it is just another animal in the forest and leave food out for it at night, often rice and durian fruits, of which it is very fond. It often gives gifts back in return. Filipinos like these creatures and refuse to harm them. This creature is very tall, 8-9 feet.

There were sightings by Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Leyte in 1944 – a Kapre terrorized them in a cave. One was captured in Ilocos de Norte on Luzon in 1961 and taken on tour with a carnival. There are sightings after 1975 on Luzon. Extant but declining.

Relict hominids called Nguoi Rung also live in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, often living in caves. They are about 4’9″-6 feet tall. They have pinkish skin and are covered with hair that is grey, reddish, brown or black. They are generally considered to be a “civilized” or advanced type similar to the Almas. Nguoi Rung do not appear to have much in the way of language. They are strong, but not as strong as a Bigfoot or Yeti.

Many were seen and killed during the Vietnam War, especially near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Quite a few GI’s reported encounters with “the apes” as they called them. In one case, “the apes” kept raiding the base at night and stealing food. GI’s felt they were dealing with some kind of orangutan. Troops from both sides were killed by the Nguoi Rung during the war.

The war seems to have driven the Nguoi Rung in Vietnam to near extinction, and they are seldom seen anymore. However, footprints were seen and cast in 1982 on Chu Mo Ray Mountain in Vietnam, and from 1983-1998, there were a number of sightings. The sightings are mostly in the region where Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam all come together, especially the Kontum-Sa Thay area of Vietnam.

Not all of these creatures are violent. Sometimes they come at night to human campfires and sit with men, but they say nothing or speak unintelligibly.

They move rapidly across mountains, climb trees easily, shake trees to get bugs to eat and live in caves.

In 1979 in Phnom Sampov, Cambodia, 12 people sighted 15 Nguoi Rung, 5 or 6 adults and the 8 juveniles, with 2 babies on the backs of the females. Many other people saw groups of Nguoi Rung moving through this area, so it looks like the Vietnam War didn’t drive them extinct after all. Phnom Sampov is in the northwest of Cambodia near the Thai border, so it looks like the Nguoi Rung are not limited to northeastern Cambodia.

There was also a recent sighting from the Ratanakiri area, which is a hot spot for Nguoi Rung activity. Ratanakiri is near the area where Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia all come together. Virachey National Park is in this region. Extant.

Around 1900, there were reports of small hominids with thick reddish hair on their bodies in Laos. There have been no further reports. Probably similar to an Orang Pendek type. Possibly extinct.

There is another taller type up to 9 feet tall that is recorded from Indochina and Burma. Several sightings of these were recorded by Allied soldiers fighting the Japanese during World War 2. There have been no sightings since. Possibly extinct.

There is supposedly a hominid called Kung-tu or Mouthman that lives in Burma. These are up to 20 feet tall and have supposedly terrorized Burmans for centuries. Their existence is dubious.

Mawas are known from peninsular Malaysia. We have many exciting recent findings coming out of one part of Malaysia that is still heavily forested. The Orang Asli people, the most ancient humans out of Africa, live there, and they have made most of the sightings. The Orang Asli are very afraid of the Mawas.

These relict hominids are about 6-9 feet tall and are generally vegetarian. Reportedly has only four toes. A captive Mawa was observed in Johor in 1870. I feel that there may be a big or even huge relict hominid discovery coming out of Malaysia soon, maybe even before North America. Extant.

The Batatut is also known from Malaysia, mostly around Saban. This is a small, proto-pygmy type, about 4 feet tall. It is very shy and nocturnal, but can also be highly aggressive – there are stories of them attacking humans and tearing out their livers. A researcher found its broad footprints in 1970 and was terrified. This is possibly the Orang Pendek in Borneo. Existence probable.

The Orang Dalam is a giant from Malaysia, reportedly 10-20 feet tall and covered with hair. The footprints are 18 inches and the stride is 12 feet. There were sightings in 1871, 1953, 1954, 1959, 1966, 1969 and 1971. The 1966 sighting was on a rubber estate near Segamat, 40 miles from Kuala Lumpur. Villagers said the giants were “shy but harmless apes.” 45 years ago, it was already under heavy retreat into the jungles due to human population pressure and loss of feeding grounds. Existence uncertain or possibly extinct.

In 1986, two relict hominids were reported in Southern Thailand in the company of Thai troops. The incident occurred in the village of Phibun in Nakhon Sri Thammarat Province. They were tied up. They were described as hair-covered, ape-like but with human faces. The troops stopped in a village, and everyone in the village saw them.

Bizarrely, the relict hominids were said to drink tea with the soldiers, which makes the story suspect. The relict hominids were taken off to some unknown location. The description of the relict hominids matches well with the description of the Nguoi Rung from Vietnam and Laos.

There is an animal reported from Indonesia called the Orang Pendek. The evidence for its existence is excellent, and it may be related to the recently discovered Homo Florensis on Flores. It is like a small Bigfoot – it is only about 3-4.5 feet tall, has ears that stick out and a belly that protrudes somewhat. but it has very large feet.

It has long honey-yellow to tan colored hair on its head extending down to its buttocks and is hairy. Its arms extend down to its knees. It has a coned head and its face is very humanoid, black colored with some pink markings. The skin on its body is pink. The hair resembles Orangutan hair. It is heavily muscled and very strong. As it walks, the Orang Pendek pulls on vegetation as a mode of locomotion in the same way that Bigfoot engages in tree-pulling.

Locals hunt most of the animals in the forest, but they refuse to hunt the Orang Pendek.

Debbie Martyr, a Western conservationist/journalist, has seen Orang Pendeks three times since 1989. An Indonesian anthropologist, Yanuar Achmed, saw one on the slopes of Mt. Kerenci. In 2001, an Indonesian forest ranger named Aripin saw one on the slopes of this same mountain. As early as 1989, the Orang Pendek was becoming rare in the Mt. Kerenci area due to deforestation. Indications are that existing Orang Pendeks may be an endangered species.

In 2003, a poacher operating north of Gunung Tujuh, the “Lake of Seven Peaks,” and east of Mt. Kerinci caught an Orang Pendek in his deer snare. He poked it with his spear, but it grabbed his spear and snapped it in two like a matchstick. Then it bellowed at him in a deafening roar, and the man passed out. When he woke up, the Orang Pendek had freed itself.

I have a feeling that it may be discovered pretty soon, even sooner than Bigfoot maybe.

Orang Pendek DNA was sequenced in 2003 and is not that of any known animal. It looks like human DNA, but it is outside the human range. Definitely extant.

Homo Floresiensis, or Flores Man, is said by natives to have survived on Flores Island until the late 1800′s. Called Ebu Gogo, they were small, hairy, and friendly, but very shy. Reports indicate that they could breed with humans. They lived in caves. People would leave food out for them at night and they would come to get it. In return, the Hobbits would give the humans gifts.

However, they started stealing human children, hoping to learn from them how to cook food. This enraged the humans, who chased the Ebu Gogo into a cave, piled brush in the front and set it on fire, killing off the Ebu Gogo. A few Ebu Gogo may have survived, but there have been no sightings since the late 1800′s. Probably extinct.

Relict hominids called Baramanu are said to exist in Pakistan in the Chitral region. They are about 5.5-6 feet tall and covered in hair. They are mostly found in the Shishi Kuh Valley of Chitral. Said to resemble prehistoric man. There have been many sightings and footprints in recent years. A body of a Baramanu was supposedly found recently, but followup was not successful. A Spanish researcher, Jordi Magraner, went there to study them for years and gathered many reports. Later, he was murdered, and research has ended. Extant.

The Yeti, of course, is known from Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan. The Yeti is quite large – about eight feet tall, and it has white, black, russet-red or grey fur and icy blue eyes. They Yeti is larger, stronger and less human than an Almas.

Nepalese reportedly captured a Yeti once, but it refused to eat and died. The body was abandoned. Two Yetis were seen in Tibet in 1986. A Yeti reportedly killed a woman in Nepal in 1998. The most recent sighting in Nepal was in 2003, but good tracks were found in 2008.

Yetis are capable of throwing boulders long distances and with excellent accuracy. They reportedly make tools. Inside of their liars, sharpened wood, bone and stone tools have been found, some fashioned into spears or arrows. The Yeti smells terrible.

Another Yeti is called Meti and does not exceed 5’9 inches. It has a coned head, a stocky apelike body that has human qualities, is covered with reddish-brown hair, and has long arms down to its knees.

One of the related types is called the Nyalmo. This is a giant type, an incredible 15 feet tall. It leaves long, four toed tracks. The first documented sighting occurred in 1937. A group of them were standing in a circle and chanting while one beat a hollow tree trunk. Existence dubious.

There is a smaller type, the Miniti, 4.5 feet tall, that was seen by biologist A. A. Tishkov on the China-Tibet border. The Miniti also lives in Nepal at 14,500-16,500 feet elevation. The Miniti is probably the same as the Tehlma.

A smaller one, the 4.5 foot tall Tehlma, is a proto-Pygmy type that lives in the steamy mountain valleys of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet. It has thick, reddish hair, hunched shoulders and a coned head that slopes backwards sharply. Its feces have been examined, and they contained an unknown primate parasite. Since parasites are typically species-specific, this implies that the Tehlma is a new species. The last known sighting was in 1958. The Tehlma exists.

Another type called the Dzuti may be a rare bear species, or perhaps it exists. It is said to be on average 8’2. This is the same as the Kung-lu of Burma. Lives in Tibet.

In 2008, an excellent cast of Yeti footprints was found by Joshua Gates in Nepal and appears to be genuine. The prints were found in the Khumbu region on the banks of the Manju River at 9,300 feet. They differ in some respects from Bigfoot footprints.

Yeti DNA was finally sequenced in 2009. The results came back in the range of large primates such as man, chimpanzees and gorillas, but the DNA sequence was unknown. In other words, it was a large unknown primate.

Pieces of the Pangboche Hand, a purported Yeti hand skeleton found at a monastery in Nepal, were tested by DNA analysis. The results came back near-human, but not human. Earlier they were examined by a London primatologist who determined that the bones resembled those of Neandertal. The Yeti certainly exists.

A truly gigantic Bigfoot lived in Kerala State, India, 30,000 years ago. It was 17 feet tall and weighed 900 pounds. Footprints 22-27 inches long have been found in a cave by anthropologists.

A large form of the Yeti, 7.5-9 feet tall, the Mande Burung, possibly a lowland form of the Yeti, is known from the Garo Hills of Meghalaya State in India. The footprints are 12-15 inches long. There have been many sightings recently, including one in 2008. Hairs of this creature were analyzed in 2008 and came back as not matching any of the known animals in the region. Possibly exists.

A tiny race of hominids used to live in Sri Lanka. These were called Nittaewo, and in the modern era, they lived in the nearly inaccessible Leanama Mountains. They are apparently now extinct. They had a chattering, bird-like language and were very small – 3 to 4 feet tall. They had reddish hair all over their bodies. Some think they were an Orang Pendek type. The local Veddas hated the Nittaewo and at one point, forced them into a cave, piled brush in the cave and set it on fire, wiping out the Nittaewo. This event occurred in the late 1700′s.

Hairy, quadrupedal hominids are reported from Malaita in Melanesia. They are small, hairy and walk on four limbs. Existence dubious.

A type of pygmoid is reported from the New Hebrides Islands of Melanesia. May be a new race of pygmy types or possibly a new species. Existence dubious.

A Bigfoot type, large and hairy, is reported from the Solomon Islands. It lives in the mountains of Guadalcanal and Laudari. Existence dubious.

A race of cone-headed pygmies is known from Fiji. Ancestral humans had a saggital crest similar to Bigfoot’s. There was sighting by 6 people on July 19, 1975. They saw eight pygmies, 2 feet tall and covered with hair, run into the brush. Existence uncertain.

A tiny, 2-foot tall “insular dwarf” skeleton is known from Palau in the Pacific. It is dated at 1000-3000 YBP. This goes along with many stories of tiny people who lived in Pacific islands.

The Yowie is known from Australia. It is very large – about 6-8 feet tall. It has a human like face and long canines and is covered with long brown hair. Yowie hair has recently been gathered and is a direct match for Bigfoot hair from North America. Yowies certainly exist.

In addition, a hairy dwarf type called the Junjdy is said to live in the north Queensland mountains. Existence unknown.

There is another giant type called the Jimbra, reported from Kalgoorlie in West Australia. They are smelly, 7-14 feet tall, and have gorilla-like faces. The males have clearly visible genitals. They have been reported since the days of the first White settlers. Existence uncertain.

In the Nullarbor Plains of South Australia, a giant called the Tjanjara has been seen. In August 1972, Steve Moncreif, a fossil hunter, was exploring in Yarle Lakes on the edge of the Great Victorian Desert. A 10 foot tall creature with a club in its hand saw him and chased him through the ravine. Tjanjaras had been seen in the area two years prior. In 1989, a 13 foot tall Tjanjara wielding a club was seen near Etadunna by two carloads of bush trekkers. Existence uncertain to possible.

A relict hominid is said to exist in New Zealand. It is called the Moehau. They are said to use stone knives, clubs and hand axes. Moehaus killed some Whites in the Coramandel Mountains in the late 1800′s. Before that, Maoris said that Moehaus and other relict types often killed Maoris and ate them. There are recent sightings, which are counterintuitive as there are no native placental mammals on the island.

In 1970, there was a sighting of a hairy Moehau in the Milford Wilderness which screamed and threw rocks at campers. It was 6.5 feet tall.

Around the same time, in Fjordland, at Haast Pass and on Mt. Helen, bushwackers found large Moehau footprints. There have been many sightings of a large Moehau in the Haast Pass area. In 1971, a ranger found tracks in the Nelson Lakes National Park. In 1972, Trevor Silcox saw a 6.5 foot Moehau while hunting in the Coramandels.

Mountaineers have made many sighting of huge footprints and even a few sightings of 6.5-9 foot Moehaus on Kaikura Mountain, which rises to over 8,000 feet. In January 1983, a hunter found a long trail of huge Moehau footprints in the Heaphy River region of Northwest Nelson State Forest Park.

In 1991, campers in the Cameron Islands in the southwest of New Zealand found huge, 17.5 inch Moehau footprints in the dense forest. In 2001, there were reports of huge Moehaus in the in the Urewera Ranges near Waikaremoana south of Gisborne. Moehaus may well exist.

There are said to be some relict hominids still living in Africa, especially in West, East and South Africa. In East Africa, they are known from Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya.

In West Africa, there are reports from the Ivory Coast in the 1940′s. It is called the Séhité. No sightings since. It may be extinct.

One from East Africa is small, only 4-5 feet tall and has rust colored skin. It is called the Agogwe, but it has many different names. The natives refuse to hunt them. The most recent sighting was in the 1940′s.

It is thought that these and other proto-pygmies in Africa are surviving australopithecines. This is because Agogwes have been seen in the company of baboons. No monkey would go near baboons for fear of being eaten, and no baboon would tolerate a man, as they run from humans. The lack of sightings over the past 70 years implies that the Agogwe may be extinct.

A similar type is known from Zimbabwe. It is called the Kakundakári. It has not been seen since around 1960. Animal collector Charles Cordier found the last tracks around 1960. He also noted that a Kakundari had gotten caught in one of his traps but had somehow managed to extract itself. Possibly extinct due to lack of recent sightings.

There is a race of very short proto-Pygmies which live in Madagascar. They are called the Kimo or the Kalanoro. It’s not known whether these are actual Pygmies or whether they are a new species. The evidence for their existence is poor.

Various human-sized hominids are reported from all over the African continent.They have long reddish or brownish hair on their bodies and are described as humanoid.

One dwarf type called the Dodu is three feet tall and has three fingers and three toes. It lives in the Cameroon-Congo border region. One was seen in January 2001. Existence probable.

There is said to be a type of giant hominid in Africa, something like a Bigfoot. They can range up to 14 feet tall. They live in Zaire, Cameroon, Kenya and Sudan. The type in Zaire is called the Kikongo or the Muhalu, and is 7.5-8 feet tall. There are reports from the early 1960′s. Existence uncertain to dubious or possibly extinct.

There were many stories that some Neandertals survived in Europe until about 1000 years ago, when they finally all died off. They lived in high mountains and forests in caves and avoided people. I now believe that these “giant” stories, thought to be remaining Neandertals, were actually relict hominids.

Relict hominids were probably killed off or died off in Europe recently. We have a good report from Germany in 1650 but few to none since. We now have two good relict hominid videos shot in the Tatras Mountains in Poland, the highest mountains of Poland, with peaks ranging up to 7,500 feet. It appears that relict hominids are slowly moving back into Europe. The relict hominids from Poland look a lot like North American Bigfoots. A relict hominid was spotted in Kosovo in 2005.

Snömannen are the relict hominids of Scandinavia. They are found in the polar regions of Sweden, Finland and Norway. The description is similar to the one for Bigfoots. Sightings are few, but they are as recent as 1985. A research team doing geological work on Spitzbergen Island, Norwegian land far to the north of Norway between the 75th and 80th parallel, at the same latitude as northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island in Canada, encountered a hairy hominid. It resembled the Alaskan Arulataq. Existence uncertain.

The Ventimiglian Giant is a large, hairy hominid over 6.5 feet tall. It is known from a flurry of sightings in the Ventimiglia region of northern Italy around 1996 and 1997. In one case, three were seen in the forest, and in another case, a short, thick neck was noted. Its existence is uncertain.

The Vedi is a hairy hominid type from Croatia, especially the area near the Hungarian border. There have been no sightings since 1950 or so. Many cases involved females sneaking up on male farmhands sleeping in stables. The females would cozy up to the males. This is similar to female Almas’ behavior in the Caucasus.

Dwarves are known from Ireland, Scotland and mainland Europe. This includes leprechauns, trolls and dwarves. These are hairy hominids only 2 feet tall. There is a long tradition of stories about them in Europe. It is unknown if they exist; they may be just mythology.

Wudewasas were a European relict hominids that lived in Europe, mostly in Finland, until the 1400′s. They carried large clubs with them.

The Fear Liath Mor or Greyman is said to haunt the peak of Ben McDhui in Scotland. Large, grey and scary-looking. It probably does not exist and is just a myth.

The Running Man is said to exist in Scotland. There have been recent sightings, and there is a long tradition of stories. This is sort of a Bigfoot type. It likes to run instead of walk and is said to run alongside cars to look in the windows. Its existence is dubious.

The Basajaun is a hairy relict hominid, standing 5-6 feet tall, that lives in the Basque Country of Spain. It is hostile and hangs around homes for food. There have been recent sightings, including one in which a group of paleontologists was attacked by one. Existence probable.

Relict hominids do not appear to exist in most of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Korea, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Micronesia, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and the Caribbean.

Check out Bigfoot Forums for some of the finest Bigfoot discussion on the Net.

An Interesting NE Asian Phenotype

Repost from the old site.

White Nationalists like to go on and on and on about the glorious color of their skin: white. For some odd reason, this white skin is superior to darker-colored skins of folks who evolved in hotter zones. Truth is, darker skin color is a perfectly rational evolutionary response to high rates of UV radiation in areas where it is very hot.

And in some areas of the globe, people can have fairly light skins if they stay out of the sun, but they get dark quite easily if they go out in the sun. Italians and Greeks come to mind. Here are photos of Italians, Greeks and Spaniards who have stayed out of sun, and then the same folks after they got tanned.

The same page also shows identical phenotypes commonly seen as European-only, like Nordics, Mediterraneans and Alpines, in both their European and extra-European forms from Arabia, North Africa and Central Asia. Often the darker skin you see in a lot of Southern Europeans is nothing but a tan.

On the other hand, Northern Europeans, and possibly other Northern types, don’t tan very well (they often burn) and even when they do, they don’t get all that dark. The very dark skin of Blacks, Papuans, Melanesians, some Aborigines and some South Indians is simply a result of evolving in those parts of the Earth where the sun shines brightest of all.

But Whites ought to give up the fantasy of about their white skin being best of all – because other races have some very white skin too. See the Korean woman in the photo below for example.

A Korean woman. She has a shade of White on her skin that is lacking in almost all Caucasians – it is probably only seen in Ireland and Scotland and it’s probably even lacking in Sweden and Norway. But this very White phenotype seen in some Koreans and Northern Chinese differs from that of European Whites in that it is more glossy. European White skin looks more chalky or powdery.

This phenotype also has skin that looks more like porcelain and is reflective of light. The very light European skin tends to be less light-reflective.

Here’s a pretty cool chart showing degrees of skin lightness versus darkness around the world.

UV radiation chart along with zones of skin color. Zone 1 has the darkest skin of all . Zone 2, which includes Italians and Spaniards, has skin that tans easily. Zone 3 contains light skin that enables residents to absorb as much Vitamin D as possible from the sun due to lack of sunlight at higher latitudes.

Note that there is also pretty high UV radiation in parts of South America (Peru), in the heart of Mexico, in Southwest Arabia (especially Yemen), in Southern India and Sri Lanka and in Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Philippines and New Guinea. Indonesians and Malaysians are known for being darker than many other SE Asian groups.

According to this chart, the darkest people of all are Blacks from Mozambique and Cameroon in Africa and Aborigines from Darwin in North Australia. A look at the same chart, much expanded, in the original paper, shows that the next darkest are Blacks, the Okavango in Namibia and the Sara in Chad (Table 6, p. 19). The chart shows that the lightest people are in Netherlands, followed by Germany and then the northern parts of the UK.

Note on the map that Tibet and parts of the Amazon should have some very dark-skinned people, but those who live there are lighter than you would expect based on UV. The paper suggests that the Tibetans are lighter because it is so cold there that most of their body is covered up all the time and only the face is uncovered.

The face is lighter to collect what Vitamin D it can as so much of the body cannot collect Vitamin D due to clothing. The Amazonian Indians are known to be shade-seeking and the paper suggests that this may account for their lighter skin.

Most Whites don’t really have White skin anyway. I am looking at my own skin here as I type, and it looks more pink than White.

References

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution. Available on this blog here.

Journeys in Asian Prehistory

Repost from the old site.

In this post we will look at the prehistory of the Asian or Mongoloid Race and some its subgroups. After humans came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, they moved along the coast of Arabia, Southwest Asia, South Asia and eventually to Southeast Asia.

One Asian man’s rendering of modern Asian expansion, contrasted with the typical model. I don’t agree with either model, but I like the one on the left a little better. For starters, the yellow line on the map to the left should be hugging the coast quite closely and the brown and red lines should be radiating out from a base somewhere along the yellow line. Unfortunately, my artistic skills are not good enough to draw my own map.

We think that these people looked something like the Negritos of today, such as those on the Andaman Islands.

At some point, probably in Southern China, the Mongoloid Race was born. The timeline, as determined by looking at genes, was from 60,000-110,000 years ago. As humans are thought to have only populated the world 70,000 years or so ago, it is strange that the timeline may go back as far as 110,000 years.

One thing that is very interesting is that there is evidence for regional continuity in Asia (especially China) dating back 100,000′s of years, if not millions of years. This is called the multiregional hypothesis of human development.

Though it is mostly abandoned today, it still has its adherents.

Some of its adherents are Asian nationalists of various types, especially Chinese and Indonesian nationalists. They all want to think that man was born in their particular country. Others are White nationalists who refuse to believe that they are descended from Africans, whom they consider to be inferior. The problem is that the Asians can indeed show good evidence for continuity in the skulls in their region.

A good midway point between the two, that sort of solves the conundrum, is that humans came out of Africa, say, ~70,000 years or so ago, and when they got to Asia, they bred in with some of the more archaic types there. The problem with this is that the only modern human showing evidence of pre-modern Homo genes in Mungo Man in Australia from 50,000 years ago.

