Negrito

This article is about the ethnic group. For the shrub, see Citharexylum berlandieri. For the municipality, see El Negrito.
Negrito
Regions with significant populations

India India
(Andaman and Nicobar Islands)

Malaysia Malaysia
(Peninsular Malaysia)

 Philippines
(Luzon, Palawan, Panay, Negros, and Mindanao)

Thailand Thailand
(Southern Thailand)

Religion
Animism, traditional
Negrito group photo (Malaysia, 1905).
Negritos in a fishing boat (Philippines, 1899).
A young Onge mother with her baby (Andaman Islands, 1905).

The Negrito (/nɪˈɡriːtoʊ/) are several ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia.[1] Their current populations include Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands, Semang peoples of Malaysia, the Mani of Thailand, and the Aeta, Agta, Ati, and 30 other peoples of the Philippines.

The Negrito peoples show strong physical similarities with some African populations, but are genetically closer to south-east Asian populations. They may be descended from ancient Australoid-Melanesian settlers of Southeast Asia, or represent an early split from the southern coast migrants from Africa.

The appropriateness of using the label 'Negrito' to bundle together peoples of different ethnicity based on similarities in stature and complexion has been challenged.[2]

Etymology

The word "Negrito" is the Spanish diminutive of negro, used to mean "little black person". This usage was coined by 16th-century Spanish missionaries operating in the Philippines, and was borrowed by other European travellers and colonialists across southeast Asia to label various peoples perceived as sharing relatively small physical stature and dark skin.[2] Contemporary usage of an alternative Spanish epithet, Negrillos, also tended to bundle these peoples with the pygmy peoples of Central Africa, based on perceived similarities in stature and complexion.[2] (Historically, the label Negrito has occasionally been used also to refer to African Pygmies.)[3]

Many on-line dictionaries give the plural in English as either 'negritos' or 'negritoes', without preference. The plural in Spanish is 'negritos'.[4][5]

The appropriateness of using the label 'Negrito' to bundle together peoples of different ethnicity based on similarities in stature and complexion has been challenged.[2]

Origins

Great Andamanese couple (1876).

African origins

Haplogroup C-M130, Haplogroup O-2 seen in dark-skinned Negritos like the Semang of Malaysia and Philippine Negritos, and haplogroup D-M174 are believed to represent Y-DNA in the migration.[6]

A number of features would seem to suggest a common origin for the Negritos and Negrillos (African Pygmies). No other living human population has experienced such long-lasting isolation from contact with other groups.[7]

Genetic testing places all the Onge and all but two of the Great Andamanese in the mtDNA Haplogroup M found in East Africa, East Asia, and South Asia, suggesting that the Negritos are at least partly descended from a migration originating in eastern Africa 60,000 years ago. This migration is hypothesized to have followed a coastal route through India and into Southeast Asia, and is sometimes called the Great Coastal Migration.

Features of the Negrito include short stature, dark skin, woolly hair, scant body hair, and occasional steatopygia. The claim that Andamanese pygmoids more closely resemble Africans than Asians in their cranial morphology in a study of 1973 added some weight to this theory, before genetic studies pointed to a closer relationship with Asians.[7]

Oceanic origins

A study of blood groups and proteins in the 1950s suggested that the Andamanese were more closely related to Oceanic peoples than Africans. Genetic studies on Philippine Negritos, based on polymorphic blood enzymes and antigens, showed they were similar to surrounding Asian populations.[7]

Analysis of mtDNA coding sites indicated that these Andamanese fall into a subgroup of M not previously identified in human populations in Africa and Asia. These findings suggest an early split from the population of migrants from Africa whose descendants would eventually populate the entire habitable world.[7]

Negrito peoples may descend from Australoid Melanesian settlers of Southeast Asia. Despite being isolated, the different peoples do share genetic similarities with their neighboring populations.[8][9] They also show relevant phenotypic (anatomic) variations which require explanation.[9]

Multiple studies also show that Negritos from Southeast Asia to New Guinea share a closer cranial affinity with Australo-Melanesians.[10][11]

In contrast, a recent genetic study found that unlike other early groups in Malesia, Andamanese Negritos lack the Denisovan hominin admixture in their DNA. Denisovan ancestry is found among indigenous Melanesian and Australian populations between 4–6%.[12][13]

The craniometric similarities to Asians could merely indicate a level of interbreeding between Negritos and later waves of people arriving from the Asian mainland. This hypothesis is not supported by genetic evidence that has shown the level of isolation which populations such as the Andamanese have experienced.

