Glimpses of the ethnolinguistic prehistory of northeastern India

The world's two most populous families of languages, Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European meet in the Himalayas. In addition to these two great linguistic phyla, Kra-Dai alias Daic, Austroasiatic and Dravidian language communities skirt the eastern Himalayan region. The crux of the ethnolinguistic prehistory of the eastern Himalayan region are the language families Tibeto-Burman, Austroasiatic, Indo-European and Kra-Dai. Historical, ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic data all point to an Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman presence in northeastern India. Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman, therefore, hold the key to understanding the population prehistory of northeastern India. In turning from the archaeological record to the molecular biological legacy, the population genetic data in the Himalayan region correspond with the linguistic divide more sharply than in most other parts in the world. Whilst gradients of biological markers often flow fuzzily across deep linguistic boundaries, in the Himalayas both the genetic and linguistic divides between Tibeto-Burman and Indo-European remain sharp. Keywords:archaeological; Austroasiatic; Dravidian language; Ethnolinguistic Prehistory; Himalayas; Indo-European; Kra-Dai; Northeastern India; Tibeto-Burman