There is evidence that as late as 120,000 years ago, supposedly fully modern humans in Tanzania were still transitioning from archaic to modern man. Ancient South African humans 100-110,000 yrs ago looked like neither Bantus nor Bushmen.

Nevertheless, we can reject the multiregional theory in its strong form as junk science. We also note cynically that once again ethnic nationalists and regular nationalists, including some of the world’s top scientists, are pushing a blatantly unscientific theory. Yet again ethnic nationalism is shown to be a stupidifying mindset.

There must be a reason why ethnic nationalism seems to turn so many smart people into total idiots. I suspect it lies in the fact that the basic way of thinking involved in ethnic nationalism is just a garbage way of looking at the world, and getting into it distorts one’s mind similar to the way a mental illness does.

We think that the homeland of the Asians is in Southern China, just north of the Vietnam border. This is because the people with the greatest genetic diversity in Asia are found in Northern Vietnam. Since the Vietnamese are known to have largely come from Southern China, we can assume that the homeland was just north of the border. From there, all modern Asians were born.

This means all NE and SE Asians, Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians came out of this Asian homeland.

School kids in Hothot, a town in Inner Mongolia. There is some question about whether China really has a right to control this area. These Northeast Asians originally came from a homeland in SE Asia near the China-Vietnam border. As this race is only 9,000 years old, NE Asians could not possibly have gone through an Ice Age that molded their brains for high intelligence, as the racist liar and scientific fraud Richard Lynn claims .

There is even evidence that the Altaics of Siberia originated from the SE Asian homeland. They are thought to have moved out of there to the west and north to become the various Altaic groups such as the Buryats. Later Caucasian lines came to the Altaics from the West.

A Mongolian man on the steppes with a grazing animal and possibly a yurt in the background. Yurts are conical structures that the Mongolians still live in. I believe that Mongolians also eat a lot of yogurt, which they cultivate from the milk of their grazing animals. Note the pale blue eyes and somewhat Caucasian appearance.

My astute Chinese commenter notes: “While Mongolians do have ‘Caucasian genes’, they look distinct from Uighurs, who are mixed. I’m thinking Mongolians and Central Asians lie in a spectrum between Caucasoids in West Asia and “Mongoloids” in Northeast Asians, while Uighurs were the product of Central Asian, West Asian, and Northeast Asian interbreeding.”

In fact, all of these populations are on the border genetically between Caucasians and Asians.

A Mongolian woman. Note short, stocky appearance with short limbs to preserve heat in the cold. Note also the long, moon-shaped, ruddy face, possibly red from the cold weather. Are those ginseng roots in her hand?

More Mongolians, this time with what look like grazing reindeer in the background. Mongolians herd reindeer? Note once again the long, flat, moon-shaped face, the almost-Caucasian features and especially the pale blue eyes of each woman. I cannot help but think that both of these women also look like Amerindians. Neither would be out of place at a pow wow.

More Mongolians, this time a Mongolian boy. Other than the eyes, he definitely looks Caucasian. He looks like a lot of the kids I grew up with in facial structure. Mongolians are anywhere from 10% Caucasian to 14% Caucasian.

From their Altaic lands, especially in the Altai region and the mouth of the Amur River, they moved into the Americas either across the Bering Straight or in boats along the Western US Coast. Another line went north to become the Northeast Asians. And from the Northeast Asian homeland near Lake Baikal, another line went on to become the Siberians.

An Evenki boy with his reindeer. Prototypical reindeer herders, the Evenki are a classical Siberian group. Strangely enough, they are related to both NE Asians and other Siberians and also to Tibetans. This indicates that the genesis of the Tibetans may have been up near or in Siberia.

From 10-40,000 yrs ago, the Siberian population was Mongoloid or pre-Mongoloid. After 10,000 yrs BP (before present), Caucasians or proto-Caucasians moved in from the West across the steppes, but they never got further than Lake Baikal. This group came from the Caucasus Mountains. They are members of the Tungus Race and are quite divergent from most other groups genetically.

More Evenkis, members of the Tungus Race, this time some beautiful women and kids in traditional costumes. But this photo was taken in some Siberian city, so they may have just been dressing up. They probably have some Caucasian genes, as the nearby Yakuts are 6% Caucasian. Many of the Evenki women have become single Moms, because the men are seen as violent, drunk and a financial drain.

Soon after the founding of the Asian homeland in northern Vietnam 53,000-90,000 yrs ago, the proto-Asians split into three distinct lines – a line heading to Japanese and related peoples, another heading to the North and Northeast Asians, and a third to the Southern Han Chinese and SE Asian lines.

A beautiful royal member of the Southern Han Dynasty in Hong Kong, member of the South China Sea Race. This race consists of the Filipinos, the Ami and the Southern Han from Guangdong Province. The Ami are a Taiwanese Aborigine tribe who made up the bulk of the Austronesians who populated much of island SE Asia over the past 8,000 years.

These Southern Chinese people never went through any Ice Age, and the SE Asian Race is only 10,000 years old anyway. So why are they so smart? Unlike some NE Asian groups, especially those around Mongolia, the Altai region, the Central Asian Stans and Siberia, the Han have no Caucasian in them.

A bright Chinese commenter left me some astute remarks about the South Chinese IQ: “Some possible reasons for high South Chinese IQ’s: Chinese culture is very… g-loaded. For example, understanding the language requires good pitch, recognizing Chinese characters takes visual IQ and good memory, Chinese literature and history span 3,000-4,000 years for references, etc.

For several thousand years testing determined your social position (and it still does to some extent in Confucian nations). Those left in the countryside were periodically left to famine and “barbarian” invasions (slaughter).

Likewise, when Chinese people interbreed, there is strong pressure to breed into the upper class of a native population. Whatever caused the high selection when Chinese and Mon-Khmer/Dai groups interbred probably gave the Chinese immigrants leverage to marry into the upper classes when they did. This is something the Asian diaspora still tends to do.”

Regarding South Chinese appearance, he notes, “Lastly, the Chinese in Fujian have distinct features. They have thicker lips, curlier hair, more prominent brow, less pronounced epicanthic folds, etc. I’m in Taiwan now and I do notice it. I was at a packed market a while ago and was noting the way people look.”

As a result of this split, all Chinese are related at a deep level, even though Northern Chinese are closer to Caucasians than to Southern Chinese. Nevertheless, we can still see a deep continuum amongst Asian populations.

A Northern Chinese man with distinctly Caucasian features. Although they have no Caucasian genes that we can see anymore, they are still closer to Caucasians than to the Southern Chinese.

The major genetic frequency found in Japan, Korea and Northern China is also found at very high levels in Southern China, Malaysia and Thailand, and at lower levels in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia. Incredibly, even higher levels are found in Southern China, Malaysia and Thailand than in Northern China.

The proto-NE Asian or North Asian homeland was around Lake Baikal about 35,000 years ago. The Ainu and a neighboring group, the Nivkhi, are thought to be the last remaining groups left from this line. The Ainu are related to the Jomon, the earliest group in Japan, who are thought to have originated in Thailand about 16,000 years ago and then came up to Japan on boats to form the proto-Jomon.

The Jomon culture itself formally begins about 9,000 years ago. Japan at that time was connected to the mainland. Jomonese skulls found in Japan look something like Aborigines. Later, around 2,300 years ago, a group called the Yayoi came across the sea from Korea and moved into Japan.

The woman on the left is more Yayoi and the one on the right is more Okinawan. The Okinawans, members of the Ryukyuan Race, seem to be related to the Ainu, and they have a long history in the south of Japan. The Ryukyuan Race is a very divergent grouping.

Most Japanese are members of the Japanese-Korean Race (like the Yayoi woman at left) but there is a divergent group in the South called the Southern Japanese Race, made up of the Honshu Kinki (the people around Kyoto) and the island of Kyushu. They may be more Okinawan than the rest of the mainland Japanese.

Over the next 2,300 years, the Yayoi slowly conquered and interbred with the Ainu until at the present time, the Ainu are nearly extinct as a cultural and racial entity. The Ainu have always been treated terribly by the Japanese, in part because they are quite hairy, like Caucasians.

The hairy body is thought to be a leftover from proto-NE Asian days, as some other groups in that area also have a lot of body hair. Despite the fact that they look down on the Ainu, about 40% of Japanese are related to the Ainu, and the rest are more or less related to the Yayoi. Actually, Japanese genetics seems a lot more complicated than that, but that’s as good a summary as any.

The Ainu. Though despised by the Japanese in part due to their Caucasian-like “monkey hair” on their bodies (note the guy’s hairy legs), the Japanese themselves are about 40% Ainu. The Ainu are members of the Ainu-Gilyak Race and are one of the most diverse groups on Earth.

A photo of Ainu Yasli Adam in traditional garb. I love this photo. Note that he could be mistaken for an Aborigine or a Caucasian. For a long time, the Ainu were considered to be Caucasians, but recent genetic studies have shown conclusively that they are Asians.

The Ainu language is formally an isolate, but in my opinion it is probably related to Japanese and Korean and thence to Altaic, nevertheless I think that both Japanese and Korean are closer to Altaic than Ainu is. Genetically, the Ainu are closest to NE Asians but are also fairly close to the Na-Dene Amerindians. Cavalli-Sforza says they are in between NE Asians, Amerindians and Australians.

At this time, similar-looking Australoids who looked something like Papuans, Aborigines or Negritos were present all over Asia, since the NE Asians and SE Asians we know them today did not form until around 10,000 years ago.

There are still some traces of these genes, that look like a Papuan line, in modern-day Malays, coastal Vietnamese, parts of Indonesia and some Southwestern Chinese. The genes go back to 13,000 years ago and indicate a major Australoid population expansion in the area at that time. Absolutely nothing whatsoever is known about this Australoid expansion.

God I love these Paleolithic types. A Papuan Huli man, member of the Papuan Race, who looks somewhat like an Australian Aborigine. Although it is often said that Papuans and Aborigines are related, they are only in the deepest sense. In truth, they really do form two completely separate races because they are so far apart.

Once again, while Afrocentrists also like to claim these folks as “Black”, the Papuans and Aborigines are the two people on Earth most distant from Africans, possibly because they were the first to split off and have been evolving away from Africans for so long. I don’t know what that thing in his mouth is, but it looks like a gigantic bong to me. There are about 800 languages spoken on Papua, including some of the most maddeningly complex languages on Earth.

NE Asian skulls from around 10,000 years ago also look somewhat like Papuans, as do the earliest skulls found in the Americas. The first Americans, before the Mongoloids, were apparently Australoids.

The proto-NE Asian Australoids transitioned to NE Asians around 9,000 years ago. We know this because the skulls at Zhoukoudian Cave in NE China from about 10,000 years ago look like the Ainu, the Jomon people, Negritos and Polynesians.

Waitress in Hothot, Inner Mongolia. Zhoukoudian Cave is not far from here. Note the typical NE Asian appearance. Mongolians are members of the Mongolian Race and speak a language that is part of the Altaic Family.

We think that these Australoids also came down in boats or came over the Bering Straight to become the first Native Americans. At that time – 9-13,000 years ago, Zhoukoudian Cave types were generalized throughout Asia before the arrival of the NE Asians.

Northern Chinese prototypes from a photo of faculty and students at Jilin University in Northern China. People in this area, members of the Northern Chinese Race, are closely related to Koreans. Note the lighter skin and often taller bodies than the shorter, darker Southern Chinese. The man in the center is a White man who is posing with the Chinese in this picture.

My brother worked at a cable TV outfit once and there was a Northern Chinese and a Southern Chinese working there. The Northern one was taller and lighter, and the Southern one was shorter and darker. The northern guy treated the southern guy with little-disguised contempt the whole time. He always called the southern guy “little man”, his voice dripping with condescension.

This was my first exposure to intra-Chinese racism. Many NE Asians, especially Japanese, are openly contemptuous of SE Asians, in part because they are darker.

Native Americans go from Australoids to Mongoloids from 7,000-9,000 years ago, around the same time – 9,000 years ago – that the first modern NE Asians show up.

Prototypical NE Asians – Chinese in Harbin, in far northeastern China. This area gets very cold in the winter, sort of like Minnesota. Keep in mind that this race is only 9,000 years old. Note the short, stocky body type, possibly a cold weather adaptation to preserve heat.

Some of the earliest Amerindian skulls such as Spirit Cave Man, Kennewick Man, and Buhl Woman look like Ainu and various Polynesians, especially Maoris.

A Hawaiian woman, part of the Polynesian Race. Kennewick Man does not look like any existing populations today, but he is closest to Polynesians, especially the virtually extinct Moiriori of the Chatham Islands and to a lesser extent the Cook Islanders. Yes, many of the various Polynesians can be distinguished based on skulls. Other early Amerindian finds, such as Buhl Woman and Spirit Cave Woman also look something like Polynesians.

It is starting to look like from a period of ~7,000-11,000 years ago in the Americas, the Amerindians looked like Polynesians and were not related to the existing populations today, who arrived ~7,000 years ago and either displaced or bred out the Polynesian types. Furthermore, early proto-NE Asian skulls, before the appearance of the NE Asian race 9,000 years ago, look somewhat like Polynesians, among other groups.

An archaeologist who worked on Kennewick Man says Amerindians assaulted him, spit on him and threatened to kill him because he said that Kennewick Man was not an Amerindian related to living groups, and that his line seemed to have no ancestors left in the Americas.

Furthermore, most Amerindians insist that their own tribe “has always been here”, because this is what their silly ancestral religions and their elders tell them. They can get quite hostile if you question them on this, as I can attest after working with an Amerindian tribe for 1½ years in the US.

To add further insult to reason, a completely insane law called NAGPRA, or Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, mandates that all bones found on any tribe’s territory are the ancestors of that tribe and must be returned to the tribe for reburial. This idiotic law is completely anti-scientific, but most Amerindians, even highly educated ones, get pretty huffy about defending it (Trust me!).

Hence there has been a huge battle over the bones of Kennewick Man. Equally idiotically, White Nationalists insist that Kennewick Man is a Caucasian, so that means he is one of theirs. They also use this to conveniently note that Whites occupied the US before the Indians, and therefore, that the Amerindians implicitly have no rights to the place and that the land-theft of Amerindian America by Whites was right and proper.

This is even more insane than Zionism by orders of magnitude. First of all, Kennewick Man is not a Caucasian! He just sort of looks like one. But that is only because Polynesians, the Ainu and even Aborigines look somewhat Caucasian. This is not due to Caucasian genes, but is instead simply a case of convergent evolution.

These dual episodes above, like the Asian paleontologist morons above, adds weight to my hypothesis that ethnic nationalism, and nationalism in general, turns people into dithering morons. Among other reasons, that is why this proudly internationalist blog casts such a wary eye on nationalism of all kinds.

The prehistory of SE Asia follows a similar storyline. Once again, all of SE Asia was inhabited by Australoids. They probably looked something like the Negritos of today. Skulls from 9,000-11,000 years ago in SE Asia (including Southern China) resemble modern-day Australoids.

The oldest skulls in Vietnam look like Negritos. 25,800 yr old bones from Thailand look like Aborigines and the genes look like the Semang, Negritos of Thailand and Malaysia. There are skulls dating back 44,000 years in Malaysia and these also look like Aborigines. Some say that the Semang go back 50,000 years in Malaysia.

Andaman Islands Negritos. This type was probably the main human type all throughout SE Asia, and a variation of this type was in NE Asia too. These are really the first people to come out of Africa. Afrocentrists like to say that these people are Black, but the truth is that these people are very far away from Black people – in fact, they are Asians.

Andaman Islanders have peppercorn hair like the hair of the Bushmen in Africa. This would differentiate this group from the woolly-haired Negritos in the Philippines. Genetic studies have shown that the Andaman Islanders are quite probably the precise remains of the first people to come out of Africa.

Genetically, they tend to resemble whatever group they are living around, with some distinct variations. In truth, this group here, the Andamans, is one of the “purest” ethnic groups on Earth, because they have been evolving in isolation for so long. This is known as genetic drift. At the same time, I think there is little diversity internally in their genome, also due to drift.

The Andaman Negritos are part of the Andaman Islands Negrito Race. Their strange and poorly understood languages are not related to any others, but there is some speculation that they are related to Kusunda in Nepal, a language isolate. I tend to agree with that theory.

One of the problems with genetic drift is after a while you get an “island” effect where the population lacks genetic diversity, since diversity comes from inputs from outside populations. Hence they tend to be vulnerable to changes in the environment that a more genetically diverse population would be able to weather a lot better.

Although racist idiot Richard Lynn likes to claim that all people like this have primitive languages, the truth is that the Andaman languages are so maddeningly complex that we are still having a hard time making sense out of them.

As in the case of Melanesians, Papuans and some Indian tribals, Afrocentrists like to claim that the Negritos are “Africans”, i.e., Black people. The truth is that Negritos are one of the most distant groups on Earth to existing Black populations. Negrito populations tend to be related, though not closely, with whatever non-Negrito population are in the vicinity. This is due to interbreeding over the years. Furthermore, most, if not all, Negritos are racially Asians, not Africans.

Another misconception is that Negritos are Australoids. Genetically, the vast majority of them do not fall into the Papuan or Australian races, but anthropometrically, at least some are Australoid. There is a lot of discrimination against these people wherever they reside, where they are usually despised by the locals.

White Supremacists have a particular contempt for them. As a side note, although White Supremacists like to talk about how ugly these people are, I think these Negrito women are really cute and delightful looking, but do you think they have large teeth? Some say Negritos have large teeth.

Around 8,500 years ago, the newly minted NE Asians, who had just transitioned from Australoids to NE Asians, came down from the north into the south in a massive influx, displacing the native Australoids. We can still see the results today. Based on teeth, SE Asians have teeth mixed between Australoids (Melanesians) and NE Asians. Yet, as noted above, there are few Australoid genes in SE Asians.

8,500 years ago, NE Asians moved down into SE Asia, displacing the native Australoids and creating the SE Asian race. If NE Asians are so smart though, I want to know what these women are doing wearing bathing suits in the freezing cold. Compare the appearance of these Northern Chinese to other NE Asian mainland groups above.

A prominent anthropology blogger suggests that a similar process occurred possibly around the same time in South Asia and the Middle East, where proto-Caucasians moved in and supplanted an native Australoid mix.

One group that was originally thought to be related to the remains of the original SE Asians is called the Yumbri, a group of primitive hunter-gatherers who live in the jungles of northern Laos and Thailand. Some think that the Yumbri may be the remains of the aboriginal people of Thailand, Laos and possibly Cambodia, but there is controversy about this.

Yumbri noble savages racing through the Thai rain forest. The group is seldom seen and little is known about them. They are thought to number only 200 or so anymore, and there are fears that they may be dying out. This paper indicates via genetics that the Yumbri are a Khmuic group that were former agriculturalists who for some odd reason gave up agriculture to go back to the jungles and live the hunter-gatherer way.

This is one of the very few case cases of agriculturalists reverting to hunting and gathering. The language looks like Khmuic (especially one Khmu language – Tin) but it also seems to have some unknown other language embedded in it. Genetics shows they have only existed for around 800 years and they have very little genetic diversity.

The low genetic diversity means that they underwent a genetic bottleneck, in this case so severe that the Yumbri may have been reduced to only one female and 1-4 males. It is interesting that the Tin Prai (a Tin group) has a legend about the origin of the Yumbri in which two children were expelled from the tribe and sent on a canoe downstream. They survived and melted into the forest where they took up a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The Khmu are an Austroasiatic group that are thought to be the indigenous people of Laos, living there for 4,000 years before the Lao (Thai) came down 800 years ago and largely displaced them from the lowlands into the hills. The Austroasiatic homeland is usually thought to be somewhere in Central China (specifically around the Middle Yangtze River Valley), but there are some who think it was in India.

They moved from there down into SE Asia over possibly 5,000 years or so. Many Austroasiatics began moving down into SE Asia during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties due to Han pushing south, but the expansion had actually started about 8,500 years ago. At this time, SE Asia was mostly populated by Negrito types. The suggestion is that the Austroasiatics displaced the Negritos, and there was little interbreeding.

The Austroasiatic languages are thought to be the languages of the original people of SE Asia and India, with families like Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, Indo-European and Dravidian being latecomers. There are possible deep linguistic roots with the Austronesian Family, and genetically, the Austroasiatics are related to Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai and the Hmong-Mien speakers.

There is an interesting paradox with the Southern Chinese in that genetically, they look like SE Asians, but they have IQ’s more like NE Asians, around ~105. There do not seem to be any reasonable theories about why this is so. It is true that NE Asians came down and moved into SE Asia, but they moved into the whole area, not just Southern China, yet SE Asian IQ’s are not nearly as high as Southern Chinese IQ’s.

Of relevance to the IQ debate is that Asians, especially NE Asians, score lower on self-esteem than Blacks, yet they do much better in school. This would tend to argue against the contention of many that Black relatively poor school performance is a consequence of them not feeling good about themselves.

This seems to poke one more hole in Richard Lynn’s theory that a journey through the Ice Age is necessary for a high IQ, as the Southern Chinese made no such sojourn.

As a result of the Northern and Southern mix in Southern China, groups such as the Yunnanese are quite a mixed group. Yunnanese are mostly southern and are extremely distant from NE Asians. The Wa are a group in the area that is almost equally mixed with northern and southern admixture.

Two pretty Laotian girls being starved to death by murderous Communist killers in Laos. The Lao are related to the Thai and are members of the Tai Race that includes the Lao, Thai, Aini, Deang, Blang, Vietnamese, Muong, Shan, Dai and Naxi peoples. The Lao language is a member of the Tai language family.

The Thai are related to the Tai group in Yunnan in Southern China. They evolved there about 4,000 years ago and then gave birth to a number of groups in the region. The modern Thai are latecomers to the region, moving into the area in huge numbers only about 700 years ago to become the Lao, Thai and Shan. The Lao are the descendants of recent Tai immigrants who interbred heavily with existing Chinese and Mon-Khmer populations.

Gorgeous Dai women in China. The Dai are an ethnic group in China, mostly in Yunnan, who are related to the Thai – they are also members of the Tai Race and speak a Tai language . It looks like the Thai split off from the larger Dai group and moved into Thailand in recent centuries.

The Dai were together with the Zhuang, another Yunnan group, as the proto-Tai north of Yunnan about 5000 years ago. They moved south into Yunnan and split into the Zhuang and the Tai. There were also Tai movements south into Vietnam via Yunnan.

More Dai, this time two young Dai men from Thailand. They do seem to look a bit different from other Thais, eh? They look a little more Chinese to me. The Thai are not the only ethnic group in Thailand; there are 74 languages spoken there, and almost all are in good shape. These people apparently speak the Tai Nüa language.

A proud Dai father in China, where they Dai are an official nationality together with the Zhuang. He’s got some problems with his teeth, but that is pretty typical in most of the world, where people usually lack modern dental care.

A photo of a Thai waitress in Bangkok getting ready to serve some of that yummy Thai food. Note that she looks different from the Dai above – more Southeast Asian and less Chinese like the Dai. The Thai are also members of the Tai Race.

Another pic of a Thai street vendor. The Thai are darker and less Chinese-looking than the lighter Dai. The Tai people are thought to have come from Taiwan over 5,000 years ago. They left Taiwan for the mainland and then moved into Southwest China, which is thought to be their homeland. Then, 5,000 years ago, they split with the Zhuang. The Zhuang went to Guangxi and the Tai went to Yunnan.

