Skeletal remains recovered from a cave in Taitung County could prove that “little black people” from indigenous mythology existed 6,000 years ago, a study previewed in World Archaeology said.
Indigenous oral traditions often refer to rare encounters with “small-statured and dark-skinned people” in remote mountain areas, possibly referring to a group who had descended from an even older population, a research team led by Australian National University archeology professor Hung Hsiao-chun (洪曉純) wrote in the study, “Negritos in Taiwan and the wider prehistory of Southeast Asia: new discovery from the Xiaoma Caves,” which the journal published on Oct. 4.
The stories might have been told by every indigenous culture except the Tao of Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), and 258 iterations of the myth have been documented since the Qing Dynasty, the study said.
Photo: Hirofumi Matsumura via Taylor & Francis Online
Records and legends describe the “non-Austronesian” group as having “dark skin, short and small body stature, frizzy hair and occupation in forested mountains or remote caves,” the study said, adding that Qing-era records indicate that they spoke their own languages and only married among themselves.
While archeologists believe the group was part of a population that still lives in Southeast Asia and Oceania today, no physical evidence had been found until now, the study said.
The accounts of the group are inconsistent, with some cultures describing them as friendly, others as hostile, while one says that its ancestors wiped out the group a millennium ago, it said.
A genetic analysis indicated that the group was similar to contemporary Negritos living in Africa, while skull measurements indicated a link to the physiology of present-day Negritos, it said.
A femur measurement from the skeleton of a woman indicated that she was 1.39m tall, the study said, adding that it is not known whether the group evolved to be small before or after their migration to Taiwan, it said.
While the finding supports the theory that a group or groups of Negritos once inhabited Taiwan proper, it does not explain what happened to them or why they disappeared after Austronesians arrived, the researchers wrote.
They might have been displaced or isolated because of the influx of stone tool-using agrarian colonists who became the ancestors of indigenous Taiwanese, they wrote.
“Within the context of a fast-growing farming population in Taiwan” 4,800 to 4,500 years ago, “the indigenous hunter-gatherers such as the Xiaoma group probably became out-numbered and out-competed for access” to coastal lands,” they wrote, adding that Negritos in the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula and the Andaman Islands have been documented in a process of becoming threatened or endangered populations.
“A similar situation likely had occurred in Taiwan’s past,” they wrote.
“Taiwan is an ideal location to investigate the issues of hominid adaptation in islands,” they added.
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