Ebook: Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific language in Nepal

Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, 2004 - 4 p.
The Kusunda people of central Nepal have long been regarded as a relic tribe of South Asia. They are, or were until recently, seminomadic hunter-gatherers, living in jungles and forests, with
a language that shows no similarities to surrounding languages. They are often described as shorter and darker than neighboring tribes. Our research indicates that the Kusunda language is a
member of the Indo-Pacific family. This is a surprising finding inasmuch as the Indo-Pacific family is located on New Guinea and surrounding islands. The possibility that Kusunda is a remnant of
the migration that led to the initial peopling of New Guinea and Australia warrants additional investigation from both a linguistic and genetic perspective