The archaeological data have convincingly proved that the Dong Son (Đông Sơn) culture resulted from the indigenous development of the previous pre-Đông Sơn cultural systems in the basins of the Hồng, Mã and Cả rivers, closely associating people and ancient Vietnamese culture. The ethnological and linguistic data demonstrate the close relationship of language and culture between the Việt and Mường peoples, and other ethnic groups of Viet – Muong (Việt – Mường) language. | Vietnam Social Sciences, No. 4(168) - 2015 Ethnic Groups of Viet – Muong Languages and Dong Son Culture Bui Xuan Dinh * Abstract: The archaeological data have convincingly proved that the Dong Son (Đông Sơn) culture resulted from the indigenous development of the previous pre-Đông Sơn cultural systems in the basins of the Hồng, Mã and Cả rivers, closely associating people and ancient Vietnamese culture. The ethnological and linguistic data demonstrate the close relationship of language and culture between the Việt and Mường peoples, and other ethnic groups of Viet – Muong (Việt – Mường) language. There are a lot of convincing data to confirm that the Việt and Mường peoples once shared an origin and they themselves were the owners of the pre-Đông Sơn and Đông Sơn cultures, closely connected with the ancient Vietnamese civilization. Key words: Ethnic, Việt – Mường languages, Đông Sơn culture. 1. Nativeness and continuity of the cultures during the period from Phùng Nguyên to Đông Sơn culture It has been 90 years, since Đông Sơn culture was discovered. Many aspects of this culture have been decoded, providing important materials to elucidate significant issues in the history of Vietnam at the time of national foundation. There are, however, still controversies surrounding some issues, including the owner of Đông Sơn culture. As there were not many archaeological evidences available in Vietnam, in the 1960s some scholars tried to find out the origin of Đông Sơn culture on the basis of overseas materials, such as those from the Eurasian steppe (Janse, 1947), the Huai River culture (Kargren, 1942), and Black Sea Costal culture (Geldern, 1951). Recently, in the book titled “The origin of Việt and Mường people” published in 2013, Tạ Đức – the author – developed the ideas that Đào Duy Anh and Bình Nguyên Lộc used to raise in the past, as below: 82 - The owners of Phùng Nguyên Culture were direct ancestors of Mường people in Vietnam. They inherently .
