PART V. The Peopling of the Philippines

The Peopling of the Philippines

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.

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.

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.

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.

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(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.

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.

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 and 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.