Negrito
Negritos ( Spanish diminutive of negro "black", see " Negro ") is a collective name for several dark-skinned, curly-haired and small ethnic groups in South and Southeast Asia. The ethnologically vague designation Negrito - which gave the Philippine island Negros its name - is now widely perceived as derogatory and is rejected.
Usually the following ethnic groups are called Negritos:
- the indigenous population of the Andaman , the Andaman or Andamanide, to which the Onge , Jarawa , Sentinelese and Great Andaman belong,
- about 25 peoples in the Philippines, including the Aeta and Ati ,
- the Semang and Senoi on the Malay Peninsula and
- the Mani in southern Thailand.
languages
The Negritos on the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines now speak Austronesian languages , which differ significantly from those of the neighboring populations. The ethnic groups on the Andaman Islands speak Andaman languages , which are related to each other but not to any other language.
Origin, history and relationship
Some ethnologists consider the Negrito ethnic groups to be remnants of the native population of the region. They originally inhabited large parts of Southeast Asia and are also related to the ancestors of those who penetrated via Indonesia to New Guinea and Australia about 40,000 years ago and became today's Papua and Aborigines . The immigration of agricultural Tai-Kadai , Austro-Asian , Austronesian and Hmong-Mien peoples from what is now southern China has pushed them back to the small areas that they inhabit today.
The Saisiyat ethnic group in Taiwan celebrates a festival every two years in honor of the “little black people” who are said to have lived there. This is an indication that Negritos may have lived in Taiwan as well.
In the past, Negrito peoples were sometimes victims of slave hunters. Pirates captured Andaman residents as slaves. At Burmese, Indian, Malay, Indonesian and Thai courts there were "little black slaves", at least some of whom were Andaman Negritos. The Semang and other indigenous groups ( Orang Asli ) on the Malay Peninsula were also targeted by Malay and Batak slave hunters in the 18th and 19th centuries .
Due to their outward resemblance to the inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa , they were formerly partly counted as part of the Negroid great race ; however, this is now obsolete, since the construct of the human races is not scientifically tenable. Because of their small body size, some in particular have postulated a connection to African pygmies , but this seems unlikely in view of the geographical distance.
literature
- Paul Schebesta : The Negrito of Asia. (Studia Instituti Anthropos, Volumes 6, 12 and 13) St. Gabriel, Vienna-Mödling 1954 and 1957
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas N. Headland, Lawrence A. Reid: Holocene Foragers and Interethnic Trade: A Critic of the Myth of Isolated Independent Hunter-Gatherers. (PDF; 3.4 MB) In: Susan A. Gregg (Ed.): Between Bands and States. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper 9. Southern Illinois University. Carbondale 1991, p. 336
- ↑ Jared Diamond : Rich and poor. The fate of human societies , chap. 15/16, ISBN 978-3-596-17214-6
- ↑ Caroline Gluck: Taiwan aborigines keep rituals alive , in: BBC News, December 7, 2006
- ↑ Jules Quartly: In honor of the Little Black People , in: Taipei Times, November 27, 2004
- ↑ Andaman.org: The Terrible Islands ( Memento October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Colin Nicholas, Center for Orang Asli Concerns The Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia # Slavery
- ^ American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race," May 17, 1998