Academic Reinforcements: Theories on Racial Origins and Migration Theory

Theories on Racial Origins

The Americans were the most pervasive and visible of the three dominant external groups that attempted to change the Filipino way of life, leading to Filipinos being called 'brown Americans' by their Asian neighbors.
The Spanish influence was widespread but superficial, mainly affecting religion, with Catholic rites modified to suit native ways.
Islamic influence was deep but restricted to the Sulu archipelago, southern Palawan, and southern Mindanao.
The American influence was nationwide due to their emphasis on education and training, building schools and writing textbooks that promoted American ideals.
American scholars, along with European and Filipino colleagues, researched and advanced theories about Filipino racial and cultural origins, which were used as instructional materials.

Filipino Racial Affinity

J. Montano (1884-85) classified Filipinos into Negritos, Malays, and Indonesians based on anthropometric measurements and ocular inspections.
- Negritos: small, dark-skinned group (Negrito of Bataan, Ata of Luzon, and Mamanwa of Mindanao).
- Malays: brown-skinned group (inhabitants of Bicol, Bisayas, and southern Luzon), suspected to have Chinese, Indonesian, and Arabic blood.
- Indonesian group: similar to Malays in complexion (Samal, Bagobo, Guianga, Ata, Tagakaolo, Tagbanua, Manubo, Mandaya, and Bilaan).
Montano theorized that the Indonesians arrived in the Philippines in two waves of migration, with the Indonesians coming first, followed by the Malays.

The Negritos

Ferdinand Blumentritt, based on Rudolf Virchow and A. Meyer's studies, theorized that Negritos were the first inhabitants of the archipelago and the aboriginal population.
Physical traits and wide distribution in Southeast Asia supported this theory.
Spanish chroniclers noted the Negritos as aboriginal due to their small size, dark skin, and warlike nature.
Blumentritt suggested that succeeding groups drove the Negritos inland.
American and European workers (D. P. Barrows, D. C. Worcester, R. B. Bean, Paul Schabesta, and Morice Vanoverbergh) confirmed this assumption.
The inland push theory lacks solid evidence and is based on where authors encountered Negrito groups.
Archaeological sites have not yet demonstrated the antiquity of the Negrito as the original group to occupy the archipelago.
Recent genetic studies by Keichi Omoto are preliminary and hypothetical.
- The Aeta of Zambales and the Mamanwa of Surigao do not share the same gene frequency and phenotypic specialization (skin color).
- The study does not trace the path of migration of the Negritos into the archipelago.
Ethnographic reports show that Negritos are highly mobile and inhabit all kinds of sites.
Negritos are encountered in marginal areas of rain forest where many non-Negrito ethnic groups are also found.
- Additionally they can be found in coastal and interior hillside regions, and places where bigger populations, whom they depend on for livelihood, also reside.

The Lowland Groups

R. B. Bean classified population types based on ear shapes, head forms, and somatological features of Filipinos, mainly inmates at the Old Bilibid Prison.
Bean's works are challenged for using few, highly selected samples and traits of unknown inheritance.
Humans are polygenetic, making it difficult to determine how skin color is inherited and the contributions of genetics vs. ecological pressures.
Anthropometric measurements are unreliable indices for racial classification due to adaptive pressures of climate, nutrition, and disease, as well as intermarriage and relative isolation of groups.
Anthropometric measurements are useful for demonstrating patterns and variations of physical growth within a given population, but need to be supported by genetic studies.
Bean classified the population into six racial groups: Primitive, Australoid, Iberian, Alphine, B. B. B., and the Cro-Magnon.
- He considered the first three as the original groups represented by the Negritos, the Kalinga, and the people in Cainta and Parañaque.
- The last three types resulted from sporadic intrusions into the islands of other groups, mostly from Europe, Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
Bean postulated that the contemporary population descended from:
- An early population which migrated directly from Europe, intermarried with the indigenous people, and brought forth the inhabitants of northern Luzon and central Mindanao.
- Those who came from Europe by way of India and the Malay Peninsula (the Malays).
- Those who came from the Middle East and Africa (the Muslims in the southern part of the country).
Assertions like these, however highly speculative, when presented in technical language and backed up by a few statistical tables and graphs, appear to be verified facts.
Historical events and the contemporaneity of Middle East and European population movements into the archipelago are not examined in relation to their possible contribution to the gene pool of the population studies.
Middle East and European intrusions into the archipelago are also historically known to be recent; thus, to argue that they contributed to the physical characteristics of prehistoric peoples is wrong.

Racial Classification

L. B. Sullivan (1918) identified three major racial groups ancestral to modern Filipinos: Negritos, Indonesians, and Malays.
He used anthropometric measurements to argue these types constituted the original people, with racial admixtures varying due to migrations.
Scholars like J. Roginsky, Fay Cooper-Cole, L. A. Estel, and Marcelo Tangco continued to do anthropometric measurements to speculate on the origin of the present population, also plotting and dating routes of entry into the Philippines.
No archaeological or paleontological evidence was presented other than the measurements of contemporary people.

Beyer's Elaboration

Prof. H. O. Beyer summarized and elaborated on known studies, postulating seven original waves of migrants:
- The primitive human type, similar to the Java man ( $250,000$ years ago).
- The Australoid-Sakai type and proto-Malays (between $25,000$ and $30,000$ years ago).
- The seafaring, stone-tool-using Indonesian "A" (about $5,000$ to $6,000$ years ago).
- The bark-cloth-wearing Indonesian "B" from Indo-China (about $1,500$ BC).
- The terrace-building people from central Asia (between $800$ and $500$ BC).
- The civilized Malays via Borneo, Palawan, and Mindoro (between $300$ and $200$ BC).
- The modern Asians (within the Christian era).
The Australoid-Sakai and the proto-Malays were pygmoid in stature, roundheaded and hairy, intermediate between Australian aborigines and the Ainu of northern Japan.
No empirical data supports the reconstruction of physical features of prehistoric peoples.
The groups were said to have reached this area through land bridges, with about one half of contemporary Negrito groups descended from these early migrants.
No archaeological site contains skeletal remains of people with hairy bodies and round heads.
The earliest fossil bones in the country are those of the Tabon Caves inhabitants (dated between $24,000-22,000$ BC by C-14), but only fragments have been recovered.

