By Dr. Rudolf Virchow

(Translated by O. T. Mason; in Smithsonian Institution 1899 Report.)

Since the days when the first European navigators entered the South Sea, the dispute over the source and ethnic affiliations of the inhabitants of that extended and scattered island world has been unsettled. The most superficial glance points out a contrariety in external appearances, which leaves little doubt that here peoples of entirely different blood live near and among one another.

“Negritos and Indios.”And this is so apparent that the pathfinder in this region, Magellan, gave expression to the contrariety in his names for tribes and islands. Since dark complexion was observed on individuals in certain tribes and in defined areas, and light complexion on others, here abundantly, there quite exceptional, writers applied Old World names to the new phenomena without further thought. The Philippines set the decisive example in this. Fernando Magellan first discovered the islands of this great archipelago in 1521, March 16. After his death the Spaniards completed the circle of his discoveries. At this time the name of Negros was fixed, which even now is called Islas de los Pintados. For years the Spaniards called the entire archipelago Islas de Poniente; gradually, after the expedition of Don Fray Garcia Jofre de Loaisa (1526), the new title of the Philippines prevailed, through Salazar.

The people were divided into two groups, the Little Negros or Negritos and the Indios. It is quite conceivable that involuntarily the opinion prevailed that the Negritos had close relationship with the African blacks, and the Indios with the lighter-complexioned inhabitants of India, or at least of Indonesia.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 scarcely 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 many islands the blacks dwell in the interior, difficult of access, especially in the dense and unwholesome mountain forests, while the lighter complexioned 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. Dogmatically it has been said that originally these islands had been occupied entirely by 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.

Complicated Pacific problem.The problem, though it appears simple enough, has become complicated more and more through the progress of discovery, 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 separated into widely differing groups. While the former hold especially the immense, almost continental, regions of Australia (New Holland) and New Guinea, and also the larger archipelagos, such as New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, Fiji (Viti) Archipelago—that is, the western areas—the north and east, Micronesia and Polynesia, were occupied by lighter-colored peoples. So the first division into Melanesia and Polynesia 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 man will seek also for the blacks a genetic explanation. The answer has been furnished by one of the greatest ethnologists, Theodor Waitz, who, after he had exposed the insufficiency of the accepted formulas, came to the conclusion that the differentiation of the blacks from the lighter peoples might be an error. He denied that there had been a primitive black race in Micronesia and Polynesia; in his opinion we have here to do with a single race. The color of the Polynesians may be out and out from natural causes different, “their entire physical appearance indicates the greatest variability.” Herein the whole question of the domain of variation is sprung with imperfect satisfaction on the part of those travelers who give their attention more to transitions than to types. Among these are not a few who have returned from the South Sea with the conviction that all criteria for the diagnosis of men and of races are valueless.

Analytical anthropology has led to other and often unexpected results. It has proved that just that portion of South Sea population which can apparently lay the strongest claim to be considered a homogeneous race must be separated into a collection of subvarieties. Nothing appears more likely than that the Negritos of the Philippines are the nearest relatives to the Melanesians, the Australians, the Papuans; and yet it has been proved that all these are separated one from another by well-marked characters. Whether these characters place the peoples under the head of varieties, or whether, indeed, the black tribes of the South Sea, spite of all differences, are to be traced back to one single primitive stock, that is a question of prehistory for whose answer the material is lacking. Were it possible to furnish the proof that the black populations of the South Sea were already settled in their present homes when land bridges existed between their territory and Africa, or when the much-sought Lemuria still existed, it would not be worth the trouble to hunt for the missing material. In our present knowledge we can not fill the gaps, so we must yet hold the blacks of the Orient to be separate races.

