The aboriginal populations of Southeast Asia are generally considered to have been members of the Negrito and broadly defined Austro-Melanesian groups, and may have arrived as part of the hypothesized Great Coastal Migration from Africa via coastal India.

These groups today make up only a small minority of the Southeast Asian population.

Evidence suggests that the earliest non-aboriginal Southeast Asians came from southern China and were Austronesian speakers.

Contemporary research by anthropologists, linguists (Blust, Reid, Ross, Pawley), and archaeologists (Bellwood) suggests that the inhabitants of Maritime Southeast Asia migrated from southern China to islands of the Philippines around 2500 BCE and later spread to present Malaysia and Indonesia.