524 THE PEOPLING OF THE PHILIPPINES. 



lower edge is straightened and widened. Already the elder Thevenot 

 has accented this contrast when he says: 



""These cause the teeth to be equal, those file them to points, giving 

 them the shape of a saw." ^ 



This difference appears to have held on till the present; at least no 

 skull of an Indio is known to me with similar deformation of the teeth. 

 This custom of the Negritos is so much more remarkable since the 

 chipping of the corners of the teeth is widely spread among the African 

 blacks. 



The other part of the body used most for deformation — the skull — 

 is in strong contrast to the last-named custom. Deformed crania, 

 especially from older times, are quite numerous in the Philippines; 

 probably they belong exclusively to the Indios. If they exist among 

 the Negritos, I do not know it; the only exception comes from the 

 Tinguianes, of whom J. de los Reyes reports their skulls are flattened 

 behind (por detras oprimido). Such flattening is found, however, not 

 seldom among tribes who have the practice of binding children on 

 hard cradle boards — chiefly among those families who keep their 

 infants a long time on such contrivances. A sure mark by which to 

 discriminate accidental pressure of this sort from one intentionally 

 produced is not at hand; it m-dj be that in accidental deformation 

 oblique position of the deformed spot is more frequent; at any rate, 

 the difference in the Philippines is a very striking one, since there not 

 so much the occiput as the front and middle portions suffer from the 

 disfigurements, and thereby deformations are produced that have 

 had their most perfect expression among the ancient Peruvians and 

 other American tribes. 



I have discussed cranial deformation of the Americans in greater 

 detail, where I exhibit the accidental and the artificial (intentional) 

 deformation in their principal forms. ^ The result is that in large 

 sections of America scarcely any ancient skulls are found having their 

 natural forms, but that the practice of deformation has not been gen- 

 eral; moreover, a number of deformation centers may be differentiated 

 which stand in no direct association with one another. The Peruvian 

 center is far removed from that of the northwest coast, and this again 

 from that of the Gulf States. From this it must not be said that 

 each center ma}^ have had its own, as it were, autochthonous origin. 

 But the method has not so spread that its course can be followed 

 immediately. Rather is the supposition confirmed that the method is 

 to be traced to some other time, therefore that somewhere there must 

 have been a place of origin for it. On the Eastern Hemisphere, and 

 especially in the region here under consideration, the relations are 



^G. A. Baer (Verhandl. d. Berliner Anthrop. Gesellschaft, 1879, p. 331) s^ays that 

 such an operation obtains only among Negritos of pure blood, 

 ^ Crania ethnica Americana, Berlin, 1892, p. 5, and figs. 