Hair as a race index.The hair furnished the strongest character for diagnosis, in which, not alone that of the head is under consideration; the hair, therefore, occupies the foreground of interest. Its color is of the least importance, since all peoples of the South Sea have black hair. It is more the structure and appearance which furnish the observer convenient starting points for the primary classification. Generally a two-fold division satisfies. The blacks, it is said, have crisped hair, the Polynesians and light-colored peoples have smooth hair. But this declaration is erroneous in its generality. It is in no way easy to declare absolutely what hair is to be called crisp, and it is still more difficult to define in what respects the so-called crisp varieties differ one from another. For a long time the Australian hair was denominated crisp, until it was evident that it could be classed neither with that of the Africans nor with that of the Philippine blacks. Semper, one of the first travelers to furnish a somewhat complete description of the physical characters of the Negritos, describes it as an “extremely thick, brown-black, lack-luster, and crisp-woolly crown of hair.” Among these peculiarities the lack-luster is unimportant, since it is due to want of care and uncleanliness. On the contrary, the other data furnish true characters of the hair and among them the crisp-woolly peculiarity is most valuable.

On the terms “wool” and “woolly” severe controversies, which have not yet closed, have taken place among ethnologists during the last ten years. Also the lack of care, especially the absence of the comb, has here acted as a disturbing cause in the decision. But there is yet a set of peoples, which were formerly included, that are now being gradually disassociated, especially the Australians and the Veddahs, whose hair, by means of special care, appears quite wavy if not entirely sleek and smooth. Generally it is frowzy and matted, so that its natural form is difficult to recognize. To it is wanting the chief peculiarity, which obtrudes itself in the African blacks so characteristically that the compact spiral form which it assumes from its root, the so-called “pepper-corn,” is selected as the preferable mark of the race. The peculiar nappy head has it origin in the spiral “rollchen.” As to the Asiatic blacks this has been for a long time known among the Andamanese; it has lately been noticed upon the Sakai of Malacca, and it is to be found also among the Negritos of the Philippines, as I can show by specimens. Therefore, if we seek ethnic relationships for the Negritos of the Philippines, or as they are named, the Aetas (Etas, Itas), such connections obtrude themselves with the stocks named, and the more strongly since they all have brachycephalic, relatively small (nannocephalic) heads and through their small size attach themselves to the peculiar dwarf tribes.

I might here comment on the singular fact that the Andaman Islands are situated near the Nicobars in the Indian Ocean, but that the populations on both sides of them are entirely different. In my own detailed descriptions which treat of the skulls and the hair specially, it is affirmed that the typical skull shape of the Nicobarese is dolichocephalic and that “their hair stands between the straight hair of the Mongoloid and the sleek, though slightly curved or wavy, hair of the Malayan and Indian peoples;” their skin color is relatively dark, but only so much so as is peculiar to the tribes of India. With the little blacks of the Andamans there is not the slightest agreement. In this we have one of the best evidences against the theory of Waitz-Gerland that the differences in physical appearance are to be attributed to variation merely. I will, however, so as not to be misunderstood, expressly emphasize that I am not willing to declare that the two peoples have been at all times so constituted; I am now speaking of actual conditions.

In the same sense I wish also my remarks concerning the Negritos to be taken. Not one fact is in evidence from which we may conclude that a single neighboring people known to us has been Negritized. We are therefore justified 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 between the Papuan and the Malay, a belt which in the north seems to terminate with the Veddah, in the south with the Australian.” One can not read the accounts of travelers without the increasing conviction of the existence of several different, if not perhaps related, varieties of peoples thrust on the same island.

Theory of Negrito and three Malay invasions.From this results the natural and entirely unprejudiced conclusion, which has repeatedly been stated, that either a primitive people by later intrusions has been pressed back into the interior or that in course of time several immigrations have followed one another. At the same time it is not unreasonable to think that both processes went on at the same time, and indeed this conception is strongly brought forward. So Blumentritt assumes that there is there a primitive black people and that three separate Malay invasions have taken place. The oldest, whose branches have many traits in accord with the Dayaks of Borneo, especially the practice of head-hunting; a second, which also took place before the arrival of the Spaniards, to which the Tagals, Bisayas, Bicols, Ilocanos, and other tribes belong; the third, Islamitic, which emigrated from Borneo and might have been interrupted by the arrival of the Spaniards, and with which a contemporaneous immigration from the Moluccas went on. It must be said, however, that Blumentritt admits two periods for the first invasion. In the earliest he places the immigration of the Igorots, Apayos, Zambales—in short, all the tribes that dwelt in the interior of the country later and were pressed away from the coast, therefore, actually, the mountain tribes. To the second half he assigns the Tinguianes, Catalanganes, and Irayas, who are not head-hunters, but Semper says they appear to have a mixture of Chinese and Japanese blood.

