"The physical features of the Assamese people are a mixture of the racial characteristics of both the Aryan and the Mongoloid races, with traces of the Dravidian and the Austric people as well …. The Ahoms, descendants of the Shan community from China’s Yunan province, played a major role in bringing the Assamese-speaking people within a common political umbrella and gave the people the name Assamese, a derivative of the word Ahom.13"