ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and discusses the population history of mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and island Southeast Asia (ISEA) from c.60,000 years ago until the end of the Neolithic. Of course, in order to understand the history of human movement and interaction in this part of Asia, it is necessary to review the situation in eastern Eurasia in general. In short, we aim to provide a context, in terms of the colonisation of the region by anatomically modern humans (AMH) and subsequent major movements and changes over the past 60,000 years, in which to situate the chapters in this Part of the volume. A knowledge of the past details of human population movement and interaction in Southeast Asia provides a brief, but important, segue into the complexities of human adaptation dealt with in the wealth of subsequent contributions to the volume.