Against this scheme many things may be said in detail, especially that, according to the apparently well-grounded assertions of Mueller-Beeck, the going of the Chinese to the Philippines was developed about the end of the fourteenth century, and chiefly after the Spaniards had gotten a foothold and were using the Mexican silver in trade. At any rate, the apprehension of Semper, which rests on somewhat superficial physiognomic ground, is not confirmed by searching investigations. So the head-hunting of the mountain tribes, so far as it hints at relations with Borneo, gives no sure chronological result, since it might have been contemporaneous in them and could have come here through invasion from other islands.

The chief inquiry is this: Whether there took place other and older invasions. For this we are not only to draw upon the present tribes, but if possible upon the remains of earlier and perhaps now extinct tribes. This possibility has been brought nearer for the Philippines through certain cave deposits. We have to thank, for the first information, the traveler Jagor, whose exceptional talent as collector has placed us in the possession of rich material, especially crania. To his excellent report of his journey I have already dedicated a special chapter, in which I have presented and partially illustrated not only the cave crania, but also a series of other skulls. An extended conference upon them has been held in the Anthropological Society.

The old Spanish chroniclers describe accurately the mortuary customs which were in vogue in their time. The dead were laid in coffins made from excavated tree trunks and covered with a well-fitting lid. They were then deposited on some elevated place, or mountain, or river bank, or seashore. Caves in the mountains were also utilized for this purpose. Jagor describes such caves on the island of Samar, west of Luzon, whose contents have recently been annihilated.

The few crania from there which have been intrusted to me bear the marks of recent pedigree, as also do the additional objects. Unfortunately, Dr. Jagor did not himself visit these interesting caves, but he has brought crania thence which are of the highest interest, and which I must now mention.

Study of a giant skull.The cave in question lies near Lanang, on the east coast of Samar, on the bank of a river, it is said. It is, as the traveler reports, celebrated in the locality “on account of its depressed gigantic crania, without sutures.” The singular statement is made clear by means of a well-preserved example, which I lay before you. The entire cranium, including the face, is covered with a thick layer of sinter, which gives it the appearance of belonging to the class of skulls with Leontiasis ossea. It is, in fact, of good size, but through the incrustation it is increased to gigantic proportions. It is true, likewise, that it has a much flattened, broad and compressed form. The cleaning of another skull has shown that artificial deformation has taken place, which obviously was completed before the incrustation was laid on by the mineral water of the cave. I will here add that on the testimony of travelers no Negritos were on Samar. The island lies in the neighborhood of the Bisayas. Although no description of the position of the skull is at hand and of the skeleton to which it apparently belonged, it must be assumed that the dead man was not laid away in a coffin, but placed on the ground; that, in fact, he belonged to an earlier “period.” How long ago that was can not be known, unfortunately, since no data are at hand; however, the bones are in a nearly fossilized condition, which allows the conclusion that they were deposited long ago.The deformation itself furnishes no clue to a chronological conclusion. In ThÉvenot is found the statement that, according to the account of a priest, probably in the 16th century, the custom prevails in some of the islands to press the heads of new-born babes between two boards, also to flatten the forehead, “since they believed that this form was a special mark of beauty.” A similar deformation, with more pronounced flattening and backward pressure of the forehead, is shown on the crania which Jagor produced from a cave at Caramuan in Luzon. There are modes of flattening which remind one of Peru. When they came into our hands it was indeed an immense surprise, since no knowledge of such deformation in the South Sea was at hand. First our information led to more thorough investigations; so we are aware of several examples of it from Indonesia and, indeed, from the South Sea (Mallicolo). However, this deformation furnishes no clue to the antiquity of the graves.

