

214 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
can be assigned definitely or at least preponderatingly 
to this or that race. It is pure Negrito, prevailingly 
Indonesian, or clearly Malaysian, as the case may be. 
Only a few small groups are sufficiently intermediate 
to be classifiable with doubt. But there is no Philip- 
pine nationality of which we can say that its civilization 
is wholly of one stratum. Without exception each tribe 
has, in its culture, elements belonging to different layers. 
A people of Mindanao will use the bow, which is perhaps 
due to Indonesian civilization; the blowgun, which may 
beof Malaysian source; steel swords, whose manufacture 
was introduced from India; and firearms which the 
Mohammedan brought in. A pagan group in Luzon will 
beat out barkcloth in the manner of its Indonesian 
ancestors or Negrito predecessors and also weave cotton 
that came from India; live in a state of society that is 
native pre-Malaysian, divine the future by methods that 
originated in Babylonia and were familiar in Rome, and 
possess pottery and brass imported from China. The 
Mangyan, a distinctly “ wild’”’ people, use the bow which 
goes back to a pre-iron culture stage, and an alphabet de- 
rived from India; the ‘‘ civilized’’ Tagalog read and write 
Roman letters, wear Europeanized clothes, but continue 
to live largely in the Malaysian status of society. 
In short, then, six to eight separate waves of civiliza- 
tion can be positively established as having reached the 
Philippines and left their influence upon the life of the 
islands. But not one of these successive cultures has 
been preserved complete. They have been superimposed ; 
-but they have interpenetrated one another; until today 
there is probably not a single nationality but shares 
in some measure in the effects of every one of the cul- 
tures. Civilization reached the Philippines in layers; _ 
but the stratification has long since become intricately. 
displaced, nonconformable, and complexly interwoven. 
—EeEeearr 
% 