Some studies have suggested that each group should be considered separately, as the genetic evidence refutes the notion of a specific shared ancestry between the "Negrito" groups of the Andaman Islands, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines.[14]

Historical distribution

Andamese Negrito people

According to both Wells and Mason, the Australoid Negritos, similar to the Andamanese adivasis of today, were the first identifiable human population to colonize India, likely 30-65 thousand years before present (kybp).[15][16] This first colonization of the Indian mainland and the Andaman Islands by humans is theorized to be part of a great coastal migration of humans from Africa along the coastal regions of the Indian mainland and towards Southeast Asia, Japan and Oceania.[15]

The Negrito peoples may be descended from ancient Australoid-Melanesian settlers of Southeast Asia, or represent an early split-off from the earliest Africans who dispersed out of Africa through the southern coastal road. The appropriateness of using the label 'Negrito' to bundle together peoples of different ethnicity based on similarities in stature and complexion has been challenged.[17]

The Andamanese are believed to be descended from the migrations which, about 60,000 years ago, brought the first modern humans out of Africa to the Andaman Islands. Andamanese women carry M32 mtDNA, which is unique and universal among Andamanese islander, other variants of the mtDNA haplogroup M is found 60% of all modern South Asians and might be a genetic legacy of the postulated first settlers.[18] A 2010 study by the Anthropological Survey of India and the Texas-based Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research identified seven genomes from 26 isolated "relic tribes" (sic) from the Indian mainland, such as the Baiga, which share "two synonymous polymorphisms with the M42 haplogroup, which is specific to Australian Aborigines." These were specific mtDNA mutations that are shared exclusively by Australian aborigines and these Indian tribes, and no other known human groupings.[19]

Other populations

Negritos may have also lived in Taiwan.[20] The Negrito population shrank to the point that, up to 100 years ago, only one small group lived near the Saisiyat tribe.[20] Evidence of their former habitation is a Saisiyat festival celebrating the black people in a festival called Pas-ta'ai.[20]

Chinese people are said to have a Negrito element in their ancestry.[21]

Vietnamese people have many racial and ethnic sources, including Austro-Asian, Thai, Chinese and Negrito.[22] Semang Negritos are believed to be descended from Hoabinhian people.[23] Ancient Mongoloid, Negrito, Indonesian, Melanesian, and Australoid remains have been found in Vietnam.[24]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Negrito.

