The term Negrito (; ) refers to several diverse ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands. Populations often described as Negrito include: the Andamanese peoples (including the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Sentinelese) of the Andaman Islands, the Semang peoples (among them, the Batek people) of Peninsular Malaysia, the Maniq people of Southern Thailand, as well as the Aeta people of Luzon, the Ati people and Suludnon of Panay, the Mamanwa of Mindanao, and about 30 other officially recognized ethnic groups in the Philippines.
Etymology
The word
Negrito, the Spanish
diminutive of
negro, is used to mean "little black person." This usage was coined by 16th-century Spanish missionaries operating in the Philippines, and was borrowed by other European travellers and colonialists across Austronesia to label various peoples perceived as sharing relatively small physical stature and dark skin.
Contemporary usage of an alternative Spanish epithet,
Negrillos, also tended to bundle these peoples with the
pygmy peoples of
Central Africa on the basis of perceived similarities in stature and complexion.
[ (Historically, the label Negrito has also been used to refer to African pygmies.)][See, for example: Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911: "Second are the large Negrito family, represented in Africa by the dwarf-races of the equatorial forests, the Akkas, , and others..." (p. 851)] The appropriateness of bundling peoples of different ethnicity by similarities in stature and complexion has been called into question.[
]
Population
There are over 100,000 Negritos in the Philippines. In 2010, there were 50,236 Aeta people in the Philippines.[ ] This number increases if we include some of the populations or individual groups among Orang Asli who have either assimilated Negrito population or have admixed origins. According to the 2006 census, the number of Orang Asli was 141,230 [ Primal Survivor: Season 5, episode 1
]
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Culture
Most groups designated as "Negrito" lived as , while some also used agriculture, such as plant harvesting. Today most live assimilated to the majority population of their respective homeland. Discrimination and poverty are often problems, caused either by their lower social position, their hunter-gatherer lifestyles, or both.
Origins
Based on perceived physical similarities, Negritos were once considered a single population of closely related people. However, genetic studies suggest that they consist of several separate groups descended from the same ancient East Eurasian meta-population that gave rise to modern East Asian peoples and Oceania, as well as displaying genetic heterogeneity. The Negritos form the indigenous population of Southeast Asia, but were largely absorbed by Austroasiatic- and Austronesian-speaking groups who migrated from southern East Asia into Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia with the Neolithic expansion. The remainders form minority groups in geographically isolated regions.
Genetic studies provided mixed evidence of modern Negrito populations, with populations considered Negrito showing diverse admixtures. Although a genetic affinity between Andaman Islanders, Malaysian and Filipino Negritos was detected by some authors, several studies indicate that Negrito populations are closer to their neighboring non-Negrito communities in their paternal heritage and autosomal DNA on average.[Endicott et al. 2003; Thangaraj et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2011), Y chromosome (Delfin et al. 2011; Scholes et al. 2011), and autosomal (HUGO Pan-Asia SNP Consortium 2009) studies indicate that Negrito populations are closer to their neighboring non-Negrito communities.] Most modern groups considered Negrito possess significant admixture from Austronesian or Austroasiatic sources, with Negrito groups in the Philippines found to have between 30 and 50% Austronesian ancestry.
The Semang and Maniq people in the interior of the Malay Peninsula share genetic affinities with ancient Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers, while also posessing ~35% East Asian related ancestry, likely brought about by recent admixture with surrounding agriculturalist communities in the region, according to the authors of a 2022 genetic study.
It has been found that the physical and morphological phenotypes of Negritos, such as short stature, a wide and snub nose, curly hair and dark skin, " are shaped by novel mechanisms for adaptation to tropical rainforests" through convergent evolution and positive selection, rather than a remnant of a shared common ancestor, as suggested previously by some researchers.
A Negrito-like population was most likely also present in Taiwan before the Neolithic expansion and must have persisted into historical times, as suggested by evidence from morphological features of human skeletal remains dating from around 6,000 years ago resembling Negritos (especially Aetas in northern Luzon), and further corroborated by Chinese reports from the Qing dynasty (1684 to 1895) and from tales of Taiwanese indigenous peoples about people with "dark skin, short-and-small body stature, frizzy hair, and occupation in forested mountains or remote caves".
See also
Notes
Further reading
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Evans, Ivor Hugh Norman. The Negritos of Malaya. Cambridge Eng.: University Press, 1937.
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Garvan, John M., and Hermann Hochegger. The Negritos of the Philippines. Wiener Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, Bd. 14. Horn: F. Berger, 1964.
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Hurst Gallery. Art of the Negritos. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Hurst Gallery, 1987.
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Schebesta, P., & Schütze, F. (1970). The Negritos of Asia. Human relations area files, 1–2. New Haven, Conn: Human Relations Area Files.
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Armando Marques Guedes (1996). Egalitarian Rituals. Rites of the Atta hunter-gatherers of Kalinga-Apayao, Philippines, Social and Human Sciences Faculty, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
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Zell, Reg. About the Negritos: A Bibliography. Edition blurb, 2011.
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Zell, Reg. Negritos of the Philippines. The People of the Bamboo - Age - A Socio-Ecological Model. Edition blurb, 2011.
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Zell, Reg, John M. Garvan. An Investigation: On the Negritos of Tayabas. Edition blurb, 2011.
External links
