File talk:Asia 200bc.jpg

Xiong Nu

Think it should be spelled "Hsiung-Nu"... AnonMoos 03:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Chinese is 匈奴 .. modern Pinyin romanization is Xiong Nu. Pratyeka (talk) 02:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Yunnan/Guizhou Region

This region should NOT be marked as Han Dynasty Chinese.

• The northwest of Yunnan was basically Tibetan cultural sphere; the Tibetans of Zhongdian/Xianggelila plateau and the Naxi people and the northern Nujiang.
• The Yi people ruled the mountains from the southern Sichuan escarpment down in to much of central Yunnan.

Pro-Chinese historians and venues tend to attest influence through a literary reference to Dian (a kingdom on the Kunming plateau), which describes a story of a Chinese general settling in the area with his army as the new king of the region. A second point they raise is that the a golden seal, provided to the Dian king by the Chinese (as with one to Yelang to the northeast bordering modern Guizhou) was recovered from the royal burial site of Sizhaishan. This does not itself prove much influence whatsoever, any more than the similar historic 'tribute' (in a particularly loose sense of the word) relations of China with arbitrary numbers of states at least as far afield as Indonesia do.

Serious historical investigation generally regards their influence less seriously, and in fact Dian art and culture seems in many ways more closely connected to that of Northern Vietnam through massive bronze drums and the use of cowrie shells, probably sourced up the Red River from Co Loa / Thang Long (modern day Hanoi). Chinese administrative level influence only began in the region after the Mongol invasion around the dawn of the fifteenth century, and in parts of Guizhou and Yunnan as late as the last century.

I would suggest 'Tibeto-Burman Peoples' on the western side, 'Hmong-Mien Peoples' on the eastern side, over far northeastern Yunnan and modern Guizhou, and 'Tai Peoples' in the south of Yunnan as a more suitable summary. Pratyeka (talk) 02:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Replace Thai with Tai

Tai is a better term historically. Pratyeka (talk) 02:24, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect/dubious labelling

There are numerous problems in the labelling of peoples on this map. To cite a few examples:

1. The Tocharian languages and, therefore, the Tocharian cultures of the Tarim Basin were Indo-European, but were not, in any sense, Iranian. (This is a common mistake, caused by the conflation of the Tarim peoples with the unrelated Tokharians/Tusharas of Bactria.)
2. Most scholars now reject or question the assumed equation of Tocharians and "Yue-chi" – a name that is usually spelt Yuezhi in English.
3. The ethnolinguistic origins of the Yuezhi, whether or not they were associated with the Tocharians, are unknown. They appear to have been Indo-European, but may or may not have been Iranian (an idea probably based on the fact that the Kushan Empire is believed to have had Yuezhi origins, and the Kushans used Iranian languages; it is not clear, however, what language/s the Kushans/Yuezhi spoke previously).
4. Likewise, the ethnolinguistic affiliations of the Dahae are unclear and they too may not have been, strictly speaking, Iranian. (Even though the Aparni – a component of the Dahae – came to dominate the Parthians and, consequently, the Seleucid Empire.)

It would be correct, however, to label these peoples as "Indo-European".

Grant65 (talk) 09:12, 2 January 2016 (UTC)