(Chinese and Korean pottery are said to have been found with the deformed crania. Similar deformations exist in the Celebes, New Britain, etc. Head-shaping has been universal, cf. A. B. Meyer, Ueber Kunstliche deformirte Schaedel von Borneo und Mindanao und ueber die Verbreitung der Sitte der Kunstlichen Schaedeldeformirung, 1881, 36 pp., 4.°—Translator.)

I have sawed one of these skulls in two along the sagittal suture. The illustration gives a good idea of the amount of compression and of the violence which this skull endured when quite young. The cranial cavity is inclined backward and lengthened, and curves out above, while the occiput is pressed downward and the region of the front fontanelle is correspondingly lacking. Likewise, a considerable thickness of the bone is to be noted, especially of the vertex. The upper jaw is slightly prognathous and the roof of the mouth unusually arched.

For the purpose of the present study, it is unnecessary to go further into particulars. It might be mentioned that all Lanang skulls are characterized by their size and the firmness of bone, so that they depart widely from the characteristics of the other Philippine examples known to me. Similar skulls have been received only from caves, which exist in one of the little rocky islands east from Luzon. They suggest most Kanaka crania from Hawaii, and Moriori crania from Chatham islands, and they raise the question whether they do not belong to a migration period long before the time of the Malays. I have, on various occasions, mentioned this probable pre-Malayan, or at least proto-Malayan, population which stands in nearest relation to the settling of Polynesia. Here I will merely mention that the Polynesian sagas bring the progenitor from the west, and that the passage between Halmahera (Gilolo) and the Philippines is pointed out as the course of invasion.

At any rate, it is quite probable that the skulls from Lanang, Cragaray, and other Philippine Islands are the remains of a very old, if not autochthonous, prehistoric layer of population. The present mountain tribes have furnished no close analogies. As to the Igorots, which Blumentritt attributes to the first invasion, I refer to my description given on the ground of chronological investigations; according to the account given by Hans Meyer the disposal of the dead in log coffins and in caves still goes on. Of the skulls themselves, none were brachycephalous; on the contrary, they exhibit platyrrhine and in part decidedly pithecoid noses. On the whole, I came to the conclusion, as did earlier Quatrefages and Hamy, that Indications of pre-Malay invasion.“they stand next in comparison with the Dayaks of Borneo,” but I hold yet the impression that they belong to a very old, probably pre-Malay, immigration.

When, on the 18th of March, 1897, I made a communication on the population of the Philippines, a bloody uprising had broken out everywhere against the existing Spanish rule. In this uprising a certain portion of the population, and indeed that which had the most valid claim to aboriginality, the so-called Negritos, were not involved. Their isolation, their lack of every sort of political, often indeed of village organization, also their meager numbers, render it conceivable that the greatest changes might go on among their neighbors without their taking such a practical view of them as to lead to their engaging in them. Thus it can be understood how they would take no interest in the further development of the affair.

Since then the result of the war between Spain and the Americans has been the destruction of Spanish power, and the treaty of Paris brought the entire Philippine Archipelago into the possession of the United States of America. Henceforth the principal interest is centered upon the deportment of the insurgents, who have not only outlived the great war between the powers, but are now determined to assert, or win, their independence from the conquerors. These insurgents, who for brevity are called Filipinos, belong, as I have remarked, to the light-colored race of so-called Indios, who are sharply differentiated from the Negritos. Their ethnological position is difficult to fix, since numerous mixtures have taken place with immigrant whites, especially with Spaniards, but also with people of yellow and of brown races—that is, with Mongols and Chinese. Perhaps here and there the importance of this mixture on the composite type of the Indios has been overestimated; at least in most places positive proof is not forthcoming that foreign blood has imposed itself upon the bright-colored population. Both history and tradition teach, on the contrary, as also the study of the physical peculiarities of the people that among the various tribes differences exist which suggest family traits. To this effect is the testimony of several travelers who have followed one another during a long period of time, as has been developed especially by Blumentritt.