A Thai monk. Am I hallucinating or does this guy look sort of Caucasian? In Thai society, it is normal for a young man to go off and become a monk for a couple of years around ages 18-20. Many Thai men and most Lao men do this. I keep thinking this might be a good idea in our society. Khrushchev used to send them off to work in the fields for a couple of years at this age.

Nevertheless, most Yunnanese have SE Asian gene lines and they are quite distant from the NE Asians (as noted, NE Asians are further from SE Asians than they are from Caucasians).

More beautiful women, this time from Yunnan, in Communist-controlled China. Look at the miserable faces on these poor, starving women as they suffer through Communist terror and wholesale murder.

Yunnan was the starting point for most of peoples in the region, including the Tai, the Hmong, the Mon-Khmer, the Vietnamese, the Taiwanese aborigines and from there to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.

In a sense, almost all of SE Asia was settled via a southward and southeastward movement out of Yunnan. Why so many groups migrated out of Yunnan is not known, but they may have being pushed out of there via continuous southward movements by Northern Han. Yunnan was seen as a sort of rearguard base and sanctuary for many Chinese ethnic groups who were being pushed out of their areas, mostly by Han expansions.

The terrain was rough but fertile. At some point, the Han started pushing down into Yunnan and that is when many southward expansions into SE Asia over the last 5000 or so years took place. A discussion of Asian racial features and their possible evolution is here.

Tibetans are close to NE Asians genetically, though they are located in the South. This is because they evolved in NE Asia and only recently moved down into Tibet. After coming into Tibet, they moved down into Burma. Many of today’s Burmese came from Tibet.

A Tibetan tourist in India. This woman has more of a classic Tibetan look than the younger woman below. Tibetans characteristically have darker skin than many NE Asians – Tibetans are actually NE Asians displaced to the south in fairly recent times. Although it is high and cold in Tibet, the region is at a more southerly latitude. Nevertheless, UV radiation is very intense in Tibet, which probably accounts for the darker skin.

It looks like all humans were pretty dark at the start and in some cases have lost melanin in cold climes where they needed to lighten to get Vitamin D. White skin in Europe is merely 9,000 years old, so European Whites never went through any brain-sharpening Ice Age either.

Tibetans are members of the General Tibetan Race, which includes the Tibetan, Nakhi, Lisu, Nu, Karen, Adi, Tujia, Hui and Kachin peoples. They speak a Tibeto-Burman language, part of the larger Sino-Tibetan family.

My observant Chinese commenter notes about the Tibetans: “As for the Tibetans, they seem to be primarily Northeast Asian (they look to be the most “yellow” of any Asians) with some other (South Asian-looking) element that interbred with them fairly recently. They tend to also be more ruddy, and have skin tones from reddish to yellow to brown.

You can see some similarities with Burmese, but they are distinct. Another thing to note is that the prevalence of colored hair and eyes is relatively higher in Tibet.“

A gorgeous Tibetan woman, but to me she does not look typically Tibetan. Note that she seems to have put some whitening powder on her face – note contrast between her face and her darker hand.

Although this blog supports Tibetan freedom and opposed the colonial Chinese takeover and racist ethnic cleansing of the Tibetan people by the Chinese Communists, it should nevertheless be noted that the wonderful regime that the Dalai Lama apparently wants to bring back was one of the most vicious forms of pure feudalism existing into modern times, where the vast majority of the population were serf-slaves for the Buddhist religious ruling class.

Yes, that wonderful religion called Buddhism has its downside.

The Buddhist paradise of Burma, run by one of the most evil military dictatorships on Earth (No satire in that sentence). I thought Buddhists were supposed to be peace loving?

A Burmese woman with classic Burmese features. The Burmese, better known as the Bamar, are members of the General Tibetan Race. Boy, she sure is cute. And yes, I do have a thing for Asian women. I think I need to retitle this post Hot Asian Babes.

There are several interesting points in the sketch above. First of all, much as it pains them to be compared to people whom they probably consider to be inferior, all NE Asians were originally Australoids similar to the Australian Aborigines.

NE Asians like to accuse SE Asians of being mostly an “Australoid” group, an analysis that is shared by many amateur anthropologists on the web. We will look into this question more in the future, but it appears that both NE and SE Asians are derived from Australoid stock. Further, there are few Australoid genes left in any mainland SE Asians and none in most SE Asians.

It is true that Melanesians, Polynesians and Micronesians are part-Australoid in that the latter two are derived from Melanesians, who are derived from Austronesians mixed with Papuans. Any analysis that concludes that non-Oceanic SE Asians are “part-Australoid” is dubious.

If anything, NE Asians are closer to Australoids than most SE Asians. The Japanese and Koreans are probably closer to Australian Aborigines than any other group in Asia. I am certain that the ultranationalist and racialist Japanese at least will not be pleased to learn this.

Second, we note that all Asians are related, and that the proto-Asian homeland was in northern Vietnam. It follows that NE Asians are in fact derived from the very SE Asians whom the NE Asians consider to be inferior. A NE Asian who is well versed in these matters (He was of the “SE Asians are part-Australoid” persuasion) was not happy to hear my opinion at all, and left sputtering and mumbling.

NE Asian superiority over SE Asians is a common point of view, especially amongst Japanese – the Japanese especially look down on Koreans (Their fellow NE Asians!), Vietnamese, Filipinos (the “niggers of Asia”), the Hmong (the “hillbillies of Asia”) and the Khmer.

The beautiful, intelligent, civilized and accomplished Koreans. Tell me, the Japanese look down on these people are inferiors why now? Note the rather distinct short and stocky appearance, possibly a heat-preserving adaptation to cold weather. Note also the moon-shaped face.

The Koreans seem to have come down from Mongolia about 5,000 years ago and completely displaced an unknown native group, but don’t tell any Korean that. Koreans are members of the Japanese-Korean Race and the Korean language is said to be a language isolate, but I think it is distantly related to Japanese, Ainu and Gilyak in a separate, distant branch of Altaic.

My Chinese commenter adds: “I get the impression that Koreans are at least comprised two major physically discernible groups. Some of them have a shade of skin similar to the Inuit or Na Dene. But I think they have intermixed quite a lot during some relatively stable 5,000+ year period, which results in a fairly even spectrum.”

Third, Richard Lynn’s Ice Age Theory takes another hit as he can explain neither the Southern Chinese high IQ, nor the genesis of high-IQ NE Asians from lower-IQ SE Asians, nor the fact that NE Asians do not appear in the anthropological record until 9,000 years ago (after the Ice Age that supposedly molded those fantastic brains of theirs), nor the genesis of these brainy folks via Australoids, whom Lynn says are idiots.

Fourth, the Negritos, who are widely reviled in their respective countries as inferiors, are looking more and more like the ancestors of many of us proud humans. Perhaps a little respect for the living incarnations of our ancient relatives is in order.

Genocide in Australia

Repost from the old site.

Looks like it was way worse than the genocide of the Amerindians in the US. The wiping out of the Amerindians was done mostly by disease. The much-repeated story of blankets poisoned with smallpox apparently occurred in once, back East.

There was a large poisoning of maybe 200-300 Amerindians in the Shasta area of California in the 1800′s, and there was a massacre of 200-300 Amerindians near Eureka at the same time. California was actually one of the worst places of all. There was an all-out war against the Amerindians here.

I spent months going over old newspaper archives in a library as part of work I did for an Indian tribe here in the Sierras (now doing great with a casino).

In the 1850′s and 1860′s, the California Indians were fighting back. The governor himself was making wild proclamations about how this war a war of one race against another, a war that had to lead to the extinction of one or the other.

For 15-20 years or so, it was more or less legal to kill any Indian you wanted in the Sierras and Northern California and for any reason. You could rape an Indian woman too if you want to, and take an Indian child captive. All of this was more or less legal.

Of course this was taking place against the backdrop of the utterly insane mass criminality and homicide of the California Gold Rush, a crime wave the likes of which the state has never even come close to seeing since.

Too many young unmarried men, hardly any women, few to no families, lots of money in the form of gold, little law enforcement, all the ingredients were there. The law that existed was a brutal one, and men were hanged right and left in the Gold Rush for all sorts of things, but preying on Indians was not one of them.

On Sundays, the men would all go to church, then they would head back to the camps to drink, take drugs, steal, fight, kill and just in general act like animals.

There were regular hangings at the camps, and these were well-attended. Folks would go watch the hangings, then head back to camp to commit more crimes later that evening. Sometimes, even capital punishment just doesn’t cut it. Recall the stories of the pickpockets that roamed through the crowds in England at the hangings. This was when pickpocketing was a capital offense.

Until 1870 or so, an Indian in this part of the state kept his head down and his mouth shut and hoped to stay alive. Epidemics and disease took their toll. By 1890, 95% of the Indian population on the Central Sierra Nevada foothills was dead.

That’s interesting to folks who insist that genetic change in humans takes a long time. Not necessarily, when something happens that kills 95% of a group, and the survivors have some characteristic that enabled them to survive, you can get some pretty extensive genetic changes pretty quickly.

Those who tally such things say that ultimately, Whites killed 7,000 Indians and Indians killed about 11,000 Whites. It’s true, the Indians were could be brutal and women and children were at times killed, but they also often kidnapped them and made them members of the tribe.

There are a couple of stories in my family about encounters with Indians. These all stem from one line of my family, who actually came over with the first invaders on the Second Ship of the Mayflower.

Sometime in the 1640′s in Massachusetts, Indians attacked the village where all the men were off hunting. They rounded up the women and children and prepared to set fire to them.

Some of the women started singing a pretty song, and the Indians stopped to listen. Well, this was long enough for the menfolk to return, chase off the Indians and save the day. Two of my ancestors were in that group, a woman and her young child.

Later, in late 1700′s Virginia, one of my relatives was taken captive by Indians with his friend. They made them run the gauntlet, a popular thing that Indians liked to do with captured Whites. As you ran the gauntlet, the Indians beat on you.

Well, the friend was apparently killed in this process. My ancestor, though, when prodded to run the gauntlet, started jumping around and squawking like a chicken. The Indians all started laughing and decided he did not have to run the gauntlet.

I’m not sure if it’s the same story, but one of my ancestors at one point was either captured by Indians or joined them. This in late 1700′s Virginia again. His family just gave him up for dead. Well, 10 years later, the son returns home, about 30 years old, and he’s walking up to his father’s house all dressed like an Indian.

His father got out his gun and was ready to shoot his own son until he recognized him. Back in those days, if an Indian was coming onto your property, you shot him.

My family goes back to 1600′s Virginia and it’s said that if you can trace your line back that far, you have a 50% chance of being related to Pocahontas. So there may be a bit of Amerindian (less than 1%) in me after all.

The first two stories are probably apocryphal.

If you notice the themes: clever Whites use their ingenuity (and common human nature) to fool the Indians by disarming them and appealing to their sensibilities for comedy and appreciation of music. As the Indian is a barbarian savage in both tales, at the same time, he is a fellow human, revealed by his ability to appreciate a clever joke or a beautiful song.

At the end of the day, there is really no way to figure out if such stories are true or not. But they got passed down through the family for years for a reason that is at once egotistical and at the same time a warning: our line is a clever line, able to cheat death by our wits. Remember this, and use this lesson in the close calls you may experience in your own dangerous times.

The treatment of the Aborigines looks like a real genocide. There were sterilization attempts, deliberate attempts at “breeding them out”, mass imprisonments for minor infractions, infantilization throughout life by being confined to child-care like institutions where even their shit had to pass muster.

In these homes, both sexes experienced mass sex abuse, and this went on for decades. Single women were not allowed to have sex, and males were punished for being a “menace to White women”. Half-breeds were taken away to be raised by Whites, and many Aboriginal children were stolen from their families. There was a conscious attempt to make this race fade into history.

There are not many full-blooded Aboriginals left. There are not that many in cities, and most are in remote areas. They still have very serious problems, but they are hardly any kind of threat to the rest of Australians in any way. At the moment, alcohol and drugs are the worst problems, and fetal alcohol syndrome is epidemic among them. The damaged children are petty criminals and find it hard to function on their own.

When the Whites first showed up, Aboriginals were waging their own war of extinction on the Negritos of Australia, who may have been there even before the Aborigines showed.

The Negritos are the first people out of Africa 70,000 years ago, who moved along the Indian Ocean to SE Asia, leaving trace populations (or relatives) behind (possibly) in Yemen, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Andaman Islands, Malaysia, the Philippines and New Guinea.

The journey taken by early man out of Africa 70,000 years ago. As you can see, one line goes to Australia. Negritos, not Aborigines, were probably the first people in Australia.

The first Whites witnessed Aborigines hunting Negritos the way man would hunt wild animals. They were killed just for the pleasure of it, and because they were small.

Early investigations revealed and photographed some relict populations in Southwest Queensland around Brisbane, Gold Coast, Tin Can Bay, Fraser Island, Blue Lake National Park, Gympie, Tewantin, Cooloola National Park, Tiaro, and the general area of the Mary River. There was another large population in Northeastern Queensland around Cairns and Cape York. Tasmanians also seem to have had Negrito characteristics.

A photo of Australian Negritos from the Cairns rainforest, taken in 1890, found by Tindale in 1937. He went looking for some Negritos in the area and found a few of them. I haven’t seen any genetic studies on these people, since there are few if any of them left, but studies did seem to show that like most Negritos, they are most closely related genetically to the people around them, in this case, the Aborigines.

Native Tasmanians are now apparently extinct. They were also hunted like animals for decades.

The people that we commonly know as Aborigines (or at least one group called Carpentarians named for the Gulf of Carpentaria in Northern Australia) seem to have come much later from Southern India (and seem related to the Veddoids) and largely replaced the Negritos, a genocide that was in its final phases when the Whites showed up.

Indo-Melanid Yanadi boys in Southern India. Note the resemblance with Aborigines. Unfortunately, cranial studies do not show a relationship with Veddoid types and Aborigines. However, genes did seem to show a link a while back. Nevertheless, cranially and surely genetically, these Yanadis are Caucasians.

They may be some of the most ancient Caucasians of them all. It’s fascinating to think that the Aborigines as we know them are the original people, but were actually later arrivals from India and the Pacific Rim respectively.

The Carpentarians showed up about 15,000 years ago, were darker and had little body hair.
A classic Aborigine, probably a cross between an Ainu type and an early South Indian type. These types were generalized across India and SE Asia about 24,000 years ago.

Another group, called Murrayians, are apparently related to the Ainu, and arrived 20,000 years ago. The Ainu are thought to be the remnants of the original people of Northern Asia. They were stocky, wavy-haired, hairy, and fairly light-skinned.

A photo of Ainu Yasli Adam in traditional garb. I love this photo. Note that he could be mistaken for an Aborigine or a Caucasian. Anthropological studies suggest that Ainu types showed up in Australia about 20,000 years ago. There seems to be evidence of them in Thailand around 16,000 years ago, and about this time they went to Japan to form a very early Japanese culture called the Jomonese. There is a suggestion that proto-Jomonese people were also in Thailand around this time.

At the same time, the Americas were being populated by types that best resemble the Ainu. These are the Paleoindians, and the Amerindians today are no relation, no matter how much they scream. The famous Kennewick Man is also a Paleoindian most closely related to an Ainu or a Maori. He only appears Caucasian because the Ainu types do look Caucasian. However, in facial structure, they are Australoid, and genetically, they are Asians.

Complete moron White nationalists claim that Kennewick Man is a White Man, and this proves that Whites were here before Amerindians, and therefore the whole continent is ours. Stupid or what? I’m going to do a whole post taking these clowns to task over this. In traditional early anthropology of the Philippines, a group called the proto-Malay is postulated.

They arrived after the Negritos and after an Australoid group called Sakais, who seem to resemble Veddoids or the Senoi of Malaysia. The proto-Malay are described as short and very hairy. A hairy Asian sounds like an Ainu, and indeed, there were Jomon types in Thailand, and Ainu types may have settled Australia 20,000 years ago, and the Americas 12,000 years ago.

In short, Ainu types were on the move around the Pacific Rim from 12-20,000 years ago, and may even have settled in the Philippines. This is real cutting-edge stuff here and I am totally going out on a limb. Feel free to dive in.

An Australian fossil called Kow Swamp from 20,000 YBP curiously looks more like Homo Erectus than Homo Sapiens.

The Negritos were least advanced, then the Murrayians, then the Carpentarians.

Tindale and Birdsell did the best work on the peopling of Australia long ago and much of it stands to this day. In between the 1960′s saw such idiocies as pan-Aboriginalism, which mandated that all Aborigines had to come from a single source.

Ridiculous theories postulated Negritos not as ancient remnants of the first modern humans in their regions, but as the result of microevolution (in particular, to living in a rain forest) and evolutionary drift.

This same scenario plays out in Africa, where Bantus kill Pygmies just for the fun of it, and take special pleasure in eating them. This old habit has come back with the horrible civil war in Zaire that has killed 5 million people.

In the Philippines, Negritos have been murdered by settlers for their land for decades now, with few legal consequences. The remainder are a defeated people, their lands stolen by Filipinos, working for Filipinos on their former lands as agricultural labor, living in squatter villages, families falling apart, riven by alcohol, dope and even pornography.

A full-grown Ati woman. The Ati, a Philippines Negrito group, live on Panay Island, where they number about 1,500. The Filipinos have been stealing their land and killing them when they resist for decades now, and the government could care less. The Negritos of the Philippines are starting to look like a defeated race.

On the Andaman Islands, most of the Negritos have gone extinct due to disease. The few remainders, for some odd reason, are afflicted with very low fertility, that is, the women seem to be unable to bear children. Is this nature’s way of marking the extinction of a race?

Andaman Islands Negritos. Contact with advanced civilization is fatal to them. They have some immunity to malaria, but none to Hepatitis, venereal diseases or even the common cold or the flu. They quickly succumb to venereal disease, violent crime, beggary, and sloth upon contact with modern civilization.

There is a group on the Sentinel Islands that attacks all researchers who come near. Indian nationalist fuckheads keep sending expeditions to “bring them into civilization” but every Andamans group that has come to the modern world has been destroyed. Long may the Sentinelese prosper in the Paleolithic glory.

I actually think these Stone Age chicks are kinda cute. Hell with modern woman anyway. Every one I meet wants to know my net worth. Think these babes care? Hell with Late Capitalism, how do I get me one of these Negrito chicks anyway?

How Long Have Modern Humans Been In India?

A new commenter is disputing many things in the anthropological threads. First he said that humans only who showed up in India 8-10,000 YBP. Not so. Their genes go back 45-60,000 years and we have data showing them in India 76,000 YBP.

He also said that all humans have African genes, or must have African genes, since they all came out of Africa. It’s true that they all came out of Africa, but no one can find any modern African type genes left over from the out of Africa people, so we say that modern OOA moderns simply do not have any African in them. Europeans and Middle Easterners have African blood, mostly dating from the last 3,000 years. No one else does. So it’s true we came out of Africa a long time ago, but there are no African genes remaining in us from that time.

76,000 years in India, you say. Homo Sapiens (modern) at the earliest reached Australia, via India 60,000 years ago. There is no evidence of earlier homo sapiens in Asia. There were probably more than one migration out of Africa, later than the 65,000 to 70,000 years BCE when the first Homo Sapiens Sapiens left Africa. Where is your data from?

Yes, it is a fact. Homo sapiens is in India 76,000 YBP. But they were wiped out by the Toba volcano eruption that occurred in 73,000 YBP, an eruption that wiped out much life in Asia and even Africa. Keep in mind that Toba may have wiped out so much Homo sapiens that we were down to the last 500-1000 humans on Earth, although I think that many more survived in West Africa. It’s possible that the remaining bands were holed up in the Mt. Kilimanjaro region where they had some refuge from the nuclear winter type climate collapse that followed the eruption.

It is from this tiny band that the Earth was populated. Anyway, I think it is quite clear that the OOA people were part of a tiny band of 500-1,000 people who survived the eruption in East Africa. It is for this reason that the OOA people are so closely related, and the other Africans are so far apart from all the rest of us.

Recall that by 75,000 YBP, Africans had split into 40 extremely divergent lines, and only two of those lines left Africa. The other 38 of the 40 stayed in Africa and kept evolving separately. That’s why Africans are so different. They are not only different form us but from each other. Supposedly two Nigerian tribes 25 miles apart are further apart than an Englishman is from an Aborigine.

This extreme divergence is why the racists on Chimpout, etc. say “Niggers aren’t human LOL,” but that isn’t the case. They can easily breed with us, so obviously they are human. However, Africans are very, very different not only from everyone else but from each other.

The people he is talking about that hit Australia 60,000 YBP were the post-Toba people. The Orang Asli in Malaysia have genes going back 73,000 YBP I believe. Most ancient out of Africa genes on Earth.

Where on Earth does he get this idea that he is going to find “African genes” in all humans on Earth owing to the fact that they are out of Africa? You won’t find any.

More Comments on the Genetics of Filipinos

The question involves whether or not Filipinos have some Negrito genes. The Negritos are the original Australoid peoples of the Philippines. The Filipinos are the modern, SE Asian Mongoloid types that we all familiar with.

SE Asian Australoids are people like Papuans, Melanesians and Negritos.

It is possible to be part this or that in your background, but it won’t show up in genes or in skulls. I think we are all aware that SE Asians in general are a mix of a Mongoloid type with more primitive Australoid types = Negrito or Melanesian types, that were already living there. But when we look at skulls, we see nothing. SE Asian skulls do not look Australoid, other than Negritos and the Senoi.

Classic SE Asian appearance in a young Filipina with relatively dark skin, an adaptation to the tropical climate. She also somewhat resembles a Taiwanese aborigine.

When we go looking for Australoid genes, we can’t seem to find much of those either. Just a few here and there along the coast of Vietnam, in Malaysia and in Indonesia. Though there are a lot more in Eastern Indonesia.

So, yeah, Filipinos may well be part Melanesian/Negrito going way back when (Heck, all SE Asians are) but there’s little to nothing obvious left of the Australoid presence, other than maybe some vague look in the faces won’t plot on a chart (Filipino skulls won’t plot with Australoid skulls on charts).

Emilio Aguinaldo, a famous Filipino independence fighter. This look, often said to be Australoid, actually shows resemblances to the Taiwanese Ami.

The analogy with Amerindians is a good one. Amerindians in the US have quite a bit of White genes. Most are only part Amerindian anymore. But Whites do not have a lot of Amerindian genes. Sure, we have some (I am 1/3000 Amerindian as I am related to Pocohontas), and perhaps a majority of Americans have Amerindian genes, but they only have small amounts of them.

Vast amounts of White genes went into the Amerindian population. Few Amerindian genes went into the White population. Both via genocide and genetic swamping effects.

A similar situation may have existed in the Philippines. Aeta genes now look Filipino, but Filipinos seem to have few Negrito genes that I am aware of.

Wilma, a Filipina girl from Siteo Pader, Angeles City. This Filipina girl has a classic Filipina look to her. She is much closer to a Taiwanese Ami than to a Negrito, as you can see.

The Negritos were simply genetically swamped out. Vast amounts of Filipino genes went into the Negritos, but few Negrito genes went into the Filipinos.

A Negrito woman from the Philippines. Do Filipinos look like this? No. Hence, don't have many Negrito genes.

All of this is complicated by the fact that the original Austronesians may well have been Australoid types. At 5000 YBP, the Taiwanese aborigine Ami, the source of the Filipino population, are Australoid.

An Ami girl from Taiwan. The Ami, Taiwanese aborigines, are the source population of most of the Philippines and the closest relatives of Filipinos.

