Far East Kingdoms

Early Burma / Myanmar

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The modern republic of Burma (or 'Myanmar' in more recent popular usage) has long been under the firm control of a military dictatorship. The country's thousand year-long history, though, is highly detailed.

Around 2000 BC, ancient Chinese rice and millet farmers spread southwards into a region which stretched between Vietnam and Burma. There, they interbred with local hunter-gatherers in two main pulses, this being the first of those pulses.

A second pulse of migration took place between southern China and a swathe of territory which stretches between Burma and Nam Viet. Farmers here inherited a genetic makeup which differs in some ways from that of the earlier Man Bac migrants who had left southern China around 2000 BC, but still closely resembles the DNA of present-day inhabitants of southern China.

In 2017 a team led by Harvard Medical School geneticist, Mark Lipson, concluded that these population movements brought agriculture to the region and triggered the spread of Austroasiatic languages which are still spoken in parts of south and South-East Asia.

Over the preceding twenty years, archaeology had already accumulated increasing amounts of evidence to support the emergence of rice farming in South-East Asia between 2,500-2,000 BC, accompanied by tools and pottery which revealed links to southern China.

The kingdom of Pagan formed an empire in the eleventh century AD.

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(Information by Peter Kessler and John De Cleene, with additional information from the John De Cleene Archive, from Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume 1, Victor B Lieberman (2003), from Early civilizations of Southeast Asia, Dougald J W O'Reilly (2007), from Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, Gustaaf Houtman (1999), from The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma, Myint-U Thant (Faber and Faber, 2008), and from External Links: Myanmar's Royal Legacy (The Diplomat), and Gov.UK, and South China Morning Post, and Myanmar (World Statesmen), and Ancient Chinese farmers sowed literal seeds of change in south-east Asia (Science News).)