All immigrations from the West.In this connection it must not be overlooked that all these immigrations, howsoever many they be supposed to have been, must have come this way from the west. Indeed, a noteworthy migration from the east is entirely barred out, if we look no farther back than the Chinese and Japanese. On the contrary, all signs point to the assumption that from of old, long before the coming of Portuguese and Spaniards, a strong movement had gone on from this region to the east, and that the great sea way which exists between Mindanao and the Sulu islands on the north and Halmahera and the Moluccas in the south was the entrance road along which those tribes, or at least those navigators whose arrival peopled the Polynesian Islands, found their way into the Pacific Ocean. But also the movement of the Polynesians points to the west, and if their ancestors may have come from Indonesia there is no doubt that in their long journeys eastward they must have touched at the coasts of other islands on their way, especially the Philippines. Polynesian invasions of the Philippines are not supposed to have closed when a migration of peoples or of men passing out to the Pacific Ocean laid the foundation of a large fraction of the population of the archipelago. It is known that now and then single canoes from the Pelew or the Ladrone Islands were driven upon the east coast of Luzon, but their importance ought not to be overestimated. The migration this way from the west must henceforth remain as the point of departure for all explanations of this eastern ethnology. (These statements are well enough for working hypotheses, but actual proofs are not at hand. Ratzel, Berl. Verhandl., etc., Phil. Hist. Class, 1898, I., p. 33.—Translator.)

Now, how are the local differences of various tribes to be explained, when on the whole the place of origin was the same? Is there here a secondary variation of the type, something brought about through climate, food, circumstances? It is a large theme, which, unfortunately, is too often dominated by previously-formed theories. The importance of “environment” and mode of life upon the corporeal development of man can not be contested, but the measure of this importance is very much in doubt. Nowhere is this measure, at least in the present consideration, less known than in the Philippines. In spite of wide geological and biological differences on these islands, there exists a close anthropological agreement of the Indios in the chief characteristics, and the effort to trace back the tribal differences that have been marked to climatic and alimentary causes has not succeeded. The influence of inherited peculiarities is also more mighty here, as in most parts of the earth, than that of “milieu.”

If we assume, first, that the immigrants brought their peculiarities with them, which were fixed already when they came, we must also accept as self-evident that the Negritos of the Philippines do not belong to the same stock as the more powerful, bright-colored Indios. As long as these islands have been known, more than three centuries, the skin of the Negritos has been dark brown, almost black, their hair short and spirally twisted, and just as long has the skin of the Indios been brownish, in various shades, relatively clear, and the hair has been long and arranged in wavy locks. At no time, so far as known, has it been discovered that among a single family a pronounced variation from these peculiarities had taken place. On this point there is entire unanimity. In case of the Negritos there is not the least doubt; of the Indios a doubt may arise, for, in fact, the shades of skin color appear greatly varied, since the brown is at times quite blackish, at times yellowish, almost as varied as is the color of the sunburnt hair. But even then the practiced eye easily detects the descent, and if the skin alone is not sufficient the first glance at the hair completes the diagnosis. The correct explanation of individual or tribal variations is difficult only with the Indios, while no such necessity exists in the case of the Negritos. But among the Indios these individual and tribal variations are so frequent and so outspoken that one is justified in making the inquiry whether there has not developed here a new type of inherited peculiarities. If this were the case, it must still be held that already the immigrant tribes had possessed them.

Assistance from history.Now, history records that different immigrations have actually taken place. Laying aside the latest before the arrival of the Spaniards, that of the Islamites, in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, there remains the older one. If ethnologists and travelers in general come to the conclusion concerning Borneo—and it is to be taken as certain—that the differences now existing among the wild tribes of this island are very old, it ought not be thought so wonderful if, according to the conditions of the tribes which have immigrated thence, there should exist on the Philippines near one another dissimilar though related peoples. This difference is not difficult to recognize in manners and customs—a side of the discussion which is further on to be treated more fully. We begin with physical characteristics.

