510 THE PEOPLING OF THE PHILIPPINES. 



However, it must be said here that the theory of a truly African 

 origin of the Negritos has been advanced but seldom, and then in a 

 very hesitating manner.' The idea that with the present configuration 

 of the eastern island world, especially with their great distances apart, 

 a variety of mankind that had never manifested any aptitude for 

 maritime enterprises should have spread themselves over this vast 

 ocean area, in order to settle down on this island and on that, is so 

 unreasonable that it has found scarcel}" a defender worth naming. 

 More and more the blacks are coming to be considered the original 

 peoples, the "Indios" to be the intruders. For this there is a quite 

 reasonable ground, in that on man}^ islands the blacks dwell in the 

 interior, difficult of access, especiallv in the dense and unwholesome 

 mountain forests, while the lighter coniplexioned tribes have settled 

 the coasts. To this are added linguistic proofs, which place the lighter 

 races, of homogeneous speech, in linguistic relations with the higher 

 races, especially the Malays. Dogmaticalh' it has been said that 

 originally these islands had been occupied entirelv b}^ the primitive 

 black population, but afterwards, through intrusions from the sea, 

 these blacks were gradually pressed away from the coast and shoved 

 back into the interior. 



The problem, though it appears simple enough, has become com- 

 plicated more and more through the progress of discover}^ especially 

 since Cook enlarged our knowledge of the oriental island world. A 

 new and still more pregnant contrast then thrust itself to the front in 

 the fact that the blacks and the lighter-colored peoples are each sep- 

 arated into widely differing o-roups. While the former hold especially 

 the innnense, almost continental, rt^gions of Australia (New Holland) 

 and New Guinea, and also the larger archipelagos, such as New Heb- 

 rides, Solomon Islands. Fiji (Viti) Archipelago — that is, the western 

 areas — the north and east. Micronesia and Poh^nesia, were occupied b}'' 

 lighter-colored peoples. So the first division into Melanesia and Poly- 

 nesia has in latest times come to be of value, and the dogma once fixed 

 has remained. For the Polynesians are by many allied to the Malays, 

 while the blacks are put together as a special ethnological race. 



For practical ethnology this division may suffice. But the scientific 



^NoTE. — A striking analogy should not be overlooked; it is the custom of the 

 Negritos to file the front teeth to a point. This custom is widely spread in central 

 Africa, but it is not common in the South Sea. Jagor, Reise in den Philijipinen, 

 Berlin, 1880, p. 374, PL II, figs. 4-6. [Compare this note with A. B. Meyer's remarks 

 in Die Negritos. 1899, p. 69. Filing the incisors in serrate form is practiced, not by 

 all Negritos, hut only by Luzon tribes (Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., 1873, p. 92). Besides 

 the custom in Africa, it will be found with some tribes in New Guinea, some in the 

 Mantawi Islands (southwest of Sumatra), and in Java (see A. B. M., Mittheil. Anthrop. 

 Gesellsch. in Wien, 1874, IV, p. 2.39, and VII, p. 215, 1877; Ausland, 1883, p. 401; 

 and Max Uhle, in Abhandl. of the Dresden Museum, 1886-87, No. 4, 18 pp., on the 

 ethnological significance of filing the teeth). — Tkanslatok.] 



