ABSTRACT
Over the past century, but especially during the last 15 years, linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence has been accumulating which indicate that at least some of the major language phyla of South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean (AA, AN, HM, ST and Tai-Kadai) are genetically related to each other. At the conference on Asian Mainland and Austronesian Connections held at the University of Hawaii in 1993, it was suggested by Peter Bellwood and Laurent Sagart that in fact all of these language phyla might descend from a single common ancestor, tentatively named PEA (allegedly by me). See Figure 11.1. In this chapter I would like to make this proposal a bit more concrete and therefore easier to support, correct and/or refute.