Hair differences.Among these the hair occupies the chief place. To be sure, among all the Indios it is black, but it shows not the slightest approach to the frizzled condition which is such a prominent feature in the external appearance of the Negritos and of all the Papuan tribes of the East. This frizzled condition may be called woolly, or in somewhat exaggerated refinement in the name may be attributed to the term “wool,” all sorts of meanings akin to wool; in every case there is wanting to all the Indios the crinkling of the hair from its exit out of the follicle, whereby would result wide or narrow spiral tubes and the coarse appearance of the so-called “peppercorn.” The hair of all Indios is smooth and straightened out, and when it forms curves they are only feeble, and they make the whole outward appearance wavy or, at most, curled.

But within this wavy or curled condition of the hair there are again differences. In my former communication I have attended to examinations which I made upon a large number of islands in the Malay Sea, and in which it was shown that a certain area exists which begins with the Moluccas and extends to the Sunda group, in which the hair shows a strong inclination to form wavy locks, indeed passes gradually into crinkled, if not into spiral, rolls. Such hair is found specially in the interior of the islands, where the so-called aboriginal population is purer and where for a long time the name of Alfuros has been conferred on them. On most points affinity with Negritos or Papuans is not to be recognized. Should such at any time have existed, we are a long way from the period when the direct causes therefor are to be looked for. In this connection the study of the Philippines is rich with instruction. In the limits of the almost insular, isolated Negrito enclave, mixtures between Negritos and Indios very seldom surprise one, and never the transitions that can have arisen in the post-generative time of development. (The island of Negros, on the contrary, is peopled by such crossbreeds.—Translator.)

If there are among the bright-colored islanders of the Indian Ocean Alfuros and Malays close together there is nothing against coming upon this contrast in the Philippine population also. Among the more central peoples the tribal differences are so great that almost every explorer stumbles on the question of mixture. There not only the Dayaks and the other Malays obtrude themselves, but also the Chinese and the Mongolian peoples of Farther India. Indeed, many facts are known, chiefly in the language, the religion, the domestic arts, the agriculture, the pastoral life which remind one of known conditions peculiarly Indian. The results of the ethnologists are so tangled here that one has to be cautious when one or another of them draws conclusions concerning immigrations, because of certain local or territorial specializations. Of course, when a Brahmanic custom occurs anywhere it is right to conclude that it came here from India. But before assuming that the tribe in which such a custom prevails itself comes from Hither or Farther India, the time has to be ascertained to which the custom is to be traced back. The chronological evidence leads to the confident belief that the custom and the tribe immigrated together.

Ancestor worship.Over the whole Philippine Archipelago religious customs have changed with the progress of external relations. Christianity has in many places spread its peculiar customs, observances, and opinions, and changed entirely the direction of thought. On closer view are to be detected in the midst of Christian activities older survivals, as ingredients of belief which, in spite of that religion, have not vanished. Before Christianity, in many places, Islam flourished, and it is not surprising to witness, as on Mindanao, Christian and Mohammedan beliefs side by side. But, before Islam, ancestor worship, as has long been known, was widely prevalent. In almost every locality, every hut has its Anito with its special place, its own dwelling; there are Anito pictures and images, certain trees and, indeed, certain animals in which some Anito resides. The ancestor worship is as old as history, for the discoverers of the Philippines found it in full bloom, and rightly has Blumentritt characterized Anito worship as the ground form of Philippine religion. He has also furnished numerous examples of Anito cult surviving in Christian communities.

Chronology has a good groundwork and it will have to observe every footprint of vanishing creeds. Only, it must not be overlooked that the beginning of the chronology of religion has not been reached, and that the origin of the generally diffused ancestor worship, at least on the Philippines, is not known. If it is borne in mind that belief in Anitos is widely diffused in Polynesia and in purely Malay areas, the drawing of certain conclusions therefrom concerning the prehistory of the Philippines is to be despaired of.