They transition to Mongoloid over the next 3000 years. Probably a similar transition occurred in the Philippines, as the Ami in the Philippines slowly turned into Mongoloids along with the rest of SE Asia.

A chart showing the near-perfect relationship between the Taiwanese Ami and the Filipinos. The relationship is clear and unmistakable. Note that other Taiwanese populations could not have been the source.

It is true that there are Bornean genes from Borneo in the South of the Philippines, that is, the South Filipinos of Mindanao are part Bornean.

The heavily-Austronesian (Ami) people of Sabah. People from Sabah went up into the Southern Philippines (Mindanao) at some point in the past. P.S. The lady in the middle is a cutie. Same with 3rd one on the top and 3rd one on the left.

The proto-Daic genes from 15,000 YBP that make up 80% of the Indonesians were from an Australoid people. Proto-Daics (the ancestors of the present day Dai people of Yunnan in South China) 15,000 YBP were Australoids. I am not sure what they looked like. Maybe something like an Aborigine or a Melanesian. The Indonesians then transitioned to Mongoloid types over the next 13,000 years or so.

An Indonesian with a strong Australoid appearance. Quite a few Indonesians retain some Australoid features.

The Anuids or Ainu types probably passed through the Philippines two times.

An Ainu woman with quite a bit of Japanese in her. Most Ainus are now heavily Japanese. By the way, she's a hottie.

The first time, going from Thailand as the Ainuid Jomonese to Japan on boats to form the Japanese Jomonese 16,000 YBP.

An Ainu chief showing the typical Ainu appearance before Japanese gene flow.

Possibly the same migration brought the Jomonese to Australia as the Ainuid Murrayans, a formative element in the Aborigines.

Typical Aboriginal women.

Jews Versus Overseas Chinese

Repost from the old site. I am not convinced that being a market-dominant minority is the smart thing to do, but some groups just outcompete others. Jews outcompete White Gentiles (the real reason for most anti-Semitism) and Overseas Chinese outcompete Malays, Indonesians and Filipinos.

After a while, the people in the country get tired of a group of “outsiders” numbering perhaps 1-3% of the population taking control of 25-70% of the nation’s wealth and the inevitable pogrom/backlash takes place. Think about it. How many countries are going to put up with that, no matter how fairly it was acquired?

Still, I think there is a smart way (Overseas Chinese, Armenians, East Indians, Lebanese) and a dumb way (Jewish) to be a market-dominant minority.

Uncle Milton commented on a previous post of mine that dealt peripherally with the overseas Chinese. I will deal with his comments at the end of the article:

Robert Lindsay: There are differences between Jews and Overseas Chinese. The Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, keep out of politics, and are not endlessly meddling in the cultural and political affairs of the nation – they just focus on making money. Jews focus on making money too, but they can’t seem to help trying to change society, a habit that arouses mountains of anti-Semitism.

Uncle Milton: I would say this is incorrect. Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand (and one of the richest if not the richest men in Thailand) was deposed by a military coup is ethnically Chinese.

There were also many ethnic Chinese who were very close to Suharto and received special favors and privileges from the Indonesian government.

The Chinese in Indonesia, however, have had to play a background role because the Indonesians, especially the Muslims, resented them. Basically, as recently as 1998 there were pogroms against ethnic Chinese. (One could also say the anti-communist purges of the mid 60s were heavily directed against ethnic Chinese.)

In other words ethnic Chinese in Indonesia were never tolerated previously as much as Jews have been in the US in the past five decades, so they had no basis on which to build a political or cultural movement. In recent years however, China has given aid and been an important foreign investor in Indonesia.

I suspect ethnic Chinese influence using mainland China with it’s rising economic prowess (and potentially it’s substantial army) will increase (outwardly) in Southeast Asia.

As for the Philippines, their national hero Jose Rizal was part Chinese as was the first president after Marcos’ dictatorship ended: Razored Aquino.

I really do not know much about the Overseas Chinese. I do not think that they would go on Jewish-type jihads to wage radical change in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines no matter what. Overseas Chinese just do not care about such things. They just care about making money and keeping the pogroms away and little else.

Sure, they have gained quite a bit of political power, as one might expect due to their money. However, I believe that Indonesia and certainly Malaysia still have some very anti-Chinese laws on the books.

The Communist revolutionaries in Malaysia were mostly Chinese, but the Chinese got into this movement not due to any love of Communism so much as a way of changing a government that they saw as heavily biased against the Chinese.

In this way, they may be somewhat comparable to the many Jews who flocked to the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Communists in Poland during and after World War 2 not necessarily because they loved Communism so much, but more because the Communists were offering to crack down hard on anti-Semitism, and Polish and Russian anti-Semitism has not been a picnic for the Jews.

It’s quite common for Filipinos, especially the urban university educated middle and upper classes, to be part-Chinese. The Chinese have been coming to the Philippines in large numbers for 800 years now and they bred in pretty heavily with the locals. Filipinos with some Chinese ancestry are quite common. The real Overseas Chinese are the pure Chinese who are 3% of the country and control 70% of the wealth.

Uncle Milton responds: I would say any ethnic minority group that controls 70% of a nations wealth inherently has a large amount of societal and cultural control, albeit indirectly.

Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia (with the exception of Thailand) are probably in a position similar to Jews in the US around 1950 with the although the ethnic Chinese control a much larger percentage of the wealth in the Southeast Asia than Jews control in the US.

The rise of political and cultural influence from Jews (US) came fairly soon after WWII and the formation of Israel and really got rolling by about the mid-60s. In my view US Jews have probably hit their peak influence or are past it. Basically it’s a numbers game, Jews are declining rapidly in number both nominally and as a percentage of the population.

The average number of children born to Jewish women is 1.1; even this number is skewed towards Orthodox Jews, who tend to have larger families and generally do not get involved in politics. The ongoing Hispanicization of the US will, in my opinion, ironically (since multiple Jewish groups promote immigration to the US) mark a decline in Jewish influence.

Latino Catholics tend not to be interested (and if anything are somewhat anti-Semitic) in Judaism unlike many evangelical Whites, many of which are Zionists and and tend to be very pro-Jewish.

I tend to believe the Overseas Chinese influence will strengthen in coming years, basically in conjunction with the rise of economic power in China. Effectively, over time, I believe we will see a Sinicization of all of East Asia with the exception of Japan.

In regards to repression of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: those laws have been reversed. As for Malaysia, basically the laws are similar in scope to our affirmative action laws. It’s up to each individual, I suppose, to determine how oppressive affirmative action is. In addition, Malaysia has some quirky laws about Islam; the Constitution states that all Malays are Islamic and anyone marrying a Muslim has to convert to Islam.

I am convinced that any further pogroms against Overseas Chinese will be met with some sort of response by the PRC. Likely first an economic threat and if severe enough, a military threat.

I respond to Uncle Milton: I am not going to go round and round about this. My perception is that the whole Overseas Chinese (OC) thing has been to keep their heads down, focus on making money and getting along, and stay out of cultural stuff. They are the complete opposite of the Jews.

Now, why so many OC got involved in the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965, I have no idea. First of all, I am not even sure it is true. I am sure that there must also have been huge numbers of Indonesians involved. After all, that party was one of the largest political parties in the nation. It’s been outlawed since 1965 because the ruling Indonesian elites are so terrified of it coming back bigtime.

Communist parties (CP’s) are still a pretty big force in that region.

Vietnam and Laos are ruled by CP’s, Cambodia had a ruling CP until just recently (not the Khmer Rogue, but instead a pro-Vietnamese CP whose leader was named Hun Sen), the Philippines has a vast CP that is outlawed and has taken up arms in a huge insurgency, Nepalese Maoists are about to seize power, Indian Maoists are tearing up India, there is a Maoist insurgency in Bangladesh, there is an active armed CP in Burma, and China, the largest nation on Earth, is ruled by a CP.

Communism goes right along with the cultural and economic realities of the region very well, particularly with Confucianism and Buddhism.

Indonesia still has one of the most horrible and inequitable semi-feudal economies in the region. It’s not that different from the Philippines. A ruling elite who are little more than criminals has teamed up with the military to steal about every spare dime in the land. Hunger and malnutrition are widespread, and wages are ridiculously low.

The state for all intents and purposes as a guarantor of the rights of the poor, who are the overwhelming majority, simply does not exist. The ruling system under Suharto (pangasila) – an alliance between capital and labor along with very close ties between capital, the military and state, along with all sorts of para-state organizations – bears quite close resemblance to classical fascism.

The state even has bands of street thugs (usually Islamists) who conveniently assault striking workers. Leftists, dissidents and labor activists are also just out and out murdered by the state.

I am not sure about the Sinicization of the whole region, because so many nationalists in those countries are hostile to the OC. Even in Vietnam there is a lot of hostility towards the OC and to Chinese in general. Fact is, no one in Asia likes the Chinese. This is what I have been told by Asians. They are an 800-lb gorilla romping through the backyard and everyone is scared of them.

There is a Chinese nationalist who comes here every once in a while and he is furious at the way that these countries have treated their ethnic Chinese. He is urging the OC’s to just pack up, sell off their assets, and go back to China or Taiwan.

You may be correct that China may intervene in the next anti-Chinese pogroms, assuming that they occur.

The Jews are total morons for letting all of these anti-Semitic Mesoamerican Catholics in here. Jesus Christ, what were they thinking? I talk to these Hispanics now and again, and they are, as a group, way more anti-Semitic than the average US White Protestant. Jews are so stupid sometimes. You know that probably 80-90% of US Jews are 100% open borders too.

Jews play dangerous games a lot, and this is one more case of it. They don’t want to oppose immigration because that will set off White racism. They like immigration because it weakens the dominant ethnic-religious group in the nation – in this case, White Christians. Thing is, the Jews have done their work and the job is done.

White Christians are already sufficiently diluted that there is not going to be any racist backlash that is going to turn anti-Semitic and go after the Jews. Whites are like 64% of the US population and that was in 2000. You know we are probably like 57% now. That’s what this sudden burst of White nationalism is – the last cry of a dying majority. Historically, such backlashes can get nasty, but I think in this case, it’s too little, too late.

Amy Chua’s World On Fire is an excellent example of a modern-day Overseas Chinese polemic. Her OC aunt living in the Philippines was murdered by her Filipina maid, possibly in a fit of ethnic pique.

The Peopling of the Philippines

Repost from the old site. Updated April 2, 2012.

The peopling of the Philippines is a bit better understood than the peopling of Indonesia described in my another post. At least we know that most of the Philippines was first settled long ago by Negritos.

An Aeta Negrito woman of the Philippines. The Aeta live mostly in Northern Luzon. White Nationalists and Afrocentrists both insist that these folks are Black people, but they are very distant from African Blacks. White people are much closer to Blacks than these Negritos. Genetically, these people resemble the Filipinos they live with.Their skulls resemble other Australoid types such as Papuans and Aborigines. Genetically, they are classed as Asians. They are part of the Southeast Asian Major Race. Their minor race is known as the Philippines Negrito Race. It includes the Ati, Aeta and, strangely, the Palau of Micronesia.

There is also another Negrito race in the Philippines – the Mamanwa Philippines Negrito Race. The woman and child above are both Mamanwas. The woman has the typical woolly hair, but the baby has the wavy, Veddoid-like hair seen in many Mamanwas.

The Mamanwa are a group of Philippine Negritos from northeastern Mindanao that are very different from all of the rest of the Negritos in the area. They live in Surigao del Sur in northeastern Mindanao, especially near Mount Hilong-Hilong.

They are thought to be the last remains of the original Negritos to move into the Philippines. There are considerable differences in stature and blood proteins between the Mamanwas and the other Negritos, and they may represent separate migrations.

Excellent photos of modern-day Mamanwas, a group of only 5,000 or so people, can be seen here. I cannot help but notice the resemblance to the Veddoid people of India and Sri Lanka and the Senoi of Malaysia. A few have woolly Negrito hair, but look at how many have the wavy Veddoid hair.

The Mamanwa language seems to be in good shape, judging by the figure that only 7% of the Mamanwa can read and write in their second language. Most Philippine Negrito languages are in bad if not terrible shape; the Mamanwa probably benefit from isolation in the jungle.

Here is a linguistics text on Mamanwa. This called a “text”, in this case a “text” of Mamanwa. It means it is a snippet of Mamanwa, with English translation usually written interlineally so we can see not only what the text means, but what the parts of each word mean too, as even the words are divided into morphemes and translated as best they can be.

The text in most primitive groups usually has to do with myths, legends or stories of the ethnic group, rather than stories about day to day behavior. In this case, it is interesting that the Mamanwa, the oldest Negritos on the Philippines, have a story about the time of their ancestors, when the Mamanwa were “like children”. I guess this means that the early Mamanwa had not reached a very high level of civilization.

Sometimes these stories seem silly or boring to me, but usually they have a lot of meaning for the group who tells them.

Unlike many other places where the Negritos seem to have died out or transcended to other forms, in the Philippines they still exist in a relatively pristine form, even if they are going extinct, culturally, linguistically and probably racially.

Although some give the Negrito population at as low as 32,000, I say that there are 119,606 Negritos left in the Philippines, most of whom are still speaking Negrito languages, based on my estimate from here. The total Negrito population, including those who have given up on their native languages, is not known. They are found throughout the archipelago in various types.

They long ago lost their original languages and now speak Austronesian languages related to the Austronesian settlers who began arriving 5,000 years ago. Philippine Negritos have bred in heavily with standard-issue Filipinos such that the Negritos are now closer to Filipinos than to any other group.

A Dumagat Negrito woman from northern Luzon with her family. The hair at first looks like the Afro a kinky-haired African can grow, but it is actually woolly and not kinky. Dumagat is a generic name for speakers of many Negrito languages in northern Luzon.

On the other hand, Filipinos do not seem to have much Negrito in them. Genetically, we can see only tiny traces of the original Negritos in the Filipino genome. Similar traces can be seen in Micronesians and probably in Malays and Indonesians. These traces range from .02 to .11% – truly minuscule.

Anthropologically, Filipino skulls look SE Asian. Nor do Filipinos look Negrito. In appearance they resemble other Austronesians like Taiwanese aborigines, Indonesians and Malays.

While Philippines Negrito genes look Filipino, Negrito skulls look Australoid, clustering with Aborigines, the Ainu, Tamils, Aborigines, the Sakai of Malaysia, Papuans, Melanesians and Fuegian and Pericu Amerindians.

The Negritos have long been a small group in the Philippines, and the other Filipinos have long dwarfed them in population. Hence, a small amount of inbreeding quickly produced many Filipino genes in Negritos but few Negrito genes in Filipinos.

A Manobo, possibly an Agusan Manobo, man in traditional dress. Most Manobos today wear Western clothing. Some, like the ones who live near the Mamanwa in Surigao del Sur in northeast Mindanao, live off the forest and are being badly affected by deforestation. The Agusan Manobo have at least 2% Negrito genes, the highest level reported for any non-Negrito Filipino group in the Philippines.

Traditionally, the Manobos are considered to be among the Nesiot Austronesians. 54% of Agusan Manobo can read and write in their native language, which has 60,000 speakers. That is a pretty impressive figure for such an isolated group.

A very difficult linguistics paper on Agusan Manobo is available here. It deals with a subfield called discourse analysis, something I never studied and hence don’t really understand very well.

It analyzes language at the discourse level – beyond sounds (phonology), parts of words (morphology), words (lexicology), and sentences (syntax). It analyzes narratives and tries to locate patterns and truths about the way that humans use language to make narratives and tell stories. Believe it or not, the rules and patterns of language work at the narrative level too.

The Agusan Manobo allowed husbands to have multiple wives, common in many primitive cultures. This was usually relegated to those men who had the most money. In this tribe, only women can be religious leaders, which is interesting and resembles the Kalash of Pakistan. The Druze of Lebanon and Israel also have many female religious leaders. I think this is a great idea as I have been worshiping females all my life.

Some Filipino populations, such as the Manobos, described above, that have a somewhat higher level of Negrito genes, but even that level is very small, around 2%. The Manobos live scattered all through Mindanao, but some of the Agusan Manobo live next to the Mamanwas in Surigao del Sur and clearly there has been some interbreeding.

A cute Dumagat Negrito girl trying to read a book. Looking at her hair and features, she is clearly heavily mixed in with Filipino.

Most Filipinos have few if any Negrito genes. There are some Filipinos with Negrito ancestry, and this is readily observable in their woolly or kinky hair and very dark complexion.

A full-grown Ati woman. The Ati live on Panay Island, where they number about 1,500. Their language is still alive. I actually think she is attractive. She’s definitely cute in a child-like way anyway. Note the classical woolly hair of the Philippine Negritos. This is not the same hair as the kinky hair of US Blacks. Other Negritos in the Andaman Islands have peppercorn hair like the Bushmen of Africa.

There are many photos in the older literature of Filipino-Negrito half-breeds, and there is probably still some interbreeding going on. There is a lot of discrimination against Negritos in the Philippines.

A photo of a Negrito man, an Ati from Negros Island, from an anthropological text published around 1916. This text had many photos of mixed Negrito-Filipino types. The Ati of Negros have apparently gone extinct.

On Luzon there is a regular festival in honor of the local Negritos. Almost everyone at the festival is a non-Negrito. A few Negritos wander around the crowd begging and are treated with contempt and ridicule by their non-Negrito brethren.

In a sign that the Negritos may be getting treated better in the Philippines, Juliet Chavez, a Dumagat Negrito, recently won a beauty contest. She is not bad looking.

One of my Filipino contacts told me that the best description of the Filipino attitude towards Negritos is that they do not even exist.

The Philippine Negritos are related to the first groups out of Africa 60-70,000 years ago. They left via the Horn of Africa, got on boats and crossed over to Yemen, then went on boats or walked along the shore along the Indian Ocean to Iran, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, New Guinea, Indonesia and Australia.

The journey taken by early man out of Africa 70,000 years ago. It makes the most sense to think that people migrated along the coast, especially in desert regions. Today in Oman, almost all towns are located along the coast.

There were widespread mangrove forests all along this route back then, though most of them have since died out. There’s plenty to eat along the coast, and the weather is much milder. A journey inland through deserts by such primitive people may have been deadly. Probably the first people undertaking this epic voyage, to which we are all indebted, were the Negritos.

It is generally accepted that Negritos or pre-Negritos probably arrived in the Philippines 30,000 years ago. Findings in caves on Palawan include a 22,500 year old skull called Tabon Man. The skull most resembles modern-day Ainu and Tasmanian people – hence, the Tabon Man people were an Australoid or Aborigine-type people. They were not Negritos.

However, there is also a fragment of a human tibia bone dated 47,000 years ago, so Negritos or pre-Negritos must have been present in the Philippines nearly 50,000 years ago. These caves show habitation going back, some say, 50,000 years.

Finds at the Tabon Caves are interesting in that giant tortoises and even elephants are found there, animals that have since died out on the Philippines.

At other sites, boars, deer, giant and pygmy elephants and rhinoceros have been found. Presently, large mammals are rare to lacking on the archipelago, a common characteristic of islands.

Some archaeologists believe that an even earlier man was present on the Philippines up to 250,000 years ago. This “Dawn Man” is thought to be related to Peking Man and Java Man, that is, he is a variety of Homo Erectus. No bones of this man have been found, but that has not prevented archaeologists from strangely speculating about his appearance.

Dr. Otley Beyer, an American anthropologist, is the one who postulated the existence of Dawn Man.

But findings at Tabon Cave date back at most 50,000 years, not 250,000 years.

Nevertheless, there are what some say are human artifacts in the Cagayan Valley on Luzon dating back 500,000 years, so Otley may have been onto something. Other reports indicate these tools date back 800,000 years, in the range of Java Man.

Others investigating similar sites in the Philippines question whether or not these are really tools, but even these people describe their own clear human artefactual finds as Acheulean and Lower Paleolithic.

These inhabitants must have been Homo Erectus, and were probably related to Java Man and possibly to Peking Man. Acheulean dates from 100,000 to 1.8 million years ago, and Lower Paleolithic spans from 120,000 to 2.5 million years ago. Clearly, the use of these terms by these Cagayan doubters means that even they feel that Homo was in the Philippines at least 120,000 years ago.

Palawan is at the very far end of the Philippines near Indonesia.

Indonesia has been inhabited by Homo derivatives for 2 million years. The theory is that Palawan was at one time connected to Borneo, and early man came to the Philippines via this land bridge.

A Batak Negrito woman of Palawan Island, possibly related to some of the first Negritos to show up in the Philippines. The Palawan Batak number 2,041, and about 1/2 the population speak the language. Note the woolly hair. Parts of Palawan near Tabon Cave are still pretty sparsely populated. Although Tabon Cave is now right on the seashore, it used to be 25-30 miles inland. Only 10% of Philippine archaeological sites have been dug up, and many of those are being looted.

All artifacts and bones have to be shipped out of the Philippines to more developed countries to be analyzed and then shipped back, since the Philippines, with its semi-feudal capitalist model, lacks the modern facilities to analyze artifacts. This is the one great thing Mao did for China – he built a modern country. Mao’s achievement is best seen in comparisons like this one. This blog supports the NPA in the Philippines.

The caves of Tabon show evidence of jar burial connected with the Plain of Jars in Laos and other sites in Sri Lanka. This is probably a Negrito culture in Sri Lanka and Laos.

The Negritos probably came to the Philippines from Malaysia, where they existed 50,000 years ago, down the Malay Peninsula, over to Borneo and up to Palawan in the Philippines, then to the rest of the islands. A map of land bridges in the area 50,000 years ago is here.

Today, the Negritos are known as Ati, Aeta, Agta, Arta, Atta, Alta and Ita, among other names. The word appears to be not their own name for themselves but an appellation placed on them by the surrounding Filipinos. In Austronesian languages, a word like ita often means “black”.

Aeta kids in the Philippines. Some of them look almost like Aborigines. The girl on the far right has a lot of Filipino blood based on her hair and features. The cute girl on the second to left is very heavily admixed with Filipino blood.

They practiced a Stone Age culture up until modern times.

A Pugot Negrito hunter of Southern Luzon with a small deer he has killed, in a photo from a travel guide in 1987. Note that he is clad only in a loincloth. They live around Quezon Province south of Manila and speak a language called Southern Alta, which has about 1,000 speakers.

Today, their lands have been invaded and stolen by non-Negrito Filipinos, and the Negritos labor as peasants on the lands of the Filipinos. Many are unemployed, and cultural collapse is evident. Marriages are unstable, domestic abuse is common, drunkenness is omnipresent, and watching pornography is a pastime. The languages are in a state of Language Death.

In the past few decades, there have been quite a few murders of Negritos by Filipino settlers. There have been few, if any, prosecutions for these crimes.

The Tiruray of Cotabato in Southern Mindanao . They are also known as the Ata and the Upland Bagobo. They may be related to Negritos, but they are clearly quite mixed. Traditionally, they are considered to be part of the second wave of Nesiot Austronesians from Taiwan. They are quite dark.

Being short and dark is an advantage in very hot climates. Dark skin avoids skin damage from UV waves and prevents the destruction of folic acid in the woman’s body during pregnancy, lack of which kills a high percentage of fetuses. Being short enables one to dissipate heat more quickly in a very hot climate. A large body quickly overheats in such a climate.The Tiruray language is in excellent shape. All 50,000 Tiruray speak it, and the literacy rate in Tiruray is 49%.

After the Negritos, two more possibly Australoid groups came to the Philippines, both poorly understood.

