population of Austroasiatic speakers, ancestral to modern Vietnamese, inhabited in the delta during the Han-Tang periods. Other proposes that Northern Vietnam and Southern China were never homogeneous in term of ethnicity and languages, but peoples shared some customs. These ancient tribes did not have any kind of defined ethnic boundary and could not be described as "Vietnamese" (Kinh) in any satisfactory sense. Any attempt of identify an ethnic group in ancient Vietnam is problematized inaccurate. Another theory, based on linguistic diversity, locates the most probable homeland of the Vietic languages in modern-day Bolikhamsai Province and Khammouane Province in Laos as well as parts of Nghệ An Province and Quảng Bình Province in Vietnam. In the 1930s, clusters of Vietic-speaking communities were discovered in the hills of eastern Laos, are believed to be the earliest inhabitants of that region. Archaeogenetics demonstrated that before the Dong Son period, the Red River Delta's inhabitants were predominantly Austroasiatic: genetic data from Phùng Nguyên culture's Mán Bạc burial site (dated 1,800 BC) have close proximity to modern Austroasiatic speakers such as the Khmer and Mlabri; meanwhile, "mixed genetics" from Đông Sơn culture's Núi Nấp site showed affinity to "Dai from China, Tai-Kadai speakers from Thailand, and Austroasiatic speakers from Vietnam, including the Kinh". According to Vietnamese legend The Tale the Hồng Bàng Clan (Hồng Bàng thị truyện) written in the 15th century, the first Vietnamese descended from the dragon lord Lạc Long Quân and the fairy Âu Cơ. They married and had one hundred eggs, from which hatched one hundred children. Their eldest son ruled as the Hùng king. The Hùng kings were claimed to be descended from the mythical figure Shen Nong. Early history and Chinese rule The earliest reference of the proto-Vietnamese in Chinese annals was the Lạc (Chinese: Luo), Lạc Việt, or the Dongsonian, an ancient tribal confederacy of perhaps polyglot Austroasiatic and Kra-Dai speakers occupied the Red River Delta. The Lạc developed the metallurgical Đông Sơn Culture and the Văn Lang chiefdom, ruled by the semi-mythical Hùng kings. To the south of the Dongsonians was the Sa Huỳnh Culture of the Austronesian Chamic people. Around 400–200 BC, the Lạc came to contact with the Âu Việt (a splinter group of Tai people) and the Sinitic people from the north. According to a late third or early fourth century AD Chinese chronicle, the leader of the Âu Việt, Thục Phán, conquered Văn