Prehistoric South-East Asians were ‘climate refugees’

The Orang Asli can be considered the first casualties of sea-level rise, or what are known as 'climate refugees' today. — Others

WHERE will people go if their home were to go underwater due to climate change? This question may find an unlikely answer from its geographic history more than 20,000 years ago.

A recent study by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) finds that prehistoric people living in South-East Asia similarly fled due to rising sea levels, and resettled elsewhere as climate refugees. This contributed to the genetic diversity found in the world today, with genetic fragments of indigenous Malaysian populations detected in indigenous populations of eastern India.