Traditional Philippine anthropology says that the Australoid-Sakais came first, and then the proto-Malay. It’s possible that it may have been the other way around, if their arrival in the Philippines mirrored their arrival in Australia.

My working of events reverses the traditional model and postulates that the proto-Malay appeared first, and then the Australoid-Sakais. The proto-Malay were short and very hairy – were they related to the Ainu? It is not known if they were Australoid or not. The nature of the proto-Malay is completely unclear.

A very hairy and early Asian seems to imply someone related to the Ainu. The proto-Ainu were in Thailand 18,000 years ago as the Jomon, when they got on boats and moved up to Japan. In Malaysia, the proto-Malay are the product of Austronesians from Taiwan breeding in with Veddoid Senoi.

It is not known if the proto-Malay described in the peopling of the Philippines are the same people as those in Malaysia, but these people do not seem to be hairy at all.

It seems more logical that the proto-Malay described here may have been the same Murrayan Jomonese-Ainu who came to Australia 15,000-20,000 years ago, possibly from Thailand, later mixed with the Carpinterians, and went on to become the Aborigines. As the Philippines is on the way from Thailand to Australia, it’s conceivable they could have moved into the Philippines along the way.

Australoid-Sakais were the next group to come to Philippines after the proto-Malay. The Sakais are the same as the Senoi in Malaysia.

The Senoi are the subject of the most flagrant yet little known anthropological frauds of our time – the Senoi Dream Theory fraud. A discussion goes beyond the scope of this post, but this exhaustive site fills in all the blanks.

They seem to be a part-Veddoid group with links to the Veddoids of India and Sri Lanka. They also seem to have some roots in Southern China 5,000 years ago. It appears that whatever movements brought them to Malaysia may have carried them over to the Philippines. The Sakai mixed in heavily with the Negritos.

It is quite possible that this is the same group as the Carpinterian Australoids who left India 10,000-15,000 years ago and went to Australia to mingle with the Murrayan Australoids and become the Aborigines. As the Philippines is on the way from southern India to Australia, it’s conceivable they could have stopped by the Philippines along the way.

All of these early Australoid groups – the Sakai, the proto-Malay and the Negritos – seem to have left little trace on the Filipinos of today.

The next group to come to the Philippines were the Nesiots. Some say the Nesiots were Austronesians from Taiwan; others say they came from Indonesia. Wherever they came from, their ancestors are the Tboli of Mindanao, Apayaos, Gaddangs, Ibanags, Lumad and Kalingas of Northern Luzon; the Tagbanuas of Palawan; and the Bagobos, Manobos, Mandayans, Bukidnons, Tirurays and Sabanuns of Mindanao.

A Tboli tribal from South Cotabato Province in Southwest Mindanao. These people are said to be proto-Malays who arrived even before the Austronesians who came to the Philippines 5,000 years ago. No one really knows where these proto-Malays came from. Some say they came from Indonesia, but that seems dubious. Perhaps genetics can sort all this out.

The Tboli language is in excellent shape, with 95,000 speakers, and there are 10,000 Tboli monolinguals. Tboli is spoken freely and everywhere by the group. Their literacy rate in Tboli is 50-60%, excellent for such a small language.

This document, Figurative Uses of ‘Breath’ in Tboli, is a linguistics text dealing with the field of Semantics, or the meaning of words. It’s easily readable by any reasonably educated reader of this blog, and you might find it interesting to dip into it.

In Tboli, one may combine the noun “breath” with 53 different adjectives and verbs to create different expressions of emotions, characteristics, or new verbs. Lengun nawa – “coffin breath” – worry, anxiety – is a cool example. More at the link.

The first wave of Nesiots came 5,000 years ago. They were tall and thin, and had light skin, deep set eyes, aquiline noses and thin lips. It is common to say that these people were part-Caucasian, but there is little evidence of this. Some of the Mangyan of Mindoro today do look somewhat Caucasian.

An Igorot of Luzon. They have a distinctive appearance that most Filipinos can recognize. These are among the last groups of Austronesians out of Taiwan. These people are also known as Bontoc, and speak two different languages, Central Bontoc and Northern Kankanay. Together these groups number 110,000. Note the terraced rice fields. Rice cultivation was brought to the Philippines by the Austronesians when they first arrived maybe 5,000 years ago from Taiwan.

Some Bontoks look quite Negrito – the woman in this photo obviously has Negrito blood.
An Alangan Mangyan woman from north-central Mindoro.The language has 7,694 speakers and is in good shape. Some say these people may be related to Negritos, but that is not proven. I have a friend on Mindoro who says she likes the Mangyan but prefers not to deal with them when they come into Calapan City where she stays sometimes. Asked why not, she said it is because they smell bad.

They live pretty primitive lives via slash and burn agriculture in the jungles of Mindoro, but maybe they don’t bathe all that much. They come into the cities now and then to buy stuff. The men, even today, are often clad only in a loincloth.

A second wave came later. They were shorter, bulkier and darker, with thick lips, wide noses and heavy jaws. As these groups are also related to the Sea Dayak of Borneo and the Batak of Sumatra anthropologically, and the Paiwan Taiwanese aborigines genetically, it seems strange to say that they came from Indonesia.

They were probably ancestors of the Paiwan who came to Indonesia and the Philippines by boats. Ancestors of the Batak later went on to populate Polynesia and from there Micronesia. I call the group made up of Sea Dayak, Sumatrans, Balinese and the Paiwan the Island SE Asian Race.

From 700-2,300 yrs ago, the last wave of Austronesians came from Taiwan, and these are the present day Pinoys. This group, traditionally called Malays, is almost exclusively related to the Ami aborigine tribe of Taiwan. An initial group of these Ami came 1,900-2,300 years ago and formed the primitive, headhunting groups in the Luzon hill tribes. These tribes include the Igorots, Ifugaos , Bontoks and the Tinggians or Tinguians.

Another group of Ami came from 700-1,900 years ago, and includes the Visayans, Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Bicolanos and Kapampangans. This group was much more advanced than the earlier group, and actually used an alphabet. The overwhelming majority of Filipinos today are related to this last group.

900 years ago, a large wave of southern Chinese came to the Philippines on boats and totally mixed in with the Ami-Filipinos.

Beautiful little Filipina girls. This is a classic Filipino phenotype.

Present-day Filipinos are mostly related to the Ami of Taiwan who came 700- 2,300 years ago, with heavy Southern Chinese admixture from the Chinese who came 900 years ago. The ancient Southern Chinese portion has totally mixed in to the point where we cannot see it genetically anymore, but it is there and can be seen by plotting Filipinos with Southern Chinese and noting that they plot quite close together.

More recently, there has also been some mixing with Chinese, but most Filipinos do not show evidence of this recent mixing. About 20% of Filipinos do have recent Chinese ancestry though.

Tales that the Filipinos are part-Australoid or heavily mixed with Negrito, very common beliefs among racists, racialists and amateur anthropologists on the Internet, are all in error, at least based on genetics or skull measures. The notion that Filipinos are part-Australoid is based on looking at their faces and noting that their faces appear somewhat Australoid.

This older anthropological method of dividing up groups into racial types a la Carleton Coon has fallen completely out of favor in recent years.

An old photo of Tagalogs on Luzon from the early part of the 20th Century. Some Filipinos are quite dark. Even these people are probably mostly Chinese people from Taiwan.

The Filipinos are first and foremost a Southern Chinese people, genetically related to the far Southern Han Chinese from around Hong Kong and the aboriginal Taiwanese tribe, the Ami.

A cute Ami girl from the Ami tribe of Taiwanese aborigines. Modern-day Filipinos, excepting some tribals, are extremely close genetically to the Ami of Taiwan, such that one can easily posit a Filipino-Ami subgroup. The most parsimonious conclusion is that most Filipinos today are derived from a large group of Ami who traveled via boat from Taiwan to the Philippines from 700-2,300 years.

There has since been a large infusion of Chinese to the Philippines. Many Filipinos in and around Manila claim recent Chinese ancestry. The Ami and other Taiwanese tribes were headhunters even as recently as the 1930′s. During the Japanese occupation, they were a perennial headache to the occupiers.

They had a tendency to behead the local Hokko Chinese (the mainland Chinese who came to Taiwan starting in the 1600′s). In one incident related in Time Magazine from the 1930′s, 100 Taiwanese aborigine women committed suicide en masse as their village was attacked by Japanese colonists, screaming that if their men warriors were killed defending the village, they would die too.

Map of Taiwanese aborigines showing the location of the Ami on the east coast of the island. The Ami were perfectly positioned to colonize much of island SE Asia.

Recent research shows some intriguing suggestions of closer link between Ami and the rest of the extra-Taiwanese Austronesian languages than between extra-Taiwanese Austronesian and the non-Ami Taiwanese languages. Austronesian is a vast family, but all of the main branches but one are on the island of Taiwan.

All extra-Taiwanese Austronesian languages form one vast family. There are cognates between such unexpected languages as Tagalog and Hawaiian, showing that the two peoples are related. The very deep diversity in Taiwanese Austronesian indicates that the Taiwanese languages have been evolving on the island for a very long time.

In fact, I was able to construct a compact race called that I called the South China Sea Race, composed of Filipinos, the Ami of Taiwan and the Guangdong Han, a shorthand for the Southern Chinese of Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and the Taiwan Strait.

The ancient proto-Ami descendants of the Filipinos were the speakers of Austronesian ancestor language of all the Philippines, the Sama-Bajau languages and Gorontalo-Mongondow languages. They also founded the Zabag Empire and it’s successor Lusung Empire, ancient small kingdoms in the Philippines. There were ancient Yue Kingdoms in Guangdong that were originally founded by the Ami of Taiwan.

There have been complaints in the comments section at the end of the post that Filipinos and Hong Kong Chinese do not look much alike. I do not know Asians very well, and to me Southern Chinese from around Hong Kong have darker skins and more SE Asian features than any other Chinese that I have encountered.

Apparently, Hong Kong Chinese and Filipinos can be readily discerned by those in the know. However, some say that when they are in Hong Kong, they have a hard time telling the Filipinos from the Hong Kong natives. They says the only way they can tell them apart is by talking to them.

But my racial classification is not based on phenotype – it is based on genes and genes alone. Check the Capelli and Chu papers linked at the end of the piece for evidence linking first the Filipinos to the Ami, and then the Hong Kong Chinese to the Ami.

The Chinese in this area have some of the world’s highest recorded IQ’s of around ~105. Oddly, the Filipino IQ is only 86, but there is a tremendous amount of malnutrition in the Philippines, and the population is poorly educated as the semi-feudal state spends almost nothing on schooling the people.

Filipinos I have known of no more than average intelligence show typical Asian traits of behavioral inhibition, calmness, shyness, self-consciousness and even a degree of introversion in the females along typical Asian time preference and providence (willingness to work hard today in the interest of possible rewards at some unknown future time).

Improvidence is typically associated with lower IQ’s, while increased providence is associated with higher IQ’s, so it is interesting to see that the Filipinos, with a relatively low IQ of 86, have behavioral attributes of higher-IQ groups.

I have been completely stunned by the highly developed math skills of Filipinos who have only at best average intelligence. Asian intelligence is highly weighted towards math and visual intelligence. All of these things add weight to the notion of Filipinos being a Southern Chinese people.

India, with a national IQ of only 81, has developed an amazing high tech and call center economy. Call centers are moving to the Philippines, where, if anything, English skills are better than in India. I think that the Philippines shows good potential for IT, based on better than expected math skills. Lack of behavioral disinhibition and good time preference ought to be good traits in the Filipino labor force.

Like many people who evolved in the tropics, Filipinos are sunny, happy and seemingly carefree. They love to laugh, sing and party. In this way they resemble Thais, Cambodians, Laos, Malays, Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Indonesians, Caribbeans and even Africans.

Typical Filipinos of today. Note the easy smiles and carefree faces. Poster is from a government contraception campaign, badly needed in this overpopulated land.

The Philippines may have a better future in the modern economy than many think.

This blog does support the armed Maoist insurgency waged by the New People’s Army in the Philippines, but that is really the subject of another post.

References

Bulbeck, D., Rainer, D. Groves, C., Raghavan, P. 2003. “The Contribution of South Asia to the Peopling of Australasia” and the Relevance of Basel’s Naturhistorisch Museum to the Anthropological Collection to the Project Aims. Bull. Soc. Suisse d’Anthrop. 9(2):49-70.

Capelli, C., Wilson, J.F., Richards, M., Stumpf, M.P.H., Gratrix, F., Oppenheimer, S., Underhill, P., Pascali, V.L., Ko, T.M., and Goldstein, D.B. 2001. A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania. American Journal of Human Genetics 68:432-443.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., P. Menozzi, A. Piazza. 1994. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chu, J. Y., Huang, W., Kuang, S. Q., Wang, J. M., Xu, J. J., Chu, Z. T., Yang, Z. Q., Lin, K. Q., Li, P., Wu, M., Geng, Z. C., Tan, C. C., Du, R. F., and Jin, L.. 1998. Genetic Relationship of Populations in China. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) 95:11763-11768.

Gaillard, Jean-Christophe and Mallari, Joel P. 2004. The Peopling of the Philippines: A Cartographic Synthesis. Hukay: Journal of the University of the Philippines Archaeological Studies Program. 6:1-27.

Harihara, S., Saitou, N., Hirai, M., Gojobori, T., Park, K. S., Misawa, S., Ellepola, S. B., Ishida, T. and Omoto, K. 1988. Mitochondrial DNA Polymorphism Among Five Asian Populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 43:134-143.

Headland, Thomas N. 2003. Thirty Endangered Languages in the Philippines. Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 47.

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. 2000. The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution.

Miller, Jeanne and Helen W. Miller. 1978. Mamanwa [language texts].‭ In Evan L. Antworth (ed.), Folktale Texts, 80-90. Studies in Philippine Linguistics, 2(2). Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines and Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Omoto, K. 1984. The Negritos: Genetic Origins and Microevolution. Acta Anthropogenetics 8(1-2):137-47.

Omoto, K., Ueda, S., Goriki, K., Takahashi, N., Misawa, S., and Pagaran, I. G. 1981. Population Genetic Studies of the Philippine Negritos. III. Identification of the Carbonic Anhydrase-1 Variant With CA1 Guam. American Journal of Human Genetics 33(1):105-111.

Porter, Doris. 1977. Figurative Uses of ‘Breath’ in Tboli.‭ Studies in Philippine Linguistics 1(1):148-50.

Schumacher, Ronald L. 1986. Stative Verbs at Peak in Agusan Manobo Narrative Discourse.‭ Studies in Philippine Linguistics 6(1):80-93.

A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification

Updated April 10, 2013. This post runs to 112 pages so far. On March 6, 2011, Sinologist Victor Mair took on the question of Mutual Intelligibility of Sinitic Languages.

The Chinese languages have undergone a lot of reclassification lately (Mair 1991), from one Chinese language a couple of decades ago up to 14 Chinese languages today according to the latest Ethnologue.

However, Jerry Norman, one of the world’s top experts on Chinese, says that based on mutual intelligibility, there are 350-400 separate languages within Chinese alone (Mair 1991). According to Gong Xun, a Sichuan Mandarin speaker in Deyang, China, by my criteria of distinguishing between language and dialect, there would be 300-400 separate languages in Fujian alone.

So far, 2,500 dialects of the Chinese language have been identified, and a number of them are separate languages.

I have been doing research on this issue recently. Based on the criteria of mutual intelligibility, I have expanded the 14 Chinese languages into 360 separate languages.

There are different ways of doing mutual intelligibility. I decided to put it at 90%, with >90% being dialect and <90% being a separate language. Experts in Chinese linguistics concurred that this seems to be a reasonable way to divide dialect from language (Mair 2009). This is based on what appears to be Ethnologue‘s criteria for establishing the line between a dialect and a language.

In the cases below where I had intelligibility data available, a number of Chinese languages had no more than 65% intelligibility between them (Cheng 1991).

Intelligibility is hard to determine. I am not interested in typological studies of lects involving either lexicon, phonology or tones, unless this can be quantified in terms of intelligibility in a scientific way (see Cheng 1991). For the most part, what I am interested in is, “Can they understand each other?”

The data below is best regarded as a pilot study.

Reasonable, fair-minded and professional comments, additions, criticisms, elaborations, presentations of evidence, etc. are highly encouraged, as long as politics and emotions are left out of it. The purpose of the classification below is more to stimulate academic interest and sprout new thinking and theory. It is not intended to be an end-all or be-all statement on the subject, in fact, it is quite the opposite.

Interested scholars, observers or speakers of Chinese languages are encouraged to contribute any knowledge that they may have to add to or criticize this data below. So far as I know, this is the first real attempt to split Chinese beyond the 14 languages elucidated by Ethnologue.

There are lapses in the data below. I mean to present this data in outline form to make it more readable.

There are also problems with the data below. In many cases, “separate language” just means that the lect is not intelligible with Putonghua. Unfortunately, I currently lack intelligibility data within the major language groups such as Gan, Xiang, Wu and the branches of Mandarin. There is probably quite a bit of lumping still to be done below. Where lects are mutually intelligible below, I have tried to lump them into one language with various dialects.

It is reasonable to ask what background and expertise I have to write such a post. I have a Masters Degree in Linguistics and have been employed as a salaried linguist for a US Indian tribe.

I assume it will be controversial. Keep in mind that this work is extremely tentative and should not be taken as the last word on the subject by a long shot. There are claims that this study claims to be “accurate and precise.”

In truth, it claims nothing of the sort. Pilot studies, which is what this is, are de facto never “accurate and precise,” and you can take an extreme argument from scientific philosophy that no science is really “accurate and precise” but is simply “correct for now” or “correct until proven otherwise.”

Gan is a separate language, already identified as such. Many individual Gan lects are unintelligible to other Gan lects. In fact, it is possible that all Gan lects are unintelligible with each other, but that remains to be proven.

Outside of Gan Proper, Leping, while very diverse, is nevertheless intelligible with nearby Gan lects and with Nanchang (Campbell January 2009).

Nanchang and Anyi are apparently separate languages within Gan based on a 200 word Swadesh test (Ben Hamed 2005). Nanchang has a great deal of dialectal diversity, with several dialects covering different cities and the rural areas. Intelligibility is not known. Jiangyu, spoken in Hubei, is very strange and at least unintelligible to Putonghua speakers, as is Huarong (evidence). Huarong is surely a separate language.

Similarly, Wanzai must surely be a separate language, as must Yichun, Ji’an, Wanan, Fuzhou, Yingtan, Leiyang, Huaining and Dongkou.

Nanchang and Anyi are within the Changjing Group of Gan, which has 15 different lects. Yingtan and Leping are members of the Yingyi Group has 12 lects. Jiangyu and Huarong are members of the Datong Group of Gan, which has 13 lects. Yichun is a member of the Yiliu Group of Gan, which has 11 lects. Wanzai is a member of the Yiping Group of Gan, of which it is the only member.

Leiyang is a member of the Leizi Group of Gan, which has 5 lects. Wanan is a member of the Jilian Group of Gan, of which it is the only member. Ji’an is a member of the Jicha Group of Gan, which has 15 lects. Huaining is a member of the Huaiyue Group of Gan, which has 9 lects. Fuzhou is a member of the Fuguang Group of Gan, which has 15 lects. Dongkou is a member of the Dongsui Group of Gan, which has 5 lects.

Gan has 102 separate lects in it. There are 30 million speakers of the Gan languages.

Within the Min group, Northern Min (Min Bei) and Central Min (Sanminghua) have already been identified as separate languages. There are 50 million speakers of all of the Min languages (Olson 1998). Northern Min has only 0-20% intelligibility with Min Nan.

Central Min has three lects, Shaxian, Sanming and Yongan, but we don’t know if there are languages among them. Central Min has 3.5 million speakers.

Northern Min is said to be a single language, although it has 9 separate lects. Most dialects are said to be mutually intelligible, but Jianyang and Jian’ou have only about 75% intelligibility. Northern Min has 10 million speakers.

The standard dialect of Min Dong or Eastern Min is Fuzhou. Eastern Min has only 0-20% intelligibility with Min Nan. Chengguan, Yangzhong and Zhongxian are separate languages, all spoken in Youxi County (Zheng 2008).

Beyond that, Eastern Min is reported to have several other mutually unintelligible languages. One of them is Fuqing, located near Fuzhou but not intelligible with it, according to Wikipedia, but others say the two are mutually intelligible, although speakers are divided on the question.

It appears that possibly Fuzhou speakers can understand Fuqing speakers better than the other way around. Fuzhou and Fuqing are about 65% intelligible in praxis, and it about the same with the rest of the Hougan Group (Ngù 2009).

Ningde, Fuding and Nanping are probably other languages in this family (evidence). Of these three, Ningde is definitely a separate language. According to George Ngù, a passionate proponent of Fuzhou, “Fuzhou is not intelligible even within its many varieties.”

It’s not clear if that applies to all of Eastern Min, but it appears that it does. Therefore, Changle, Gutian, Lianjiang, Luoyuan, Minhou, Minqing, Pingnan, Pingtan, Yongtai, Fuan, Fuding, Shouning, Xiapu, Zherong and Zhouning are all separate languages.

There are two other lects lumped in with Eastern Min. Manjiang is spoken in the central part of Taishun County, and Manhua spoken in the eastern part of Cangnan County. Both of these names mean “barbarian speech.”

Both are probably mixtures of Southern Wu (Wenzhou etc.), Eastern Min, Northern Min, and maybe even pre-Sinitic languages. Manhua and Manjiang are not intelligible with Fuzhou. However, Manjiang has affinity with Shouning in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Whether or not it is intelligible with it is not known. Min Nan speakers who have looked at Manjiang data say that it doesn’t even look like a Sinitic language.

Manhua is best dealt with as a form of Wu. I discuss it further below under Wu.

Fuding, Fuan, Shouning, Xiapu, Zherong and Zhouning are in the Funing Group of Eastern Min, which has 6 lects.

Fuzhou, Fuqing, Chengguan, Yangzhong, Zhongxian, Ningde, Changle, Gutian, Lianjiang, Luoyuan, Minhou, Minqing, Pingnan, Pingtan, Yongtai and Nanping are in the Houguan Group of Eastern Min, which has 16 lects.

Eastern Min contains 23 separate lects.

Within Min Nan, Xiamen and Teochew are separate languages (evidence). There is even a proposal to split Xiamen, Qiongwen and Teochew into three separate languages before SIL. Amoy, Taiwanese, Jinjiang, Zhangzhou, Tainan, Taibei, Yilan, Taichung, Quanzhou and Lufeng are part of the Xiamen group. Jinmen is apparently a separate language, as it has poor intelligibility with Taiwanese. A much better name for Xiamen according to the Chinese literature is Quanzhang (Campbell January 2009).

Quanzhang is a combination of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, two of the most important dialects in the language. Xiamen has only 51% intelligibility with Teochew. Whether or not Zhangzhou and Quanzhou are intelligible in China itself is still somewhat of an open question.

Nevertheless, Quanzhou speakers in Singapore can no longer understand Taiwanese or Xiamen well, though they have partial understanding of them. They have only 30-40% intelligibility with Yilan. Nevertheless, they have good understanding of Zhangzhou. This implies that much of the understanding between at least some of the Xiamen lects was due to bilingual learning.

The Yilan dialect on Taiwan is so different that it alone has posed serious problems for the task of standardizing Taiwanese Min Nan, yet it is intelligible with the rest of Taiwanese (Campbell January 2009). Lugang is also very different, but is also intelligible (Campbell 2009).

There are some communication problems for Tainan speakers hearing Taipei, but it appears that they are still intelligible with each other (Campbell January 2009).

