Search for LIMS content across all our Wiki Knowledge Bases.
Type a search term to find related articles by LIMS subject matter experts gathered from the most trusted and dynamic collaboration tools in the laboratory informatics industry.
The word Negrito, the Spanish diminutive of negro, is 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 Austronesia to label various peoples perceived as sharing relatively small physical stature and dark skin.[1] Contemporary usage of an alternative Spanish epithet, Negrillos, also tended to bundle these peoples with the pygmy peoples of Central Africa on the basis of perceived similarities in stature and complexion.[1] (Historically, the label Negrito has also been used to refer to African pygmies.)[2] The appropriateness of bundling peoples of different ethnicities by similarities in stature and complexion has been called into question.[1]
Population
There are over 100,000 Negritos in the Philippines. In 2010, there were 50,236 Aeta people in the Philippines.[3] The Ati people 55,473 (2020 census)[4] Officially, Malaysia had approximately 4,800 Negrito (Semangs).[5] This number increases if we include some of the populations or individual groups among Orang Asli who have either assimilated Negrito population or have admixed origins. According to the 2006 census, the number of Orang Asli was 141,230 [6]
Andamanese of India with just c. over 500. Thailand Negrito Maniq is estimated 300, divided into several clans.[7][8] Other puts it at 382[9] or less than 500.[10]
Culture
Most groups designated as "Negrito" lived as hunter-gatherers, while some also used agriculture, such as plant harvesting. Today most live assimilated to the majority population of their respective homeland. Discrimination and poverty are often problems, caused either by their lower social position and/or their hunter-gatherer lifestyles.[11]
Based on perceived physical similarities, Negritos were once considered a single population of closely related people. However, genetic studies suggest that they consist of several separate groups descended from the same ancient East Eurasian meta-population that gave rise to modern East Asian peoples and Oceanian peoples, as well as displaying genetic heterogeneity. The Negritos form the indigenous population of Southeast Asia, but were largely absorbed by Austroasiatic- and Austronesian-speaking groups who migrated from southern East Asia into Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia with the Neolithic expansion. The remainders form minority groups in geographically isolated regions.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
Genetic studies provided mixed evidence of modern Negrito populations, with admixtures in different. Studies indicate that Negrito populations are closer to their neighboring non-Negrito communities in their paternal heritage and overall DNA on average.[20][21]
It has been found that the physical and morphological phenotypes of Negritos, such as short stature, a wide and snub nose, curly hair and dark skin, "are shaped by novel mechanisms for adaptation to tropical rainforests" through convergent evolution and positive selection, rather than a remnant of a shared common ancestor, as suggested previously by some researchers.[22][23][24][25]
A Negrito-like population was most likely also present in Taiwan before the Neolithic expansion and must have persisted into historical times, as suggested by evidence from morphological features of human skeletal remains dating from around 6,000 years ago resembling Negritos (especially Aetas in northern Luzon), and further corroborated by Chinese reports from the Qing period rule of Taiwan (1684 to 1895) and from tales of Taiwanese indigenous peoples about people with "dark skin, short-and-small body stature, frizzy hair, and occupation in forested mountains or remote caves".[26]
^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)
^"JAKOA Program". Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli (JAKOA). Archived from the original on 23 September 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
^Thonghom; Weber, George. "36. The Negrito of Thailand; The Mani". Andaman.org. Archived from the original on 20 May 2013. Retrieved 23 December 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^Yew, Chee-Wei; Lu, Dongsheng; Deng, Lian; Wong, Lai-Ping; Ong, Rick Twee-Hee; Lu, Yan; Wang, Xiaoji; Yunus, Yushimah; Aghakhanian, Farhang; Mokhtar, Siti Shuhada; Hoque, Mohammad Zahirul; Voo, Christopher Lok-Yung; Abdul Rahman, Thuhairah; Bhak, Jong; Phipps, Maude E.; Xu, Shuhua; Teo, Yik-Ying; Kumar, Subbiah Vijay; Hoh, Boon-Peng (February 2018). "Genomic structure of the native inhabitants of Peninsular Malaysia and North Borneo suggests complex human population history in Southeast Asia". Human Genetics. 137 (2): 161–173. doi:10.1007/s00439-018-1869-0. PMID29383489. S2CID253969988. The analysis of time of divergence suggested that ancestors of Negrito were the earliest settlers in the Malay Peninsula, whom first separated from the Papuans ~ 50-33 thousand years ago (kya), followed by East Asian (~ 40-15 kya)...
^Endicott et al. 2003; Thangaraj et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2011), Y chromosome (Delfin et al. 2011; Scholes et al. 2011), and autosomal (HUGO Pan-Asia SNP Consortium 2009) studies indicate that Negrito populations are closer to their neighboring non-Negrito communities.
^Deng, Lian; Pan, Yuwen; Wang, Yinan; Chen, Hao; Yuan, Kai; Chen, Sihan; Lu, Dongsheng; Lu, Yan; Mokhtar, Siti Shuhada; Rahman, Thuhairah Abdul; Hoh, Boon-Peng; Xu, Shuhua (3 February 2022). "Genetic Connections and Convergent Evolution of Tropical Indigenous Peoples in Asia". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 39 (2): msab361. doi:10.1093/molbev/msab361. PMC8826522. PMID34940850. We hypothesize that phenotypic convergence of the dark pigmentation in TIAs could have resulted from parallel (e.g., DDB1/DAK) or genetic convergence driven by admixture (e.g., MTHFD1 and RAD18), new mutations (e.g., STK11), or notably purifying selection (e.g., MC1R).
^Endicott, Phillip; Gilbert, M. Thomas P.; Stringer, Chris; Lalueza-Fox, Carles; Willerslev, Eske; Hansen, Anders J.; Cooper, Alan (January 2003). "The Genetic Origins of the Andaman Islanders". The American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (1): 178–184. doi:10.1086/345487. PMC378623. PMID12478481. D-loop and protein-coding data reveal that phenotypic similarities with African pygmoid groups are convergent.
Garvan, John M., and Hermann Hochegger. The Negritos of the Philippines. Wiener Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, Bd. 14. Horn: F. Berger, 1964.
Hurst Gallery. Art of the Negritos. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Hurst Gallery, 1987.
bin Abdullah, Khadizan; Yaacob, Abdul Razak (1974). Pasir Lenggi, a Bateq Negrito resettlement area in Ulu Kelantan. OCLC2966355.
Mirante, Edith (2014). The Wind in the Bamboo: A Journey in Search of Asia's 'Negrito' Indigenous People. Orchid Press Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-974-524-189-3.
Schebesta, P., & Schütze, F. (1970). The Negritos of Asia. Human relations area files, 1–2. New Haven, Conn: Human Relations Area Files.