试论云南民族地理

本文试图探讨云南特殊地理位置和自然条件所导致的民族源流的多元性、民族分布的复杂性、民族经济文化的多样性以及民族社会发展的差异性这些在民族地理学中至为重要的课题。

ETHNIC GEOGRAPHY OF YUNNAN

The present paper approaches from the slant of ethnogeography,to yunnan's ethnic groups in their origin and development, their distribution, cultural areas as well as the relationship between the diversity in their sociai development and their geographical settings in Yunnan.Located at the key jnnction of south and East Asia; Yunnan lies on the geographical step of rising and falling greatly between two others of Qinghai-Ti-betan plateau and the pacific littoral belt of Southeast Asia.Such a geographic position and physical conditions have made Yunnan since lemote antiquity an area in which primitive hordes of people converged. During the Neolithic Age, the northern nomadic peoples of Di-Qiang distributed in Northwest Yunnan, a part of southern frigne of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau while the southern agricultural peoples of Baiyue and Baipu shared central and southern parts of Yunnan which are the bases of southeast Asian highlands. A unit of physical geography plays an evidently significant role in the definition of that of human geography.The distribution of northern and southern peoples that inhabited in different surroundings during the neolithic Age contributes the basic patterns of their later distribution in Yunnan. The plane figure of modern distribution of peoples who share their abodes in terms of larger areas and live in a compact community as an ethnic gtoup in terms of smaller areas is the result of their time-honoured migrations and movements on that basis and because of variows factors.The objective existenie of three steps in Yunnan's topography makes inevitable the macroscopically vertical disribution of Yunnan's ethnic groups, where as the ups and downs of the topomaphy in small areas is the major contributing factor of various types of their microscopically vertical disrribution.Yunnan's complicated natural conditions have not only shaped the special disribution of its ethnic groups, but also governed to a great extent their economies and cultures.This paper divides Yunnan Province into four cultural areas and eight cultural types according to diffterent economic and cultural situations urder different physical conditions.These exists a very sharp difference in the social, economic and cultural development among Yunnan's twenty-six ethnic groups. Generally specking, the farther an ethnic group is away from central Yunnan and the higher it distributes, the less developed it is.There is no doubt that the closedness of grographical enviorment has been the major factor that restrists the development of less developed peoples. The understanding of that is very significant in striving for their development.Yunnan's ethnic geography is far beyong what have been outlined above, but rather includes more fields and richerimplica tions,so it is very necessary to make, more efforts in the study of this discipline.