Jieyang, Raoping, Chaoyang, Shantou (Swatow) and Hailok’hong (Haklau) are lects in the Teochew Group (evidence) of Teochew. Teochew (Chaozhou) is the prestige version of Teochew. Chaoyang speakers can understand Jieyang, Raoping (evidence) and Shantou, but intelligibility is difficult with Haifeng and Lufeng. Shantou, Raoping, and Jieyang are then dialects of Chaoyang.

Zhangzhou and Quanzhou have marginal intelligibility with Teochew varieties. They are both spoken in Taipei, Taiwan. After all, Taiwanese itself is just a mixture between Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. The situation in Taipei was interesting. The dialects of the city were a mix of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. The dialect of the center of the city was mixed between the two, with a slight Quanzhou lean to it. In Sulim (Shilin), people spoke with a dialect that heavily favored Zhangzhou. Other districts spoke a Tang’oann-type dialect, which is just Quanzhou mixed with a bit of Zhangzhou.

All these conditions are more common with the older generation because the new generation either does not speak Teochew at all or they favor the mixed Zhangzhou-leaning “Southern” style favored in the media, or they just do not speak the language at all. Hailok’hong (Haklau) is spoken down the coast between the Teochew zone and the Hong Kong area. It has marginal intelligibility with other Teochew lects. Nevertheless, Taiwanese speakers can no longer understand the pure Quanzhou spoken in the Chinese city of that name.

On the other hand, Chaoyang itself is unintelligible to some other Teochew lects. Shantou speakers cannot understand some of the other Teochew lects, and speakers of other lects often find Shantou hard to understand.

Sources report that Teochew lects can vary greatly in the pronunciation of even single words, and the tones can be quite different too.

There are claims that Teochew is intelligible with Zhangzhou and Quanzhou, but these claims appear to be incorrect (see above). That might make some sense, as Teochew are a group of Min speakers who broke off from Zhangzhou Min about 600-1,100 years ago. They moved down to northeast Guangdong, after hundreds of years, a heavy dose of Cantonese went in, producing modern Teochew.

Teochew has only 51% intelligibility with Xiamen.

Haifeng and Shanwei are members of the Luhai Teochew subgroup of Teochew, which differs markedly from Teochew and may be a separate language. Luhai is said to be halfway between Teochew and Zhangzhou. Luhai probably represents a later move from Zhangzhou towards northeast Guangdong by the same group that formed Teochew. This move may have occurred around 400 years ago.

Lufeng is said to have over 90% intelligibility with Xiamen, but if it is really halfway between, it should have 75% intelligibility. Intelligibility testing may be needed.

The Teochew spoken in Indochina – in particular, in Vietnam and Cambodia (Indochinese Teochew) may be a separate language. Some Indochinese Teochew speakers who have returned to their family villages say they could only understand 70% of the speech there.

Furthermore, intelligibility is difficult between Malay Teochew and other Teochew, such as SE Asian Teochew and Teochew on the mainland. Malay Teochew is spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

The Teochew variant spoken in Malaysia is composed of many highly variant lects. Whether or not they are mutually intelligible with each other is not known. The variety spoken in Medan, Indonesia is particularly interesting. It has heavy Malay and Cantonese influence and cannot be understood by other Teochew speakers. Teochew has 10 million speakers.

Zhangping, though close to Xiamen, is a separate language according to a 200 word Swadesh test (Ben Hamed 2005).

Sanjiang appears to be a separate language . Datian, in Fujian, is also a separate language.

A version of Hokkien called Malay Hokkien is spoken in Malaysia and in Indonesia in Sumatra and Kalimantan. In Indonesia, it is spoken in the city of Medan, the state of Riau, the city of Bagansiapiapi on Sumatra and in a few places on Kalimantan, such as Kuching and especially in Brunei. Malay Hokkien is heavily laced with Teochew.

Northern Malay Hokkien is spoken from Taiping along the coast formerly all the way to Phuket but now only to Pedang in Malaysia and in Indonesia in the city of Medan, the state of Riau, the city of Bagansiapiapi on Sumatra and in a few places on Kalimantan, such as Kuching and especially in Brunei. Speakers of Northern Malay Hokkien have a hard time understanding the Southern Malay Hokkien (see Singapore Hokkien below) spoken in Kelang, Malacca and Singapore. Northern Malay Hokkien is creolized, with Malay and Thai embedded deeply in the language.

Southern Malay Hokkien is less creolized, if at all. Singapore Hokkien lies between Northern Malay Hokkien and Taiwanese on the continuum. A very pure variety of Hokkien is spoken in the Indonesian city of Bagansiapiapi. It has avoided the Mandarinization of Hokkien that is occurring elsewhere. They speak like the Hokkien speakers of Tang’oann (Tong’an), China.

Kelantan Hokkien is spoken in the Malay state of Kelantan. It is wildly creolized with Malay and is probably not intelligible with any other form of Hokkien.

The version of Hokkien spoken in the Philippines is often called Binamhue, Banlamhue or Minanhua (Philippines Hokkien) by speakers, derives from a dialect on the outskirts of Quanzhou, and it may have drifted into a separate language. At present, it is sometimes not intelligible with Quanzhou or Xiamen. That is, some Philippines Hokkien speakers claim that they can only understand about 70% of Taiwanese television.

The version of Min Nan, Singapore Hokkien (Southern Malay Hokkien), spoken in Singapore, Kelang and Malacca is similar to that spoken in Taiwan, but many Singapore Hokkien speakers have a hard time understanding Taiwanese Hokkien, while others can understand it just fine. Older Singapore Hokkien speakers can understand Taiwanese Hokkien better than younger ones. This is due to bilingual learning more than anything else because younger Singapore Hokkien speakers are no longer good at understanding other Min Nan dialects due to lack of exposure to them.

The reason that Taiwanese speakers can seem to speak communicate well with Singapore Hokkien speakers is because they are using a simpler vocabulary. A Singapore Hokkien speaker, if immersed in Taiwan, could pick up Taiwanese fairly quickly, within say 3 months.

An umbrella term covering Malay Hokkien, Singapore Hokkien and Philippines Hokkien may be Nusantaran Hokkien.

Another language in the same group is best called Wan’an, comprising a number of dialects and possibly languages in Wan’an County of Fujian (Branner 2008). Zhaoan, Pinghe and Yunxiao, also of Fujian, are separate languages.

Wan’an and Longyan are not mutually intelligible (Branner 2008). Longyan seems to have about 85% intelligibility with Taiwanese. Koongfu and Shizhong are apparently dialects of Longyan Min and are probably intelligible with it. Koongfu is spoken in Kanshi Township in Yongding County. Shizhong is spoken in southern Longyan County.

There are many varieties of Southern Min spoken in Western Fujian that may or may not be independent languages.

Liancheng Gutyan Junbao, Longyan Wan’an Wuzhai, Longyan Wan’an Songyang, Longyan Wan’an Tutuan, Longyan Baisha Youshui, Shiahtsuen Buhyun Liling, Shanghang Buhyun Liling, Liancheng Xuanhe Shengxing, Shanghang Gutian Laifang, Liancheng Xinquan Linguo, Liancheng Xinquan Lelian, Liancheng Pengkou Wangcheng, Liancheng Miaoqian Zhixi, Liancheng Gechuan Zhuyu, Liancheng Miaoqian Jiangshe, Liancheng Sibao Shangjian Zhenbian, Liancheng Juxi Gaoding, Liancheng Tangqian Dikeng, Liancheng Wenheng Hengming, Liancheng Xinquan Dongnancun, Liancheng Quxi Puxi Dongxiduan, Liancheng Quxi Qiaotou and Liancheng Liwu Nanban Zhangwu are spoken in Western Fujian. Shiahtsuen is spoken in Laiyuan Township in southeastern Liancheng County. (Branner 2000).

Whether or not these lects are dialects or separate languages is difficult to say. With many of these lects, they don’t understand each other at first, but after they talk to each other for a while, they start to figure out the other lect. (Branner 2008). Intelligibility testing needs to be done for these lects.

Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Singapore Hokkien, Philippines Hokkien, Xiamen, Amoy, Yilan, Tainan, Taipei, Taichung, Taiwanese, Jinjiang, Lufeng, Lugang, Jinmen, Zhangping, Koongfu, Shizhong, Nanjing, Zhaoan, Pinghe, Yunxiao, Longyan, Wan’an, Liancheng Gutyan Junbao, Longyan Wan’an Wuzhai, Longyan Wan’an Songyang, Longyan Wan’an Tutuan, Longyan Baisha Youshui, Shiahtsuen, Shanghang Buhyun Liling, Liancheng Xuanhe Shengxing, Shanghang Gutian Laifang, Liancheng Xinquan Linguo, Liancheng Xinquan Lelian, Liancheng Pengkou Wangcheng, Liancheng Miaoqian Zhixi, Liancheng Gechuan Zhuyu, Liancheng Miaoqian Jiangshe, Liancheng Sibao Shangjian Zhenbian, Liancheng Juxi Gaoding, Liancheng Tangqian Dikeng, Liancheng Wenheng Hengming, Liancheng Xinquan Dongnancun, Liancheng Quxi Puxi Dongxiduan, Liancheng Quxi Qiaotou and Liancheng Liwu Nanban Zhangwu are all members of the Quanzhuang Group of Min Nan, which has 50 lects.

Teochew, Shantou, Lufeng, Haifeng, Chaoyang, Jieyang, SE Asian Teochew and Malaysian Teochew are members of the Chaoshan Group of Min Nan, which has 12 lects.

Datian is in its own group in Min Nan.

Min Nan consists of 68 separate lects. Clearly, the dialectal relationships of Min Nan are confusing, as many of the lects are very closely related, if not fully intelligible. Intelligibility testing may be needed to sort out some of these issues. There are 30 million speakers of Southern Min.

Zhenan Min, spoken in Zhejiang Province around Pingnang and Cangnan and in the Zhoushan Islands, is a separate language. Zhenan Min contains 4 lects, Pingyang, Cangnan, Dongtou and Yuhuan, which may or may not be languages. Zhenan Min has 574,000 speakers. Zhenan Min is influenced by Eastern and Northern Min.

Qiongwen (Hainanese) is a separate language with 8 million speakers. It has the lowest intelligibility with the rest of Southern Min as any other Min Nan lect. Qiongwen itself has 14 separate lects, all spoken on Hainan. Whether or not any of them are separate languages is not known.

Longyan (Branner 2008) is a separate language, apart from Southern Min. It is spoken in Longyan City’s Xinluo District and Zhangping City and has 740,000 speakers. It has heavy Hakka influence due to the large number of Hakka speakers in the surrounding areas.

Another split in Min is Leizhou. Leizhou Min is a separate language and is now recognized by some as a separate branch of Min altogether, along the lines of Southern and Northern Min. Leizhou consists of 7 different lects. Haikang appears to be just a dialect of Leizhou.

However, at least some of the other 6 Leizhou lects are very different in phonology and lexicon. Intelligibility data is not known, but they may be intelligible. Leizhou Min, with 4 million speakers, has low intelligibility with Min Nan lects and has only 50% intelligibility with Hainanese.

Shaojiang Min, or Min Gan, is said to be a completely separate high-level division of the Min language like Leizhou Min. It has four lects – Shaowu, Guangze, Jiangle and Shunchang – that are said to be mutually intelligible. There are subdialects within these larger lects. The substratum of Shaojiang is not Min, Gan or Hakka – instead, it is the ancient Baiyue language.

Puxian Min has already been identified as a separate language. Puxian has 3 separate lects. There are minor differences between these lects.  However, there is a form of Puxian Min spoken in Singapore, Hinghwa, and presently it lacks full intelligibility with Puxian Min proper. Puxian speakers are a minority in Singapore, and their language has mixed a lot with Singapore Hokkien, Malay, English and other languages spoken in Singapore, resulting in a separate language.

A Min language called Longdu, located in Guangdong, is not only a separate language (evidence here and here) but seems to be in another Min category from Southern Min. It is spoken in the southwest corner of Zhongshan City in Shaxi and Dayong.

In Guangdong Province, there are other divergent lects of Min Nan. Two others, Nanlang (also spoken in Zhongshan) and Sanxiang, are also separate languages. Nanlang is spoken 10 miles southeast of Zhongshan in Cuiheng. It is also spoken in Nanlang and Zhangjiabian. Sanxiang is spoken to the south of Zhongshan in the hilly rural areas.

In Chinese, Longdu, Nanlang and Sanxiang are referred to as All-Lung, South Gourd and Three Rural, respectively. Sources give Longdu and Nanlang 100,000 speakers and Sanxiang 30,000 speakers. 14% of the population of Zhongshan speaks Min. Nanlang now has mostly elderly speakers.

All of these seem to be in the same group, Zhongshan Min, and all are spoken in the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong. Zhongshan Min has 150,000 speakers.

This group is possibly a Northern or Eastern Min group stranded way down in Guangdong. They are sometimes referred to in old literature as “Northeastern Min”. That’s not really a category. It often means Northern Min, but sometimes it means Eastern Min. These languages have all borrowed extensively from the type of Cantonese spoken in the Pearl River Delta.

Looking at the whole picture, it appears that various immigrants speaking Puxian Min, Northern Min and Southern Min all settled around Zhongshan. These various Min elements, along with a hefty dose of Cantonese, have gone into the creation of Zhongshan Min.

Sanxiang, Nanlang and Longdu are apparently not mutually intelligible, although Nanlang is close to Longdu. Sanxiang is more divergent. Further, there are more dialects within these three languages, and dialectal divergence is considerable, with possible communication difficulties among them.

Sanxiang has at least two dialects, Phao and Tiopou. Phao is fairly uniform across a number of villages, but Tiopou is quite different. Nevertheless, there is near-full intelligibility. For now, we will just list Sanxiang, Nanlang and Longdu as separate languages, with possible dialects Phao and Tiopou (Sanxiang); Nanlang A and Nanlang B; and Longdu A and Longdu B, among them.

A very strange lect is spoken by the She people in Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. The She language was originally Hmong-Mien, then added a Cantonese layer, then a Hakka layer, then a Min layer, and in Zhejiang, a Wu layer. It is best described as a Hmong-Mien language that has been Sinicized. There are probably 200,000 speakers of this language.

There is also an original She language that is non-Sinitic (Hmong-Mien) and is spoken by only about 1,000 people in Guangdong.

In Eastern Guangdong, the She speak the Chaoshan She language. They live in the Phoenix Mountains in Chao’an County in Chaozhou prefecture. It has had heavy contact with Chaoshan (Teochew) Min group. This is probably a separate language, unintelligible with other She languages and also with Chaoshan Min.

Within Hakka, besides Hakka Proper (Meixia), Tingzhou is a separate language (evidence). Wuhua Hakka is intelligible with Meixian.

Fangcheng and Dabu are close to Meixian, but intelligibility data is lacking. Fengcheng has five different lects within it, but intelligibility is not known. Hong Kong Hakka is not intelligible with the Hakka spoken on Taiwan, nor with Dabu. Dongguan, spoken near Hong Kong, can understand Meixian, but Meixian cannot understand Dongguan.

Taipu or Taipo is spoken in the village of the same name in Hong Kong and is not intelligible with Meixian, nor is Wakia, also spoken in Hong Kong.

A variety of Hakka spoken in a part of Hong Kong called Shataukok is called variously Satdiugok, Sathewkok, Shataukok, Satdiukok or Satdiugok. It is said to be different from other Hakka, and evidence indicates that Shataukok may indeed be a separate language. Shataukok has dialects within it and they are different, but they are generally mutually intelligible.

All three of these are dialects of a more or less intelligible language called Hong Kong Hakka.

Located near Hong Kong, Shenzhen/Bao’an is a separate language.

Haifeng and Lufeng, located near each other in Guangdong, appear to be dialects of a separate language called Hailufeng.

Longchuan in northeastern Guangdong is a separate language (evidence), with poor intelligibility with other Hakka lects. Longchuan has four different dialects, Huangbu, Sidu, Chetian and Tuocheng. Sidu and Tuocheng are close and probably dialects of Longchuan. Sidu Longchuan has 18,000 speakers.

Boluo and Heyuan are separate languages, not mutually intelligible. Longchuan, Bolou and Heyuan are quite distant from other Hakka. Heyuan is spoken in central Guangdong.

Huizhou is mutually intelligible with Longchuan and also with Meixia and Dabu.

Sanxiang, spoken in Zhongshan prefecture, is different from all other Hakka, but intelligibility data is lacking.

It is possible that in northern Guangdong, there may be many different Hakka languages, since dialects tend to differ from village to village, and in many cases, communication is difficult.

The Hakka spoken in Kunming, Sarawak, in Malaysia, known as Ho Po Hak, is a separate language. It is very different from the Hakka spoken in Sabah, Malaysia, and it is similar to Hopo, spoken in Hopo, near Meizhou. Hopo is not intelligible with Dabu, Hailu or Meixian. Hopo appears to be a dialect of Jiaoling. Hopo has deep influence from Teochew Min, because it is located right next to the Teochew area.

The Gannan Group (or Ninglong Group) from Southern Jiangxi, Mingxi from Western Fujian, and the Yuemin Group from Southern Fujian and Southeastern Guangdong are separate languages.

In the Gannan Group are multiple lects. One of them is Xingguo, spoken in Xingguo County in Ganzhuo Prefecture (evidence). The Gannan Group is extremely diverse compared to the Hakka of Guangdong and Fujian. Gannan lects differ even from village to village.

With Gannan Hakka, we may be dealing with a situation of many different languages, as with Wu, Hui, Tuhua and Xiang. In fact, it quite possible that with Jiangxi Hakka, we may be dealing with every Hakka lect being a separate language, but that remains to be proven.

In Fujian Province, there is the wildly diverse Tingzhou Hakka Group mentioned above. Even within this group, there are separate languages, including Yongding, Liancheng, Changting, Xinquan, Qingliu, Mingxi, Ninghua and Shanghang (evidence). Gucheng is probably also a member of Tingzhou.

Sources say that each Hakka village in Fujian speaks its own lect, and that the lects are far enough apart to make communication from village to village very difficult. Therefore, we conclude that in addition to the above, we will add Wuping, Longyan, Zhaoan, Yunxiao, Shangsixiang, Fuding, Fuan, Gucheng and Nanjing Qujiang.

Luoyuan She Hakka is spoken in Fujian. It is an extremely diverse form of Hakka that differs from all other Hakka. It must surely be a separate language.

Chengdu is spoken in Chengdu, Sichuan. It is quite different from other forms of Hakka and has poor intelligibility with other forms.

On Taiwan, the Miaoli (Four Counties), Dongshi (Dapu) and Xinzhu (Hailu) lects are not mutually intelligible, nor is the mixed Gaoxiong lect created in order that these three lects could communicate with each other. Kunbei (Zhaoan) is very different and must be a separate language. Raoping may well be a separate language, but intelligibility data is lacking. In general, speakers of other kinds of Hakka find Taiwan Hakka to be hard to understand, possibly due to Southern Min influence.

Bangka Island Indonesian Hakka, spoken on Bangka Island in Indonesia, has diverged so radically with its tones that it is now a separate language. That is, speakers of other Indonesian Hakka lects say that they cannot understand Bangka Island speakers. It’s actually said to be a Hakka creole more than anything else.

In Indonesia, two other Hakka languages are spoken, Kun Dian Indonesian Hakka, spoken in Borneo, and Belitung (Ngion Voi) Indonesian Hakka. Kun Dian Hakka is the largest Hakka group in Indonesia. Most live at Pontianak and Singkawang, where they speak two different intelligible lects, but they have spread all over Indonesia. Kun Dian Hakka is a dialect of Meixian.

Belitung Hakka is spoken mostly on Sumatra and Borneo, and is characterized by a soft way of speaking. Belitung Hakka and Bangka Hakka say they cannot understand Kun Dian Hakka, but Kun Dian speakers say they can understand the other two for the most part. East Timor Hakka is a dialect of Meixian.

Jiexi is spoken in southeast Guangdong. Dayu is spoken in southern Guangxi. Liannan is spoken northwest Guangdong. Dongguan Qingxi is spoken in south-central Guangdong. Wengyuan is spoken in northern Guangdong. Ningdu is spoken in Jiangxi. Mengshan Xihe is spoken in eastern Guangxi. Hong Kong Hakka is spoken in Hong Kong.

Zhaoan Xiuzhuan is spoken in southern Fujian. Shanghang Pengxin, Basel Mission and Shanghang Guanzhuang Shangzhuo are spoken in West Fujian (Branner 2000).

Dayu, spoken in Jiangxi, is a separate language, not intelligible at least to Central, or Meixian, Hakka speakers.

Meixian, Wuhua and Bao’an are members of the Yuetai Group of Hakka, which has 23 lects. Within Yuetai, Wuhua and Dabu are members of the Xinghua subgroup, which has 5 lects. Xinghua has 3.4 million speakers. Bao’an and Lufeng are in the Xinhui subgroup of Yuetai, which has 9 lects. Xinhui has 2.4 million speakers.

Gaoxiong, Xinzhu, Dongshi and Miaoli are members of the Jiaying Group of Hakka, which has 7 lects.

Tingzhou, Yongding, Liancheng, Changting, Xinquan, Shanghang, Basel Mission, Shanghang Pengxin, Wuping, Ninghua, Qingliu and Mingxi are all part of the diverse Tingzhou Group of Hakka. All told, Tingzhou has 12 lects, all of which are separate languages.

Longchuan, Boluo and Heyuan are members of the Yuezhong Group of Hakka, which has 5 lects.

Huizhou is in its own subgroup of Hakka.

Xingguo and Ningdu are in the Ninglong Group of Hakka, which has 13 lects. This group is said to be very diverse, with lects differing from village to village.

Liannan and Wengyuan are members of the Yuebei Group of Hakka, which has 11 lects and must surely be a separate language.

Dayu is a member of the Yugui Group of Hakka, which has 43 lects.

Ho Po Hak, Bangka Island, Nanjing Qujiang, Jiexi, Dayu, Hong Kong, Mengshan Xihe, Zhaoan Xiuzhuan, Nanjing Qujiang, Fuan, Fuding and Haifeng are unclassified.

There are 12 major Hakka lects and 210 Hakka lects altogether. Others claim that there are over 1000 Hakka lects spoken in China. There are 30 million speakers of the various Hakka languages. The dialect situation with Hakka, as with Min Nan, is quite confused and somewhat contradictory. Intelligibility testing could clear up some of the confusion. Some speakers report adequate intelligibility between lects, while others report difficulty.

Putonghua is Standard Mandarin, based on the Beijing dialect as of 1949, but it has since diverged wildly and many Putonghua speakers today cannot understand Beijing. Putonghua is being promoted as the national language of China. In addition to Putonghua, there 1,500 other dialects of Mandarin spoken in China. In general, other Mandarin dialects are not intelligible to Putonghua speakers (Campbell April 2009).

However, the Northeastern dialects and the dialects around Beijing may be more intelligible than the Mandarin dialects in the rest of the country. The implication is that there may be as many as 1,500 Mandarin languages in China. However, many of these Mandarin dialects are intelligible with at least some other Mandarin dialects. Hence, despite the lack of intelligibility with Putonghua, there is a lot of potential lumping within Mandarin.

The degree to which Mandarin dialects are intelligible to each other is very much an open question and in general is poorly investigated.

Within Mandarin, besides Putonghua, the main branch, Jinan (New Jinan), Beijing and Tianjin (evidence and here) are not intelligible with Putonghua; however, Tianjin may be intelligible with Beijing, on the other hand, Tianjin is looking more and more like a separate language.