Tattooing.Next to religious customs, among wild tribes fashions are most enduring. Little of costume is to be seen, indeed, among them. Therefore, here tattooing asserts its sway. The more it has been studied in late years the more valuable has been the information in deciding the kinship relations of tribes. Unfortunately, in the Philippines the greater part of the early tattoo designs have been lost and the art itself is also nearly eliminated. But since the journey of Carl Semper it has been known that not only Malays but also Negritos tattoo; indeed, this admirable explorer has decided that the “Negroes of the East Coast” practice a different method of tattooing from that of the Mariveles in the west, and on that account they attain different results. In the one case a needle is employed to make fine holes in the skin in which to introduce the color; in the other long gashes are made. In the latter case prominent scars result; in the former a smooth pattern. But these combined patterns are on the whole the same, instead of rectilinear figures. Schadenburg has the operations commence with a sharpened bamboo on children 10 years of age. Among the wild tribes of the light-colored population tattooing is not less diffused, but the patterns are not alike in the different tribes. Isabelo de los Reyes reports that the Tinguianes, who inhabit the mountain forests of the northern cordilleras of Luzon, produce figures of stars, snakes, birds, etc., on children 7 to 9 years old. Hans Meyer describes the pattern of the Igorots. There appears to exist a great variety of symbols; for example, on the arms, straight and crooked lines crossing one another; on the breast, feather-like patterns. Least frequently he saw the so-called Burik designs, which extended in parallel bands across the breast, the back, and calves, and give to the body the appearance of a sailor’s striped jacket. It is very remarkable that the human form never occurs.

What is true concerning tattooing on so many Polynesian islands holds also completely here. But reliable descriptions are so few, and especially there is such a meager number of useful drawings, that it would not repay the trouble to assemble the scattered data. At least it will suffice to discover whether among them there are genuine tribal marks or to investigate concerning the distribution of separate patterns. Those known show conclusively that in the matter of tattooing the Filipinos are not differentiated from the islanders of the Pacific; they form, moreover, an important link in the chain of knowledge which demonstrates the genetic homogeneity of the inhabitants. The tattooings of the eastern islanders are comparable only to those of African aborigines, with which last they furnish many family marks, made out and recognized. It is desirable that a trustworthy collection of all patterns be collected before the method becomes more altered or destroyed.

Teeth alterations.Next to the skin, among the wild tribes the teeth are modified in the most numerous artificial alterations. The preferable custom, common in Africa, of breaking out the front teeth in greater or less number has not, so far as I remember, been described among the Filipinos; I only mention that while I was making a revision of our Philippine crania, two of them turned up in which the middle upper incisors had evidently been broken out for a long time, for the alveolar border had shrunk into a small quite smooth ridge, without a trace of an aveolus. It is otherwise with the pointing of the incisors, especially the upper ones, which, also is not common. I must leave it undecided whether the sharpening is done by filing or by breaking off pieces from the sides. The latter should be in general far more frequent. In every case the otherwise broad and flat teeth are brought to such sharp points as to project like those of the carnivorous animals. I have met with this condition several times on Negrito skulls and furnished illustrations of them. On a Zambal skull, excavated by Dr. A. B. Meyer and which I lay before you, the deformation is easy to be seen. I called attention at the time to the fact that among the Malays an entirely different method of modifying the teeth is in vogue, in which a horizontal filing on the front surface is practiced and the sharp lower edge is straightened and widened. Already the elder ThÉvenot 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.

Skill flattening.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 I. de los Reyes reports their skulls are flattened behind (por detrÁs 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 may 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 general; 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 may 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 apparently otherwise. Here exist, so far as known, great areas entirely free from deformation; small ones, on the other hand, full of it. There are here, also, deformation centers, but only a few. Among these, with our present knowledge, the Philippines occupy the first place.

