fied when we see in the Negritos a truly primitive
people. As they are now, they were more than three hundred and
fifty years ago when the first European navigators visited these
islands. About older relationships nothing is known. All the graves
from which the bones of Negritos now in possession were taken belong
to recent times, and also the oldest descriptions which have been
received, so far as phylogeny is concerned, must be characterized
as modern.

[Negritos a primitive people.] The little change in the mode of life
made known through these descriptions in connection with the low grade
of culture on which these impoverished tribes live amply testify that
we have before us here a primitive race.

* * * * *

(The question whether we have to do with older, independent races
in the Malay Archipelago or with mixtures is everywhere an open
one.--Translator.)

Whoever would picture the present ethnic affiliations of the
light-colored peoples of the Philippines will soon land in confusion
on account of the great number of tribes. One of the ablest observers,
Ferd. Blumentritt, mentions, besides the Negritos, the Chinese and
the whites, not less than 51 such tribes. He classifies them in one
group as Malays, according to the plan now customary. The division
rests primarily on a linguistic foundation. But when it is noted that
the identity of language among all the tribes is not established and
among many not at all proved, it is sufficiently shown that speech is
a character of little constancy, and that a language may be imposed
upon a people to the annihilation of their own by those who belong
to a different linguistic stock. The Malay Sea is filled with islands
on which tarry the remnants of peoples not Malay.

For a long time, especially since the Dutch occupation, these old
populations have received the special name of Alfuros. But this
ambiguous term has been used in such an arbitrary and promiscuous
fashion that latterly it has been well-nigh banished from ethnological
literature. It is not long ago that the Negritos were so called. But
if the black peoples are eliminated, there remains on many islands at
least an element to be differentiated from the Malay, chiefly through
the darker skin color, greater orthocephaly, and more wavy, quite
crimped hair. I have, for the different islands, furnished proof,
and will here only refer to the assertion that "a broad belt of
wavy and curly hair has pressed itself in