Vietic peoples refers to a group of ethnic groups of Southeast Asia.
Geographic distribution
The Vietic peoples are aboriginal to northern Vietnam, Laos and surrounding areas, mostly in northern Annamite mountains, although they can also be found in Thailand, Cambodia and China.
Origin
The proto-Vietic peoples are believed to have migrated by land from China to Laos and Vietnam through the Mekong, where they had settled for at least 4,500 years. Although there is no good estimate, paleolithic human sites around the modern Vietic villages in Laos and Nghe An are dated 2,500 to 2,000 BC, indicates that perhaps they were. They were parts of the larger proto-Austroasiatic peoples, who inhabited widely on neolithic mainland Southeast Asia. A human fossil site of these hunter-gatherers excavated in a cave at Pha Phen, 12 kilometres south of Lak Sao, Bolikhamsai Province is dated to 6190 BP (4190 BC). The Katuic people separated from Vieto-Katuic to be an independent group around 1,000 BC.
Nghệ An is regarded in Vietnam as the "Vietic homeland" after the Austroasiatic exodus from Yunnan (also believed to be a tribute to North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh's birthplace). Anthropologists however considered the large area along the Northern Annamites Mountains from Nghệ An to Quảng Bình Province in Vietnam, Bolikhamsai to Khammouane Province in Laos as the traditional Vietic homeland, due to high amount of diversity of archaic Vietic groups and languages present in the region. not in the Red River Delta, which had been originally inhabited by Tai speakers However, archaeogenetics demonstrated that before the Đông Sơn period, the Red River Delta's inhabitants were predominantly Austroasiatic: genetic data from Phùng Nguyên culture's Mán Bạc burial site (dated to 1,800 BCE, thus predating Proto-Vietic, which is dated to 1,000 BCE) have close proximity to modern Austroasiatic speakers; meanwhile, "mixed genetics" from Đông Sơn culture's Núi Nấp site showed affinity to "Dai from China, Tai-Kadai speakers from Thailand, and Austroasiatic speakers from Vietnam, including the Việt"; Therefore, "[t]he likely spread of Vietic was southward from the [Red River Delta], not northward. Accounting for southern diversity will require alternative explanations."
History
The Northern groups of the Vietics, residing in the norde-extremê Annamites (part of ancient Jiaozhi and Jiuzhen) and known as the Viet-Muong, had intensive contacts and interactions with the Tai people and Sinitic colonists from the north during the thousand years of Chinese rule. Based on linguistic evidence and historical records, anthropologists believe that the Viet-Muong eventually separated into two independent groups, Vietnamese and Muong, sometime between the seventh and tenth centuries (Tang dynasty).
Isolated tribes of Vietics on the Laotian side of the Annamite mountains remained intact with limited outside influence. These tribes stayed out of the regions politics despite numerous contests between the Khmer, the Vietnamese, and the Chinese over the region from the year 722 to the mid-twelfth century. The Siamese launched several catastrophic raids onto Laotian Vietic areas between 1826 and 1860 as part of their punitive expeditions against the Vientiane Kingdom, greatly depopulating many Vietic villages.
During the late nineteenth century, the Laotian Vietic homeland of Khammouane (now Khamkeut District, Bolikhamsai Province and Nakai-Nam Theun National Park) experienced the massive arrival of Tai-speaking and Hmong-speaking groups from Houaphanh and Nghệ An. These migrating populations included many former Zhuang warriors fleeing the Taiping rebellion in China, social upheavals and unrest in Vietnam, and Khmu Ho-Chueng war in Northern Laos. The new settlers immediately dominated the indigenous Vietic villagers, sometimes hiring them as labors. Some of Vietic groups were labeled as Puak to indicate their vassalage, or simply called "Kha" by the Tais. Originally Laotian Vietic groups that now speak Tai and Lao languages, for example, the Bo, were perhaps results of the Taization process: the willingness of adoption of the language and culture of the dominant, outnumbering group by minority groups. As explained by a Tai Khang leader in Bolikhamsai: "We are Lao Loum; before we were Kha, but we decided to adopt Lao language and became Lao Loum, and now we have forgotten our Kha language." Anthropologists note that similar processes happened to many other Mon-Khmer speaking peoples in surrounding places.