The knowledge of this, indeed, is not of long duration. Public attention was first aroused about thirty years ago concerning skulls from Samar and Luzon, gathered by F. Jagor from ancient caves, to furnish the proof of their deformation. Up to that time next to nothing was known of deformed crania in the oriental island world. First through my publication the attention of J. G. Riedel, a most observant Dutch resident, was called to the fact that cranial deformation is still practiced in the Celebes, and he was so good as to send us a specimen of the compressing apparatus for delicate infants (1874). Compressed crania were also found. But the number was small and the compression of the separate specimens was only slight. In both respects what was observed in the Sunda islands did not differ from the state of the case in the Philippines. Through Jagor’s collections different places had become known where deformed crania were buried. Since then the number of localities has multiplied. I shall mention only two, on account of their peculiar locality. One is Cagraray, a small island east of Luzon, in the Pacific Ocean, at the entrance of the Bay of Albay; the other, the island of Marinduque, in the west, between Luzon and Mindoro. From the last-named island I saw, ten years ago, the first picture of one in a photograph album accidentally placed in my hands. Since then I had opportunity to examine the Schadenberg collection of crania, lately come into the possession of the Reichsmuseum, in Leyden, and to my great delight discovered in it a series of skulls which are compressed in exactly the same fashion as those of Lanang. It is said that these will soon be described in a publication.

It is of especial interest that this method has been noted in the Philippines for more than three hundred years. In my first publication I cited a passage in ThÉvenot where he says, on the testimony of a priest, that the natives on some islands had the custom of compressing the head of a newborn child between two boards, so that it would be no longer round, but lengthened out; also they flattened the forehead, which they looked upon as a special mark of beauty. This is, therefore, an ancient example. It is confirmed by the circumstance that these crania are found especially in caves, from the roofs of which mineral waters have dripped, which have overlaid the bones partly with a thick layer of calcareous matter. The bones themselves have an uncommonly thick, almost ivory, fossil-like appearance. Only the outer surface is in places corroded, and on these places saturated with a greenish infiltration. It is to be assumed, therefore, that they are very old. I have the impression that they must have been placed here before the discovery of the islands and the introduction of Christianity. Their peculiar appearance, especially their angular form and the thickness of the bone, reminds one of crania from other parts of the South Sea, especially those from Chatham and Sandwich Islands. I shall not here go further into this question, but merely mention that I came to the conclusion that these people must be looked upon as proto-Malayan.

Hope of Filipino and American study.The changes which will take place in the political condition of the Philippines may be of little service to scientific explorations at first; but the study of the population will be surely taken up with renewed energy. Already in America scholars have begun to occupy themselves therewith. A brief article by Dr. Brinton is to be mentioned as the first sign of this. But should the ardent desire of the Filipinos be realized, that their islands should have political autonomy, it is to be hoped that, out of the patriotic enthusiasm of the population and the scientific spirit of many of their best men, new sources of information will be opened for the history and the development of oriental peoples. To this end it may be here mentioned, by the way, that the connecting links of ancient Philippine history and the customs of these islands, as well with the Melanesians as with the Polynesians of the south, are yet to be discovered.

As representatives of these two groups, I present, in closing, two especially well-formed crania from the Philippines. One of them, which shows the marks of antiquity that I have set forth, belongs to an “Indio.” Comparison of Indio and Negrito skulls.It has the high cranial capacity of 1,540 cubic centimeters, a horizontal circumference of 525 millimeters, and a sagitta-circumference of 386 millimeters; its form is hypsidolicho, quite on the border of mesocephaly: Index of width, 75.3; index of height, 76.3. Besides, it has the appearance of a race capable of development; only, the nose is platyrrhine (index, 52.3), as among so many Malay tribes, and in the left temple it bears a Processus frontalis squamae temporalis developed partly from an enlarged fontanelle. The other skull was one taken from a Negrito grave of Zambales by Dr. A. B. Meyer. It makes, at first glance, just as favorable an impression, but its capacity is only 1,182 cubic centimeters; therefore 358 cubic centimeters less than the other. Its form is orthobrachycephalic; breadth index, 80.2; height index, 70.6. As in single traits of development, so in the measurements, the difference and the debased character of this race obtrude themselves. Only, the nasal index is somewhat smaller; on the whole, the nose has in its separate parts a decidedly pithecoid form.