::: Regarding linguistics, It seems to me, even with my limited experience that the state of research is unclear on the issue. I have also noted that it seems highly politicized, with certain "camps" being accused of being biased towards certain scenarios (For example here). I do note, however, that "Austric" languages and their affinity to Old Chinese are often discussed in the first few opening paragraphs and I in all honesty don't think a brief mention of this in Layman's terms is dishonest. I am content to drop the issue if Kanguole or others have already addressed them in the Old Chinese (or related) sections.  

 ::: Regarding physical anthropology/archaeology, The resemblance of Anyang sacrificial pit remains to modern day Southern Chinese and Hainan Islanders won't change, unlike 'Old Chinese' linguistics. In all the studies the Anyang cluster with Southern Chinese and Hainan Islanders. Only when Atyal (A Taiwanese tribal group with extensive historical cohabitation with Han Taiwanese) are included  do they occupy a node intermediate. I have plotted the measurements from Howell's data set myself and can confirm similarities between populations from the general South China region. Whether these remains are characteristic of "Shang commoners" is the core issue in this discussion. I had previously always assumed they were considered Shang citizens due to the tone researchers took when describing them, e.g. the most recent saying directly "they are thought to be Han." Only on online forums and blog comment sections did I ever see opposition to this. Despite claiming a "plethora" of evidence, Lathdrinor only came up with one citation (Yang 1966) stating that these remains were "non-Shang", but in his 1983 work Howells claims to have disproved this and demonstrates they were ordinary northern Chinese from this time period (page 225). He has yet to respond. I am far from an expert in this field either, but this would be much easier for me to state/discuss cogently, especially since my opposition seem to have expertise in linguistics.