For one thing, Tianjin’s tones are quite different from Putonghua’s, and its tone sandhi is much more complicated and it is more closely related to lects 150-500 miles away, since originally Tianjin speakers came from Anhui (Lee 2002). Some reports say that Tianjin is intelligible with Putonghua, so intelligibility testing may be needed.

Jinan is not intelligible with Putonghua, but may be learned over a period of weeks to possibly months, as it is close enough. Jinan is only 65% intelligible with Beijing.

Since Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing City, Hebei and all of NE Mandarin may be intelligible, I am just going to make a language called Northeast Mandarin and call Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Nanjing City dialects of NE Mandarin for now. Beijing is has low intelligibility with other branches of Mandarin: 72% intelligible with Southwest Mandarin, 64% intelligible with Jilu Mandarin and Zhongyuan Mandarin and 55% intelligible with Jiaoliao Mandarin.

However, many Putonghua speakers claim that Beijinghua is not inherently intelligible with Putonghua. Complaints about unintelligible taxi drivers in Beijing are legendary. At the very least, competing views of the intelligibility of Beijinghua and Putonghua deserve investigation.

On the other hand, Beijinghua may be intelligible with Hebei and Nanjing City. I think that Hebei is clearly a dialect of Beijing. The lect of Beijing’s hutongs and taxi drivers is legendary for being hard to understand. It would be interesting to see whether Tianjin and Hebei speakers can understand it. Tianjin may be a separate language, since it is not intelligible with Beijinghua.

What probably happened was that Beijinghua and Putonghua have taken separate trajectories. This has also occurred in Italian, where, though Standard Italian was based on Tuscan, Standard Italian and Tuscan have taken separate trajectories since. It is said that if you see old Tuscan men on TV in Italy, a speaker of Standard Italian from southern Italy would need subtitles to understand them, but one from northern Italy would not.

Others say that Putonghua was based on the language of the Beijing suburbs, not the city itself.

For whatever reason, Beijinghua often seems to have less than 90% intelligibility with Putonghua, though the question needs further research. Beijinghua, in its pure and least mutually intelligible form, seems to be spoken mostly in the innermost hutongs and among taxi drivers and other low income and working class people. The lect of people with more education and money is probably a lot more comprehensible.

I would describe the real, pure, Putonghua as “CCTV speech”, the lect you hear on Chinese state television. Evidence that Beijinghua lacks full intelligibility with Putonghua is here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The question of whether or not Beijinghua is a separate language from Putonghua is sure to be highly controversial. Perhaps intelligibility testing could settle the question.

Beijing is in a group all of its own called the Beijing Group. It contains 43 separate lects, and may contain more than one language.

We should also note here that even Putonghua, the language that was meant to tie the nation together, seems to be evolving into regional languages.

Guangdong Putonghua is not fully intelligible to speakers of the Putonghuas of Northern China and hence is probably a separate language.

There are also varieties of Putonghua that are spoken in Singapore and Taiwan. Taiwanese Mandarin is about 80-85% intelligible with Putonghua and is a separate language (Mair July 2009). Claims that Taiwan Mandarin is fully intelligible with Putonghua are incorrect.

Shanghai Putonghua is often not intelligible with Putonghua from other regions. It has heavy interference from Shanghaihua, which seriously effects the Putonghua accent. Even after four years of exposure to it, Standard Putonghua speakers often have problems with it.

In addition, Jianghuai Mandarin Putonghua and Zhengcao Mandarin Putonghua Putonghua are not intelligible with Putonghua from other areas (Campbell April 2009). These varieties of Mandarin cause a particular interference with Putonghua Mandarin that results in a severe dialectal disturbance in their Putonghua.

These Putonghuas are spoken in the regions native to the Jianghuai and Zhengcao dialects of Mandarin. Jianghuai is spoken in Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei and to a much lesser extent Zhejiang Provinces. Zhengcao is spoken in Anhui, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, with one dialect is spoken in Hebei.

Although it is different, Singapore Putonghua is still intelligible with Putonghua. Malay Mandarin is said to be quite different but nevertheless intelligible. Nevertheless Malay Mandarin speakers say they have to make speech adjustments with Chinese speakers otherwise their speech is poorly intelligible. This implies that Malay Mandarin is indeed a separate language.

Yunnan Putonghua is intelligible with Putonghua from other regions (Campbell January 2009).

Cangzhou, spoken in southeastern Hebei, is a separate language. It is only partly intelligible with Putonghua. Renqiu, Huanghua, Hejian, Cangxian, Qingxian, Xianxian, Dongguang, Haixing, Yanshan, Suning, Nanpi, Wuqiao and Mengcun, all spoken in Cangzhou prefecture, are all dialects of Cangzhou. Cangzhou shares some similarities with Tianjin, but it is only partly intelligible with it.

Jinan is a member of the Liaotai Group of the larger Jilu Group, which has 37 lects.

The Baotang Group of Jilu has 52 lects. Tianjin forms its own subgroup within Baotang. Cangzhou, Renqiu, Huanghua, Hejian, Cangxian, Qingxian, Xianxian, Dongguang, Haixing, Yanshan, Suning, Nanpi, Wuqiao and Mengcun are members of the Huangle subgroup of Baotang, which has 25 lects.

Jilu itself consists of 170 lects.

Taiwanese Mandarin, while different from Putonghua, is intelligible with it. Singapore Mandarin has fewer differences then Taiwanese. Both are dialects of Putonghua.

Luoyang, Kiafeng, Changyuan and Zhengzhou, all in Henan Province, are not intelligible with Putonghua. However, all four are mutually intelligible with each other, so they are dialects of a single language, Henan Mandarin.

Xinyang, also spoken in Henan, is a separate language and cannot be understood by Luoyang speakers. Nanyang has high but not complete intelligibility with Luoyang. After a few weeks of close contact, Luoyang speakers can understand Nanyang, but initially, comprehension is poor due to different tones. Nanyang has 15 million speakers.

Luoyang and Gushi are unintelligible. In addition, Gushi is different from Nanyang and may not be intelligible with it. Intelligibility between Xinyang, Gushi and Nanyang is not known. In general, intelligibility between many lects in Henan is not good, but after a week or two of close contact, they can start to understand each other.

In Shaanxi, Yanan, Xian, Huxian (evidence), Zhouzhi (evidence) and Hanzhong are not intelligible with Putonghua. Let us call this language Shaanxi Mandarin. Xi’an, for instance, is about 65% intelligible with other Mandarin groups. Xining, in Xinghai, seems to be very different from other Shaanxi lects, and is probably a separate language altogether (evidence here and here) .

In Gansu Province, Tongwei is not intelligible with Putonghua, and Gansu Mandarin seems to be very different from other forms of Mandarin. Gansu Mandarin appears to be a separate language. However, within Gansu, there are divergent lects, such as Sale, which is unintelligible with other Gansu lects.

Bozhou (evidence), Yingshang (evidence) and Fuyang (evidence), spoken in Anhui, are at least unintelligible with Putonghua. Fuyang is very different. The lect spoken 300 km south of Jinan, around Mengcheng in rural Anhui, is said to be completely unintelligible with Putonghua, Tianjin and Beijinghua. For the time being, we will refer to this as one language, Anhui Mandarin. Intelligibility between lects of Anhui Mandarin is not known.

Anhui Mandarin Putonghua has poor intelligibility with Standard Putonghua due to its phonology. Therefore, it is a separate language.

Xian, Huxian and Zhouzhi are members of the Guanzhong Group of Zhongyuan, which has 45 lects.

Yanan, Hanzhong and Xining are members of the Qinlong Group of Zhongyuan, which has 67 lects.

Luoyang is a member of the Luoxu Group of Zhongyuan, which has 28 lects.

Kiafeng, Nanyang, Zengzhou, Changyuan and Bozhou are members of the Zhengcao Group of Zhongyuan. The Zhengcao Group has 93 lects.

Xinyang and Gushi are in the Xinbeng subgroup of Zhongyuan, which has 20 lects.

Tongwei and Sale are part of the Longzhong Group of Zhongyuan, which has 25 lects.

Yingshang is a member of the Cailu Group of Zhongyuan, which has 30 lects.

The Mandarin spoken in Qinghai is very different from that spoken in Gansu, but it’s not known if it is a separate language. They are both usually two types of Zhongyuan Mandarin.

Zhongyuan has a shocking 388 lects. Zhongyuan Mandarin is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Zhongyuan Mandarin has 130 million speakers (Olson 1998).

Yichang (evidence), Longchang (evidence), Chengdu, Chongqing (evidence), Guilin and Nanping (spoken near Mt. Wuyi – evidence), Longcheng (evidence), Luocheng (evidence), Luzhou (evidence here and here), Lingui (evidence), Jiuzhaigou (evidence) Xindu, Wenshan (evidence), Mianzhu (evidence here and here), Yangshuo (evidence), Wuhan (evidence) and Leshan (evidence) are all unintelligible with Putonghua.

Furthermore, Guilin is not intelligible with general Southwest Mandarin speech either. Wenshan at least is not intelligible with other Southwestern varieties (Johnson 2010).

Chengdu is part of a Sichuan Mandarin koine that is spoken in many of the larger cities in Yunnan. It includes Kunming, Bazhong , Dazhou, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Luzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang, Deyang and Guiyang and is broadly intelligible (Xun 2009). Ziyang is intelligible with the koine, but has a heavy accent (Xun 2009). Leshan is unintelligible with the koine, but it can be learned in a few weeks of exposure (Xun 2009).

Dali is also not intelligible with Putonghua, but that is because Tibetan Mandarin has heavy Tibetan admixture.

Chongqing speakers cannot understand Chengdu or Luzhou speakers. The many small lects around Mt. Emei are not intelligible with Chengdu, appear to be be very different, and may one or more separate languages.

Wuhan is not intelligible to speakers of Southwest Mandarin from other provinces, for instance, it is only 80% intelligible with Chengdu. The intelligibility of Wuhan and Yichang is not known.

Dahua, spoken in and around Dahua village on the Puduhe River near Dongchuan in Yunnan Province, is apparently a separate language .

Another language spoken in Yunnan, Lanping, is also not intelligible with Putonghua and neither is Kunming(evidence). Kunming is not intelligible with Tuoyuan. The language spoken in Kunming is part of the Sichuan Mandarin koine that includes Kunming, Bazhong, Dazhou, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Luzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang, Deyang and Guiyang.

Chuanlan is a little-known language spoken by the Tunbao people of Guangxi Province.

Yingshan is a separate language based on a 200 word Swadesh test (Ben Hamed 2005).

Menghai (evidence) may well be a completely separate language. The mutual intelligibility of Menghai, Guiyang and Kunming is not known. Guiyang is at least not intelligible with Putonghua. Guiyang is evolving into the Sichuan Mandarin koine, which is broadly intelligible with Kunming, Bazhong, Dazhou, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Luzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang and Deyang.

Shaoshan, apparently Mao Zedong’s lect, spoken in Hunan Province, is a separate language. It was said although Mao had a secretary who could understand him well, not many others could. Another language spoken in Hunan, in Zhangjiajie County, is called Zhangjiajie Maoxi. The Maoxi are a tribal group there that speak a strange variety of Mandarin. Tuoyuan in Hunan is not fully intelligible with other Southwest Mandarin lects, or at least not with Kunming.

Junhua, or military language, is a language spoken by an ethnic group on Hainan in the city of Zonghe. It is said to be “Old Mandarin”, and is probably not intelligible with other lects. It is a form of Southwest Mandarin known as the Junhua Group, which contains 4 lects .

Guilin, Luocheng, Yangshuo, Liuzhou and Lingui are members of the Guiliu Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 57 lects. Guiliu Southwest Mandarin is at least not comprehensible with Putonghua or Chengyu Southwest Mandarin.

Leshan and Longchang are members of the Guanchi Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 85 lects. Within Guanchi, Longchang is a member of the Renfu Group , which has 13 lects.

Yichang, Chengdu, Chongqing and Yingshan are members of the Chengyu Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 113 lects. Chengyu Southwest Mandarin is not comprehensible with Putonghua or Guiliu Southwest Mandarin.

Menghai, Kunming, Wenshan and Guiyang are members of the Kungui Group of Southwest Mandarin. The Kungui Group itself has an incredible 95 lects.

Lanping is in the Dianxi Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 36 lects. Within Dianxi, it is a member of the Baolu subgroup, which has 21 lects.

Taoyuan is in the Changhe Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 14 lects.

Wuhan is a member of Wutian Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 9 lects.

Dali is a member of the Dianxi Group of Mandarin, which has 36 members. Within Dianxi, Dali is a member of the Yaoli Group, which has 15 members.

Nanping, Chuanlan, Shaoshan, Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie Maoxi and Dahua are unclassified.

Southwest Mandarin itself has a stunning 519 lects and is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. There are 240 million speakers of Southwest Mandarin (Olson 1998).

Jianghuai Mandarin is a separate language. Yangzhou is considered to be a separate language by a 200 word Swadesh test (Ben Hamed 2005). Yangzhou has about 52% intelligibility with the other branches of Mandarin.

Nanjing (evidence and here) is also a separate language – now mostly spoken in the suburbs, as city speech is not a separate language anymore. The city language is said to be intelligible with the general northeastern China lect spoken in Beijing and Hebei. So I will call Nanjing Suburbs a separate language. Lianyungang is a separate language, as is Yancheng and Huaian ( evidence for both).

Nantong, a very strange variety of Mandarin on the border of Wu and Mandarin that shares many features with Wu languages, is a separate language, as is its sister language, Tongdong. Jinsha is a dialect of Nantong. Rugao, next to Nantong, is also a separate language. Also within Jianghuai, Hefei is considered to be a separate language by a 200 word Swadesh list (Ben Hamed 2005).

Rudong is at least not intelligible with Putonghua.

Anqing, in Anhui Province, is also not intelligible with Putonghua. In 1933, there were three different languages spoken in Tongcheng, Anhui – East Tongcheng, West Tongcheng and Tongcheng Wenli. Tongcheng Wenli was the classical-based language spoken by the educated elite of the city. Whether these three languages still exist is not known, but surely some of the speakers in 1933 are still alive.

Chuzhou, spoken in Anhui, is not intelligible with Putonghua, although it is said to be close to Nanjing. Dangtu, also spoken in Anhui, is not intelligible with Putonghua.

Dongtai is a separate language (evidence). The lects spoken in Dafeng, Taizhou, Xingua and Haian are said to be similar to Dongtai, so for the time being, we will list them as dialects of Dongtai. Jiujiang, spoken in Jiangxi Province, is a separate language, as is Xingzi , located close by.

Intelligibility between Rudong, Anqing, Chuzhou, Dafeng, Taizhou, Xingua, Haian and Dangtu is not known.

Yangzhou, Lianyungang, Yancheng, Huaian, Nanjing, Hefei, Anqing, the Tongchengs, Chuzhou and Dangtu are in the Hongchao Group of Jianghuai, which has 82 lects.

Dongtai, Dafeng, Taizhou, Haian, Xinghua, Jinsha, Nantong, Tongdong, Rudong and Rugao are in the Tairu Group of Jianghuai. Tairu has 11 different lects.

Jiujiang and probably Xingzi are members of the Huangxiao Group of Jianghuai, which has 20 lects.

Jianghuai is composed of an incredible 120 lects and is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Some suggest that all of the lects of Jianghuai are mutually unintelligible, but that remains to be proven. Jianghuai Mandarin has 65 million speakers (Olson 1998).

Northeastern (Dongbei) Mandarin is a separate language. Within Northeast, Shenyang is a separate language according to a 200 word Swadesh list (Ben Hamed 2005). Harbin is often listed as intelligible with Putonghua, but some Putonghua speakers can barely understand a word of it. Harbin may be a separate language. That classification is sure to be controversial, so intelligibility testing may be required to sort it out.

Shenyang is a member of the Jishen Group of Northeastern Mandarin, which has 44 dialects. Within Jishen, Shenyang is a member of the Tongxi Group, which has 24 dialects.

Harbin is a member of the Hafu Group of Northeastern Mandarin, which has 64 lects. Within Hafu, it is a member of the Zhaofu Group, which has 18 lects.

Lanyin Mandarin in the far northwest is also a separate language (Campbell 2004). Though Lanyin is said to be intelligible with Putonghua, that does not appear to be the case. Minqin (evidence) and Lanzhou (evidence) in Gansu are not fully intelligible with Putonghua, nor is Yinchuan (evidence) in Ningxia. Intelligibility within Lanyin is not known, but Jiuquan at least appears to be a completely separate language inside Lanyin.

Jiuquan is a member of the Hexi Group of Lanyin, which has 18 lects.

Yinchuan is a member of the Yinwu Group of Lanyin, which has 12 lects.

Lanzhou is a member of the Jincheng Group of Lanyin, which has 4 lects.

Lanyin is composed of 57 separate lects. Lanyin Mandarin has 9 million speakers (Olson 1998).

The Jiaoliao Mandarin spoken in Shandong contains lects such as Qingdao (evidence here and here) and Wehai (evidence) which are not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Dalian is quite different from Putonghua. Intelligibility between Qingdao, Wehai and Dalian is not known.

Weihai and Dalian are members of the Denglian Group of Jiaoliao, which has 23 lects.

Qingdao is a member of the Qingzhou Group of Jiaoliao, which has 16 lects.

Jiaoliao is composed of 45 lects. Jiaoliao is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Intelligibility inside of Jiaoliao is not known, but there may be multiple languages inside of it, because some Shandong Peninsula lects sound very strange even to speakers used to hearing Shandong Mandarin.

Karamay is an unclassified Mandarin language spoken in Xinjaing. The Mandarin spoken around Tiantai in Zhejiang is not intelligible with Putonghua and may be a separate language. It is also unclassified.

Mandarin has 873 million speakers. There are an incredible 1,526 lects of Mandarin.

Although it is related to Mandarin, Jin is a completely separate language. Besides the Main Jin branch Baotou are apparently separate languages (evidence). As is possibly Taiyuan (evidence).

Within Hohhot Jin, there are two separate languages. One is Hohhot Xincheng Jin, a combination of Hebei Jin, Northeastern Mandarin and the Manchu language. The other is Jiucheng Hohhot Jin, spoken by the Muslim Hui minority in the city. It is related to other forms of Jin in Shanxi Province.

Yuci is a separate language from Taiyuan on a 200 word Swadesh test (Ben Hamed 2005). Fenyang, the language used in Chinese director Jia Zhanke’s movie Xiao Shan Going Home is not intelligible with Putonghua. Jingbian, in Shanxi, is a separate language. Yulin is also a separate language.

Hohhot is a member of the Zhanghu Group of Jin, which has 29 lects.

Baotou and Yulin are members of the Dabao Group of Jin, which has 29 lects.

Taiyuan and Yuci are members of the Bingzhou Group of Jin, which has 16 lects.

Fenyang is a member of the Luliang Group of Jin, which has 17 lects.

Jingbian is a member of the Wutai Group of Jin, which has 30 lects.

Jin is composed of 171 lects, and some of them are separate languages. Jin has 48 million speakers (Olson 1998).

Besides Xiang Proper, assuming there even is such a thing, Shuangfeng and Changsha are separate languages, having only 47% intelligibility.

In fact, Changsha itself is divided into multiple languages in the city itself. We do not know how many there are, but we know that they exist. For the moment, we shall just add one lect to Changsha, and divide it into Changsha A and Changsha B, but there may be more. Furthermore, there are significant differences within the Changsha spoken in Changsha City and in the surrounding countryside.

Shuangfeng is also very different within itself, as the vocabulary changes every 10 miles or so. Intelligibility data is lacking.

Mao Zedong spoke Xiangtan, a notoriously difficult Xiang language in Hunan, about which it is said, “No one can understand.” Xiangtan itself is internally diverse, with differences between the dialect of the city and rural areas, but intelligibility data is lacking. Hengyang is apparently a separate language, as is Jishou (evidence). There is significant dialectal diversity in Hengyang, but intelligibility data is lacking.

Liuyang is a separate language, spoken in Liuyang county-level city in Changsha prefecture in Hunan. Liuyang is split into 5 divisions – Liuyang North, Liuyang South, Liuyang West, Liuyang East and Liuyang City.

Liuyang South and Liuyang East are separate languages, mutually unintelligible with the others. Liuyang City has recently arisen as a sort of a Liuyang “Putonghua” that is understandable to speakers of all Liuyang lects. So within Liuyang, we have three dialects – Liuyang City, Liuyang North and Liuyang West. Outside of Liuyang Proper, there are also two separate languages – Liuyang South and Liuyang East. None of the three Liuyang languages is intelligible with Changsha.

Even within this classification, each of the 5 Liuyang lects has multiple dialects. Each village is said to have its own lect in Liuyang.

Hengshan (evidence) is a separate language with vast dialectal divergence divided by Mount Hengshan. There are two Xiang Hengshan lects on either side of the mountain – Qianshan and Houshan – that are very different and must be separate languages. Huayuan (evidence) is at least not intelligible with Putonghua.

In the city of Yiyang, Henan Province, 3 lects are spoken. One is a Yiyang Changyi Xiang lect, another is a Yiyang Luoshao Xiang lect, and a third is Luoyang Southwest Mandarin, a dialect of Henan Mandarin, described above. All appear to be separate languages. We will call the two Xiang lects Yiyang Changyi and Yiyang Luoshao.

Baojing at least is not intelligible with Putonghua, yet it is said to be intelligible with Chengdu Southwest Mandarin.

Lingshuijiang, also spoken in Hunan by 300,000 people, may well be a separate language.

Ningxiang is said to be very different from Changsha. Given the dramatic divergence present even as background in Xiang, this must mean that Ningxiang is at least not intelligible with Changsha.

According to good sources, there is a tremendous amount of lect diversity in Western Hunan, and most of it probably involves Xiang lects, while most or all of these lects are not mutually intelligible. But until we get more data, we cannot carve any languages out of this mess yet.

Shuangfeng and Lingshuijiang are a members of the Luoshao Group of Xiang, which has 21 lects.

The Changshas, Hengyang, Xiangtan, Hengshan, Ningxiang and the Liuyangs are members of the Changyi Group of Xiang, which has 32 lects.

Baojing, Jishou and Huayuan are members of the Jixu Group of Xiang, which has 8 lects.

Xiang is composed of 74 lects. Many, or possibly all of them are separate languages. The various languages of Xiang have 50 million speakers.

Wu is a major group of diverse Chinese languages that is often divided into Northern Wu and Southern Wu. Northern Wu and Southern Wu are definitely mutually unintelligible languages. Southern Wu has 18 million speakers. In general, the list below just lists Wu lects that are utterly unintelligible with Putonghua. My opinion is that in general, the Wu lects are mostly separate languages, however, some are merely dialects of other Wu lects.

A good general rule for Zhejiang lects is that people say they can sort of understand the next city over, but two cities away was incomprehensible. For instance, in the Taizhou prefecture region, there are 4-5 unintelligible dialects across a 12 mile area. In Zhejiang, the mountains go all the way down to the sea, so there are few flat areas where language can spread out and become comprehensible.

Suzhou, Shanghaiese, Wuxi (evidence), Huzhou (evidence), Changzhou (evidence), Xiaoshan (evidence), Songjiang (evidence), Jiaxing, Hangzhou (evidence), Kunshan (evidence), Ningbo and Yixing (evidence) are separate languages.

Tongxiang also appears to be a separate language, as does Yuyao (evidence) and Zhoushan.

