14 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
inconceivable that they could have evolved side by side 
in the same region. The localization of the Negritos, 
and their inferiority in arts as well as numbers, is such 
that the first Spanish settlers were driven to the conclu- 
sion that they must represent the aboriginal inhabitants 
of the Philippines who had been in possession before the 
first members of the brown race reached the shores of 
the archipelago. No other view regarding them appears 
tenable even today, or seems ever to have been pro 
pounded. | 
Now, the Negrito of the dim pre-Malaysian days must 
have had some rudiments of culture of his own, simple 
and savage though it undoubtedly was; and a knowl- 
edge of this would certainly be of the greatest interest. 
Unfortunately however he has always been so weak and 
backward, as compared with the overwhelming pre- 
ponderanee of the Malaysian, that ever since we know 
anything of him he has been in a position of cultural 
dependence and parasitism toward the brownman. He 
has entirely lost the distinctive language which he 
must once have had; and while his culture is extremely 
meager, practically everything in it is only a simplified 
imitation of what the Filipino proper possesses. It is 
only his racial type, his blood and physical appearance, 
that the Negrito has maintained; and this is usually 
mixed along the borders of the regions which he occupies, 
just as strains of Negrito blood are often recognizable 
among the Filipino tribes who are neighbors to him. 
The Negrito is so utterly different from everything else 
human in the islands that it will be necessary to consider 
him more in detail in a separate section. But unfortu- 
nately all that can be said about him from the point of 
view of the history of civilization is, that while he must 
have had a form of culture antecedent to all others that 
we know in the Philippines, this culture has been so 

