SO EXCITED to read articles discussing the possibility that groups of Baiyue, the peoples who inhabited modern South China and North Vietnam, lived in ancient Southwest Korea.
We always knew a large group of South/Southeast Asians lived in Korea since ancient times. It’s an archeological and genetic fact, not to mention something you see in the faces of people you pass in the street. My husband has what is called the “Southern” facial structure. So does his mom, and so do about 20% of modern Koreans. But to be able to put a name to these groups and get hints of where they came from? Fucking amazing.
Grave styles. Tools. Agriculture. Even language? I covered my mouth to keep myself from screaming in the library when one of the articles speculated that 半乃 found on a tile fragment from the Korean Southwest might be BaanNaa, “village with rice field” in a major language of the Baiyue peoples.
It’s all rather speculative by necessity, but that’s why I’m writing a novel and not a thesis, right? I’m just trying to give a sound basis to my fictional vision of ancient Korea. And whatever Korea looked like 2,000 years ago, it was most certainly not pale and homogeneous the way some nationalists imagine it.
Admixture between regions – hell, between continents – is a much more frequent and ancient phenomenon than most nationalists would prefer to admit.
I mean the Pacific Islands were settled by migration from Southeast Asia (Taiwan indigenous people, I think?) beginning over 3,000 years ago. Long before that groups of ancient humans moved from Africa across the Eurasian continent to the Americas… the story of migration IS the story of humanity.
L.J.'s Obsessions 