Qidong, spoken in the city of Qidong, is a separate language. Lvsi, Qisi or Tongdong, spoken in the nearby town of Qisi, is a separate language from Qidong. Qidong is said to be very close to Chongming, so for the time being, we will list Chongming as a dialect of Qidong.

Haimen also appears to be a dialect of Qidong. However, there are 2 lects spoken in Haimen, and they are apparently not mutually intelligible. We will leave Haimen A as a dialect of Qidong, while we will set Haimen B as a separate language as it is not intelligible with Haimen A.

There are differences between Chongming and Haimen A, but the degree of them is not known. Changyinsha is very similar to Haimen, Chongming and Qidong, so it is probably a dialect of Qidong also. Another name for Qidong is Qihai, which refers to the speech of Qidong, Haimen and Tongzhou. For the time being, we will list Haimen A, Changyinsha and Chongming as dialects of Qidong. Chongming, and hence Qidong, is not intelligible with Shanghaiese.

Zhangjiagang, Changsha and Kunshan may be intelligible with Suzhou, but data is lacking. Suzhou is only 43% intelligible with Wenzhou. None of these lects is intelligible with Shanghaiese.

Ningbo has good intelligibility with Shanghaiese, but not vice versa.

Reports vary on the intelligibility of Shanghaiese and Suzhou. Some say they understand each well, but that is probably not the case at first due to serious differences in tones. Intelligibility testing is needed.

Pudong, the older form of the Shanghai language, is still spoken in the Pudong District of the city, but it is dying out. There is a question of whether or not it is mutually intelligible with Shanghaiese, but Shanghaiese speakers seem to feel it is not mutually intelligible (Gilliland 2006).

Several lects are spoken in the suburbs of Shanghai. Reports vary, but Shanghai residents generally report that these lects are not mutually intelligible with Shanghaiese (Gilliland 2006). They are Baoshan, Fengxian, Nanhui, Jiading, Jinshan, Pudong (or Chuansha) and Qingpu.

Hangzhou is reportedly much different from the lects of Shanghaiese, Ningbo, etc. to the northeast, and is not intelligible with Shanghaiese, nor with Suzhou. Hangzhou has 1.2 million speakers.

Changzhou and Wuxi are not intelligible with Shanghaiese or Suzhou. Changzhou and Wuxi have high, but not full, intelligibility. Changzhou and Wuxi are part of a dialect chain in which eastern Changzhou speakers can communicate with western Wuxi speakers, but as one moves further west into Wuxi or east into Changzhou, intelligibility drops off. Like Czech and Slovak, it is best then to split Wuxi and Changzhou into separate languages.

Changzhou itself has considerable dialectal divergence, though apparently all dialects are intelligible. Changzhou has 3 million speakers.

Yixing, near Changzhou, is not intelligible with Shanghaiese.

Jiangyin is spoken in Jiangyin city. It is related to Changzhou and has high intelligibility with Changzhou and Wuxi.

All of the above are in the Taihu Group.

Taizhou, centered around the city of Tuzhou in Eastern Zhejiang, is composed of 11 separate lects, all of which are separate languages, Huangyan (evidence), Jiaojiang, Linhai, Sanmen, Tiantai (evidence), Wenling (evidence), Ninghai (evidence), Xianju, Leqing (evidence), Yubei and Yuhuan (evidence). (Evidence for all).

A single subgroup of Wuzhou, Yiwu – contains 18 separate languages, all mutually unintelligible. We will call them Yiwu A, Yiwu B, Yiwu C, Yiwu D, Yiwu E, Yiwu F, Yiwu G, Yiwu H, Yiwu I, Yiwu J, Yiwu K, Yiwu L, Yiwu M, Yiwu N, Yiwu O, Yiwu P, Yiwu Q and Yiwu R for the time being.

Pucheng is a separate language. Pucheng has 2 dialects, Nampo and North Dabei. Intelligibility data is not known. Pucheng is so diverse that some say it is a language isolate and is not even a part of Wu (Norman 1988).

There are two groups of Southern Wu which are said to be both highly divergent and to have very low intelligibility internally. These groups are sometimes called Jinqu and Shangli.

Jinqu consists of at least 30 languages: Jinhua, Jinhua Xiaohuang, Tangxi, Lanxi, Pujiang, Yiwus A-R, Dongyang, Pan’an, Yongkang (evidence), Wuyi (evidence), Quzhou (evidence), Longyou and Jinyun. Lanxi has 660,000 speakers (Rickard 2006). Quzhou is apparently not intelligible with Wenzhou. Jinqu is roughly equivalent to the Wuzhou Group.

Shangli contains at least 18 languages: Shangrao City, Shangrao County, Guangfeng, Yushan, Kaihua, Changshan, Jiangshan, Lishui (evidence), Suichang , Songyang, Xuanping, Qingtian (evidence here and here), Yunhe, Jingning, Longquan, Qingyuan, Taishun and Pucheng.

This group is roughly equivalent to the Longqu and Chuzhou Groups of Chuqu. Some members of this group extend beyond Zhejiang and into northeastern Jiangxi and northern Fujian.

We are going to cautiously classify all of these lects as separate languages since they are said to be much more divergent and much less mutually intelligible than Taihu, and Taihu itself seems to have pretty low internal intelligibility.

Wenzhou (evidence) is a separate language. Ouhai, Yongjia and Ruian appear to be dialects of Wenzhou, but all of them are probably separate languages, since if you go 5 miles in any direction in Wenzhou, there’s a new dialect, and it’s hard to understand people. Wenzhou is 43% intelligible with Suzhou. Wencheng (evidence) appears to be a separate language.

Wenxi is a separate language within Oujiang, not intelligible with Wenzhou. It is spoken in one town in Qingtian County.

Jinxiang also has its own Wu lect, with Mandarin influences. This is a Taihu (Northern Wu) outlier.

In addition, in Taishun County, there is also an aberrant Wu lect spoken in the town of Luoyang, influenced by both Manjiang and Oujiang Wu.

There is another Wu lect similar to Manjiang Eastern Min spoken in the town of Hedi in Qingyuan County in Lishui.

Manhua is quite different. There is a controversy over whether or not Manhua is Macro-Min or Macro-Wu. It is probably Macro-Wu based on phonology and it also shares some similar Min-like traits with other Wu lects such as those in the Chuqu group.

Within Manhua, there is a northern group spoken in the town of Yishan and a southern group spoken in the towns of Qianku and Jinxiang. Qianku is the standard for Manhua. The northern/southern divide may impede intelligibility, but we have no information yet.

Wuhu is a separate language, unintelligible with Shanghaihua.

Nanjing Wu is a separate language

Jiaxing, Shanghaiese, Suzhou, Wuxi, Songjiang, Tongxiang, Qidong, Lvsi, Yunhe and Kunshan are all in the Hujia Group of Taihu. The Hujia Group contains 32 lects.

Changzhou, Yixing, Jiangyin and Haimen are in the Piling Group of Taihu. Piling has 12 lects. Piling has 8 million speakers.

Wenzhou, Ouhai, Yongjia, Ruian and Wencheng are in the Oujiang Group of Taihu, which also contains 12 lects.

Hangzhou has its own group, the Hangzhou Group of Taihu.

Shaoxing, Fuyang, Xiaoshan, Linan, Yuyao and Zhuji are in the Linshao Group of Taihu which also contains 12 lects.

Fenghua and Zhoushan are in the Yongjiang Group of Taihu. The Yongjiang Group contains 11 lects and has 4 million speakers.

Changxing is in the Taioxi Group of Taihu, which has 5 lects.

The Taihu Group is composed of 75 separate lects, many or all of which are separate languages. Taihu has 47 million speakers.

Lishui, Qingyuan, Jingning, Jinyun and Taishun are in the Chuzhou group of Chuqu, which contains 9 lects. Chuzhou has 1.5 million speakers. Chuqu itself contains 35 separate lects.

Pucheng, Shangrao County, Shangrao City, Jiangshan, Songyang, Guangfeng, Longquan, Kaihua, Changshan, Suichang, Longyou, Yushan and Quzhou are members of the Longqu Group of Chuqu, which has 14 lects and 5 million speakers (Olson 1998).

The Yiwu languages, Dongyang, Jinhua, Jinhua Xiaohuang, Lanxi, Tangxi, Wuyi, Pan’an, Pujiang and Yongkang are all members of the Wuzhou Group, which contains 27 separate languages. Wuzhou has 4 million speakers.

Nanjing Wu is unclassified.

The various Wu languages have 85 million speakers.

Within Hui, there are at least six separate languages (Hirata 1998). Actually, there are many more.

Xidi, spoken in a village at the foot of Huangshan Mountain, is a separate language. Xidi is unintelligible even to villages a few miles away. Tunxi, Wuyuan and Xiuning are separate languages. The first two are spoken in Anhui, but Xiuning is spoken in Jiangxi Province.

Within the Jingzhan Group of Hui, Jingde, Ningguo, Qimen, Chilingkou, (spoken in Chiling, Qimen County), Meixi Xiang, and Shitai are separate languages.

Within Qimen County itself, there are 6 different Hui lects, with low intelligibility between them. It is quite possible that we are talking about 6 different languages here. One of them appears to be Chilingkou above. The others we will just call: Qimen A, Qimen B, Qimen C, Qimen D and Qimen F. All except Meixi are spoken in Anhui Province. Meixi is spoken in Meixi, Jiangxi.

Jixi, Hongmen and Shexian are separate languages. Within Shexian, there are two different languages that we will only call Shexian A and Shexian B for now. Chunan is spoken in Jiangxi, while Jixi and the Shexian languages are spoken in Anhui.

Dexing and Dongzhi are separate languages, the first spoken in Jiangxi and the second spoken in Anhui.

In the Yanzhou Group of Hui, Jiande and Chunan are separate languages. There are two other lects in the group, Suian and Shouchang. Chunan and Suian are very diverse and in all probability separate languages. Shouchang is also extremely diverse, and Jiande has some differences with Shouchang. These two are probably both separate languages too.

The Yangzhou languages are interesting because there is controversy whether they are Wu or Hui languages. Careful examination reveals that they cannot be subsumed under Southern Wu due to their great divergence, despite having some similarities with Wu. Some authors feel that they are Hui-Wu merged lects, and their similarity with both is given as a reason for merging Wu and Hui into a supergroup.

While it is best to classify them as Hui, they are much different from most Hui lects. All are spoken in western Zhejiang. The Yanzhou Group has 4 languages. Discussion here.

Huangshan, Tunxi, Wuyuan and Xiuning are members of the Xiuyi Group of Hui, which has 6 lects.

Meixi, the Qimens, Chilingkou, Shitai, Ningguo and Jingde are members of the Jingzhan Group of Hui. Jingzhan has 12 lects, all of which are separate languages.

Jixi, Hongmen and the Shexians are members of the Jishe Group of Hui. The Jishe Group has 6 lects .

Dexing and Dongzhi are members of the Qide Group of Hui. The Qide Group has 5 lects.

Xidi is unclassified.

The various Hui languages have 3.2 million speakers . There are 34 different Hui lects, at least 24 of which are separate languages. There is a possibility that all Hui lects are separate languages, but that remains to be proven.

Cantonese is a major language spoken in the south of China. They are said to be a mix between the Yue people and the Han. They have great pride in their speech which appears to be closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin is. When Sun Yat-Sen was President of Republican China, a vote was held on which language to base Standard Chinese on. Cantonese only lost by one vote in favor of Mandarin.

Some Cantonese activists denounce Mandarin as a pidgin language spoken Manchu and Mongol invaders glommed onto the Chinese of the people they conquered.

Attempts to determine intelligibility through the use of complex lexical, tonal, grammatical and phonological formulae produce results that are excessively high in terms of percentage of intelligibility. A better method is presented in Szeto 2000, in which sentences in other lects are played to speakers of Lect A, and speakers of Lect A are asked to give the basic meaning of the sentences played to them. A sentence is recorded as correct if the basic meaning was ascertained.

By this better method, Standard Cantonese has only 31.3% intelligibility of Siyi, 7.2% of Hakka, 2.7% of Teochew and 2.5% of Xiamen. This paper also highlights the very important role morphological and syntactic differences play in intelligibility, even apart from phonology and other factors.

In contrast, the more complex method not relying on actual informants gives false positives. By this method, Cantonese has 54.7% intelligibility of Hakka, 47.4% of Xiamen 43.5% of Teochew. This method falsely overestimates the intelligibility of Hakka by 7.6 X, of Teochew by 16.1 X and of Xiamen by 19 X.

Cantonese is traditionally said to have nine tones, but phonemically, there are only six tones, since the last three are just three of the first six with a voiceless stop consonant on the end. These are often called entering tones in traditional Chinese scholarship.

Entering tones have disappeared from most Mandarin lects, probably about 800 years ago due to the influence of invading Mongols speaking Turkic languages, but are still present in Cantonese, Hakka and Min. The original entering tones of Middle Chinese have merged into one or the other or Mandarin’s four tones.

Traditional Chinese tones or contour tones end in a vowel or a nasal. However, in Cantonese, the entering tone has retained its original short and sharp character from Middle Chinese, so in a sense, it has a different sound quality.

Besides Standard Cantonese (the Guangzhou lect in the Yuehai Group), there is Siyi, or Sze Yup, a separate language. Siyi has 8 dialects, however, there are reports that there are intelligibility problems within the Siyi lects. In particular, Enping speakers cannot understand some other dialects. Therefore, Enping is a separate language.

Kaiping, or Chikan, is not fully intelligible with Enping until they get used to each others’ sounds. Kaiping is so different from Taishan that it is hard to imagine how they can communicate well, though there is partial intelligibility.

In Xinhui, there is a dialect called Hetang that is very divergent and has many strange features not found in other dialects. Doubtless it is less than fully intelligible with other Siyi lects.

Actually, there seems to be many more than 8 dialects of Siyi. In Taishan County alone, there are 20 townships there may be a different lect in each one. For certain, there are at least three distinct dialects of Taishan, Taishan A, Taishan B and Taishan C. Even the lects in Taishan County can be quite different. However, all lects in Taishan County appear to be intelligible.

Xinhui is somewhat different from Taishan, but appears to be intelligible. Heshan is said to be intelligible with Xinhui and Taishan.

Nevertheless, there are calls from Taishan speakers to split their lect off from the rest of Siyi. If Taishanese is unintelligible with the rest of Siyi, this would make sense, but that does not appear to be the case.

150 years ago, there was less, but still significant, difference between Siyi and Sanyi (Standard Cantonese), but Siyi was disparaged as a “hill dialect” of poor farmers, while Sanyi was elevated as the prestige lect of the cultured and cosmopolitan. This is why Sanyi became the Standard Cantonese lect. The Siyi incorporated this negative view into their self-image even to the point where they held overseas meetings meeting in Sanyi speech.

There are 3.6 million speakers of Siyi.

Vietnamese Cantonese is quite different from Standard Cantonese, but it is nevertheless intelligible. Malay Cantonese is also quite different from Standard Cantonese. Both are dialects of Cantonese.

Hong Kong is a dialect of Guangzhou. Foshan and Nanhai are close to Guangzhou and may be intelligible with it. Nanhai and Shunde are intelligible.

Some say that Shunde and Zhongshan are intelligible with Standard Cantonese, but others disagree. This requires further study, as they are obviously close. However, both are said to at the same time be quite different from Standard Cantonese.

Even within Yuehai, Panyu is said to be a separate language (Chan 1981). Namlong, a poorly understood lect from the Pearl River area, is also a separate language, or at least it was one in 1949. Whether it still exists is not certain, but speakers must still be alive. Yuehai itself has 31 separate lects.

Danija, the Cantonese lect of the Tanka fisherpeople who live on boats off the coast of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan, may well be a separate language. In Hong Kong, another Cantonese language, Gashiau, is spoken by a group of fisherpeople related to the Danija. This language is related to Danija but apparently not intelligible with it.

Maihua, a Cantonese lect spoken on Hainan, may well be a separate language also.

Nanning is a dialect of Cantonese, easily understandable by a Standard Cantonese speaker. However, Lizhou is a separate language, with difficult intelligibility with Standard Cantonese. Dongguan and Zhanjiang (evidence), are separate languages. Shiqi, spoken in Guangxi, is a separate language. Speakers of Standard Cantonese cannot necessarily understand Shiqi, but Shiqi people can understand Guangzhou. Shiqi is spoken in the urban part of Zhongshan City.

Huazhou is a very divergent Cantonese lect that is very hard even for other Cantonese speakers to understand. It is surely a separate language (evidence here and here).

Maoming is an extremely diverse Cantonese lect that must also be a separate language.

Beihai and Hepu are reported to be very different, but intelligibility data is not known, nor is it known to what extent these two lects differ from other Cantonese. But the Quinlian Group of which they are members must surely be a separate language.

One division holds that the Standard Cantonese (Guangzhou), Siyi, Zhongshan, Gaoyang and Guangfu groups are mutually unintelligible groups.

The Goulou Group of Cantonese appears to be a separate language from all of the rest of Cantonese, and is probably in a group of its own away from the rest of Cantonese, and linked with Pinghua and Tuhua. Yulin is a representative lect in Goulou, and is said to present form of Chinese that is closest to Old Chinese.

Siyi has at least 11 dialects, includes the famous Taishanese (includes Taishan A, Taishan B and Taishan C), along with Heshan, Jiangmen, Siqian, Doumen,  Xinhui, Enping and Kaiping.

Nanning is in the Yongxun Group of Cantonese, which has 12 lects.

Zhanjiang and Maoming are members of the Gaoyang Group of Cantonese, which has 10 lects. Gaoyang has 5.4 million speakers.

Dongguan, Shunde, Foshan, Zhongshan, Nanhai, Panyu and Hong Kong are members of the Guangfu Group of Cantonese, which has 31 lects. Guangfu has 13 million speakers.

Shiqi is a member of the Zhongshan Group of Cantonese , which contains at least 3 lects.

Huazhou is a member of the Wuhua Group of Cantonese, which has 2 lects.

Beihai and Hepu are members of the Quinlian Group of Cantonese, which has 6 lects.

Namlong is unclassified.

There are 100 lects of Cantonese, and Cantonese has 64 million speakers.

Pinghua, now recognized as a major split off from Cantonese, is composed of Guinan and Guibei, which are separate languages. The Guibei lects are very different, but we don’t have any intelligibility data.

Guinan has 22 lects, and Guibei has 8 lects .

There is one Pinghua lect that is unclassified.

Pinghua has 31 separate lects. Ping has 2 million speakers.

Tuhua is a separate branch of Chinese spoken in Guangdong and Hunan Provinces. It has 26 separate lects.

In addition to Tuhua Proper, the best known of the Tuhua lects is Shaozhou, referred to here as Shaozhou Proper. Shaozhou is said to be very different from other Chinese lects. Shaozhou itself consists of many different lects which are often strikingly different from the others. Some say that Shaozhou is a branch of Min Nan, while others say it is related to Hakka.

In Lechang prefecture, there are five separate languages, Lechang Tuhua 1, Lechang Tuhua 2, Lechang Tuhua 3, Lechang Tuhua 4 and Lechang Tuhua 5, which are not fully intelligible with each other.

Additionally, many Tuhua lects are starting to splinter recently as influences from Hakka, Cantonese and Southwest Mandarin begin to affect the younger speakers such that the language of the youngest speakers is quite a bit different from the language of the older speakers.

One of the Shaozhou Tuhua lects, Longgui Tuhua, spoken in Qujiang County in Guangdong, is a separate language. Longgui Tuhua has 2,000 speakers.

Actually, Tuhua is not really a language group, but a wastebasket group for various lects derisively referred to as “tuhua” – or “farmer’s language.”

Xianghua, said to be an unclassified Chinese lect, is actually a branch of Tuhua that contains 6 lects of its own. Xianghua is a completely separate and highly diverse language that is spoken in Western Hunan.

Jiahe Tuhua is a completely separate language, unintelligible with other lects. Furthermore, there are huge dialectal differences within Jiahe Tuhua that may or may not constitute separate languages.

Jiangyong Tuhua is divided into two mutually unintelligible languages – North Jiangyong Tuhua and South Jiangyong Tuhua (Leming 2004). It is spoken in the rural areas of Jiangyong County in Hunan Province. There are multiple lects within these two languages, which have considerable distance between them.

A subdialect of North Jiangyong Tuhua – the suburban, or “upper street language” dialect, was the basis for the famous nishu, “women’s script”, a secret language of women, originating from the Shangjiangxu (Xiao River) region of northeastern Jiangyong County in Hunan Province, of which much has been written lately.

Also in Hunan, in Guiyang County, another Tuhua language is spoken – Guiyang Tuhua. This is apparently a separate language, and the northern and southern variants are so divergent that they are separate languages also – Northern Guiyang Tuhua and Southern Guiyang Tuhua. In addition, there are a lot of diverse dialects within the two Guiyang Tuhua languages, but intelligibility data is lacking.

Yantang Tuhua, one of these dialects, may well be a separate language, as may Yangshi Tuhua. Jiangyong and Guiyang are in the Tuhua branch of Tuhua. Yantang and Yangshi are unclassified.

Furthermore, initial examination suggests that a number of things.

First of all, that the Tuhua lects, especially those of Southern Hunan, are very diverse, possibly as diverse as Wu, Xiang and Hui. Many or all of them may well be separate languages. Further, they are poorly studied and dialectally very diverse. There are many dialects inside the known Tuhua lects, and these dialects are often very different. So there appear to be languages inside even the known Tuhua lects.

Further, there appear to be links with the Tuhua lects of Southern Hunan, the Tuhua lects of northern Guangdong and the Ping lects of northern Guangxi, which border each other. They all appear to be related, and to have descended from a common ancestor.

Danzou is a separate language. Danzou is spoken in the northwest of Hainan, and Hainanese speakers cannot understand it. It is related to the language spoken by the Lingao, or is the same language. Yet the Danzou people speak 9 different lects, including lects described as Hakka, others described as Cantonese and others described as Mandarin.

Maojiahua is a form of Chinese spoken by 20,000 Hmong in southwest of Hunan, in the northeast of Guangxi and in some areas of Hubei. It is a separate language already recognized by Ethnologue, but is incorrectly lumped in with the Hmong languages by them.

Linghua is an unclassified Chinese lect spoken in Yongzhou in Hunan. Linghua is a separate language. It is apparently the same as the Yongzhou Tuhua dialect.

However, the Yongzhou Tuhua language has 17 different dialects: Yongzhou Tuhua A, Yongzhou Tuhua B, Yongzhou Tuhua C, Yongzhou Tuhua D, Lanshan Tushi Tuhua, Lanjiaoshan Tuhua, Xintian Southern Rural Tuhua, Xintian Northern Rural Tuhua, Ningyuan Zhangjia Tuhua, Ningyuan Pinghua, Lanshan Shangdong Tuhua, Lanshang Taiping Tuhua, Daoxian Xianglinpu Tuhua, Daoxian Xiaojia Tuhua, Shuangpai Lijiaping Tuhua and Jianghua Baimangying Tuhua.

Of these, Lanshan Tushi Tuhua may well be a separate language.

Intelligibility between lects is not known, but dialectal divergence within Tuhua lects is typically great, and some or all of the above may be separate languages.

Pingde Yahua or Kim Mun, incorrectly classed as an unclassified Chinese lect, is actually one of the Mien languages. It is not a Sinitic language.

Wutun, or Wutunhua, is a Chinese-Mongolian-Tibetan mixed language spoken by 2,000 Tu in Qinghai Province. Whether it is a form of Chinese is controversial. Until it is proven to be Sinitic, we will not list it here.

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