Notes

  1. ↑ Snow, Philip. The Star Raft: China's Encounter With Africa. Cornell Univ. Press, 1989 (ISBN 0801495830)
  2. 1 2 3 4 Manickham, Sandra Khor (2009). "Africans in Asia: The Discourse of 'Negritos' in Early Nineteenth-century Southeast Asia". In Hägerdal, Hans. Responding to the West: Essays on Colonial Domination and Asian Agency. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 69–79. ISBN 978-90-8964-093-2.
  3. ↑ See, for example: Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, 1910–1911: "Second are the large Negrito family, represented in Africa by the dwarf-races of the equatorial forests, the Akkas, Batwas, Wochuas and others..." (p. 851)
  4. ↑ "Merriam Webster".
  5. ↑ "The Free Dictionary".
  6. ↑ 走向遠東的兩個現代人種
  7. 1 2 3 4 Thangaraj, Kumarasamy; et al. (21 January 2003), "Genetic Affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a Vanishing Human Population" (PDF), Current Biology, 13, Number 2: 86–93(8), doi:10.1016/S0960-9822(02)01336-2, PMID 12546781 Check date values in: |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
  8. ↑ "Genetic affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a vanishing human population.". Current Biology 13: 86–93. January 2003. doi:10.1016/S0960-9822(02)01336-2. PMID 12546781.
  9. 1 2 Stock, JT (2013). "The skeletal phenotype of "negritos" from the Andaman Islands and Philippines relative to global variation among hunter-gatherers". Human Biology 85 (1-3): 67–94. doi:10.3378/027.085.0304. PMID 24297221.
  10. ↑ Getting Here: The Story of Human Evolution, William Howells, Compass Press, 1993
  11. ↑ David Bulbeck; Pathmanathan Raghavan and Daniel Rayner (2006), "Races of Homo sapiens: if not in the southwest Pacific, then nowhere" (PDF), World Archaeology (Taylor & Francis) 38 (1): 109–132, doi:10.1080/00438240600564987, ISSN 0043-8243, JSTOR 40023598 Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors= (help)
  12. ↑ Reich; et al. (2011). "Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania". The American Journal of Human Genetics 89: 516–28. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.09.005. PMC 3188841. PMID 21944045.
  13. ↑ "About 3% to 5% of the DNA of people from Melanesia (islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean), Australia and New Guinea as well as aboriginal people from the Philippines comes from the Denisovans." Oldest human DNA found in Spain – Elizabeth Landau's interview of Svante Paabo, accessdate=2013-12-09
  14. ↑ Catherine Hill; Pedro Soares, Maru Mormina, Vincent Macaulay, William Meehan, James Blackburn, Douglas Clarke, Joseph Maripa Raja, Patimah Ismail, David Bulbeck, Stephen Oppenheimer, Martin Richards (2006), "Phylogeography and Ethnogenesis of Aboriginal Southeast Asians" (PDF), Molecular Biology and Evolution (Oxford University Press) 23: 2480–91, doi:10.1093/molbev/msl124, PMID 16982817 Cite uses deprecated parameter |coauthors= (help)
  15. 1 2 Spencer Wells (2002), The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-11532-X, ... the population of south-east Asia prior to 6000 years ago was composed largely of groups of hunter-gatherers very similar to modern Negritos ... So, both the Y-chromosome and the mtDNA paint a clear picture of a coastal leap from Africa to south-east Asia, and onward to Australia ... DNA has given us a glimpse of the voyage, which almost certainly followed a coastal route va India ...
  16. ↑ Jim Mason (2005), An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature, Lantern Books, ISBN 1-59056-081-7, ... Australia's "aboriginal" peoples are another case in point. At the end of the Ice Age, their homeland stretched from the middle of India eastward into southeast Asia and as far south as Indonesia and nearby islands. As agriculture spread from its centers in southeast Asia, these pre-Australoid forager people moved farther southward to New Guinea and Australia. ...
  17. ↑ Manickham 2009.
  18. ↑ Rajkumar, Revathi; et al. (2005). "Phylogeny and antiquity of M macrohaplogroup inferred from complete mt DNA sequence of Indian specific lineages". BMC Evolutionary Biology 5: 26. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-5-26. PMC 1079809. PMID 15804362.
  19. ↑ Satish Kumar, Rajasekhara Reddy Ravuri, Padmaja Koneru, BP Urade, BN Sarkar, A Chandrasekar, VR Rao (22 July 2009), "Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link", BMC Evolutionary Biology (BioMed Central) 9: 173, doi:10.1186/1471-2148-9-173, ... In our completely sequenced 966-mitochondrial genomes from 26 relic tribes of India, we have identified seven genomes, which share two synonymous polymorphisms with the M42 haplogroup, which is specific to Australian Aborigines ... direct genetic evidence of an early colonization of Australia through south Asia ...
  20. 1 2 3 Jules Quartly (27 Nov 2004). "In honor of the Little Black People". Taipei Times. p. 16. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
  21. ↑ Rogers, Joel Augustus (1967). The Old World. J. A. Rodgers Publications. p. 67.
  22. ↑ Chan 2006, p. 3.
  23. ↑ Bellwoord 1999, p. 286.
  24. ↑ Vietnam. Bộ ngoại giao 1969, p. 28.

Further reading

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1879 American Cyclopædia article Negritos.
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