Much later, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, yet other ethnic groups began migrating into Laos mainly from southern China, once again to escape tightening administrative controls that threatened their cultural independence and freedom. These were the Hmong-Mien- and Tibeto-Burman-speaking peoples. Of these two broad groups, the Hmong spread most deeply into Laos, settling at high altitudes in the mountains of northern Laos, the mountainous areas surrounding the Plain of Jars in Xieng Kouang Province, to the provinces of Borikhamxay, and across to Sayabouly Province. The Mien and Tibeto-Burman tribes such as the Akha, Phunoi,
6 Stuart-Fox
and Lolo confined themselves to the far north. Thus was finally created the patchwork pattern of ethnic and linguistic diversity characteristic of Laos today.