ANTHROPOLOGY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND PACIFIC ISLANDS. 43 



It is an ethnic law that the most restless and vigorous migrating peoples 

 go farthest from their nest. In consequence, one ought to find, unless they 

 have perished, primitive and backward people near the human nest, wherever 

 that was. Such people are still found in various parts of Malaysia; and in 

 Java there has been noted the most simian-like people known, the Kalang. 

 It is believed that pure-blood members of this group are extinct, but all 

 available data, scant as it may be, should be secured of those persons having 

 Kalang affinities. 



Still Malaysia holds the interest of the anthropologist, because one of 

 the four living anthropoid apes, the orang-utan, survives only in Sumatra 

 and Borneo; Java lies between the two. The anthropologist should have 

 a mass of accurate data about this ape. The individual and communal life 

 of this singularly man-like animal should be exhaustively studied, and the 

 anatomist and physiologist should gather a full store of facts before the ape 

 vanishes. Very little data, such as needed, exist to-day. 



NEGRITIC TERRITORY. 



The last of the five ethnic groups in the Pacific is the Negritic. These 

 people are to-day found bearing different names in several isolated areas, 

 in the Philippines surrounded by Malayan Filipinos, and in New Guinea 

 surrounded by Melanesians. They occur as the Aket in Sumatra, as the 

 Semang in the Malay Peninsula, and also as the Mincopi of the Andaman 

 Islands west of the Malay Peninsula in the Bay of Bengal. 



There is little question that the Negritos preceded the Malayans in 

 whatever areas they both occur. De Quatrefages and others regard them 

 as representatives of the parent stem of which the Pygmies of Africa are 

 a branch. Another theory is that the Negritos are the common ancestors 

 of the African Negroes and the Oceanic Melanesians. Again it has been 

 suggested that the Negritos, as well as the Melanesians, are a branch of 

 the original negroid stock, perhaps African. Keane regards the Negritos 

 as the true aborigines of Indo-China and western Malaysia. The Negritos 

 are regarded by some as closer to the j^rimitive human type than any other 

 existing race. Quite a different view is that of Keith, that "there is no 

 human race known that has so little claim to be regarded as a primitive 

 human type. They are the last race in the world to answer to the criteria 

 required in an ancestral type for modern man." What are these criteria? 

 Evidently there is not agreement as to what constitutes a primitive type. 

 This suggests further research in physical anthropology. 



Since the Negritos are fast being displaced by other people, and since 

 their language is practically extinct over much of their present range in the 

 Philippines, problems such as their origin, their former distribution, their 

 kinship to other peoples, their language, and the part they have played in 

 originating culture are most urgent. 