Beyer's Later Migrations

The Australoid-Sakai group was followed by the straight-haired, semidwarf Mongoloid type called proto-Malays with about $9.5$ % of the 20th-century population descended directly from this group.
The Indonesian "A" type was slender, fair-complexioned, sharp, and thin-faced, with deep-set eyes (between $5,000$ and $6,000$ BC).
The Indonesian "B" type was shorter in height, larger in build, darker in complexion, with well-pronounced jaws, a broad rectangular face, large thick nose, large mouth, thick lips, and large firmly set eyes (about $1,500$ BC); with about $12$ % of the contemporary 20th-century population said to have descended from the Indonesian "A" group and $3$ % from the Indonesian "B" group.
The Malays were the civilized group, Mongoloid in characteristics, representing the ancient mixture of Indonesian and Mongoloid strains, and constitute the bigger bulk of contemporary population.

Questions on Beyer's Theory

On what solid evidence rests the racial classification of Filipinos with other ethnic groups in Southeast Asia?
Are Filipinos Malays racially? What is Malay? Is it a racial (i.e., biological) entity or an ethnolinguistic category?
If Filipinos were Malays, what scientific evidence would be presented to support the classification?
Why is there an Indonesian race? What is the rationale for classifying Indonesians into types "A" and "B" when applied to Philippine prehistoric groups?
What scientific studies did we have in the past, or even at present, to justify these classifications?
Because race is a biological concept, how do we justify the use of cultural labels (i.e., linguistics and ethnic categories) in the classification system?
Are these classifications valid in terms of contemporary scientific thinking about racial groupings to warrant their continuous use in our textbooks?
If there were Indonesian and Malayan races, why was there no Filipino race?

New Approaches to Racial Studies

Physical characteristics of prehistoric peoples are often presented as validated facts based on anthropometric measurements of living populations.
Modern physical anthropologists advise that biological classification must transcend anthropometric measurements and include studies in genetics to exercise some control over inheritance and variability in human evolution.
Traits that define a race must be inherited and non-adaptive.
Useful classification must be based on genotypes, yet present criteria are based on phenotype.

Genetic Studies & Morphological analysis

Concern over genetic studies has been emphasized because the morphological approach alone has given rise to more problems than it has resolved.
Without exact genetic analysis, it is hard to state how much one group differs from another.
Morphological analysis should be used with care and for comparative biological purposes, not to support historical events like migration.
Measurements of living populations should be used as preliminary indices for population profile, not for rigid racial classification.
The proper use of measurements is for investigating processes, not establishing rigid categories.
Conclusions are mostly based on measurements or ocular studies of phenotypic traits (skin color, build, and height), not on genetic elements.
Traits like nose shape or lip thickness are products of several genetic givens and can vary tremendously.
The use of living populations as the basis for assessing the physical traits of ancient people is tenuous.
Biological science has not yet provided a method to determine skin color, nose form, eye color, or hair form of people long dead.
Archaeological research has not yet yielded skeletal materials to reconstruct detailed physical characteristics of ancient men.
Genetic study has its own limitations in providing adequate data for tracing movements of people.
Blood-group genetical studies do not tell us the racial components of the Pacific peoples or their path of migration.

Racial Affinities Reconsidered

Only posterity can provide the answer to many of the questions we ask at present.
We need more data to give credence to what has been accepted as our racial heritage.
Archaeologists have just begun systematic archaeological studies of ancient humans in the Philippines.
The fragment of fossilized skullcap in the Tabon Caves and fossilized bones of ancient humans being unearthed in Indonesia offer hope for new insights.
Following assumptions about ancient Filipino population, accepted as facts in history books, can be challenged as untenable:
- The Negritos were the aboriginal group in the archipelago they were the first inhabitants.
- Filipinos are Malays racially and ethnically.
- The Philippines was peopled by waves of migrants coming from Asia mainland, and the culture of Filipinos today is largely a result of these immigrations.

Question of Aborigines

Evidence does not exist to show that the Negritos came ahead of all other ethnic groups now living in the archipelago.
No one knows where the Negritos came from, although several hypotheses have been advanced.
Groups of small, dark-skinned people are fairly well distributed in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Archaeology shows that there were people in this country as early as between 24,000 and 22,000 BC; Cagayan Valley shows ancient men about 500,000 years ago.
Fossilized skullcap and jaw fragments found in the Tabon Caves are human bones, but cannot tell if they belong to a Negrito.
The aborigine hypothesis should be dropped as untenable, as it can never be empirically validated.
The Negritos have just as much claim to contemporaneity in the archipelago as all other groups.
The term aborigine was used by the colonizers to support their prejudices and feelings of superiority.

Question of Malayan Origin

The ethnic classification of Filipinos as Malays and/or of Filipino culture as Malayan in origin needs to be carefully reexamined.
The history of ancient humans in the Philippines is linked with the general evolution and development of humans in Southeast Asia as they are in Africa.
Contemporary historical reconstruction of past events has failed to emphasize that there was widespread distribution of early humans in the area prior to the division of the present population into Indonesians, Malays, and Filipinos.

Fossil Evidence

The Philippines was once linked with other islands in the region through island outcroppings and isthmuses known as land bridges.
- On the western side, the archipelago was linked with the massive highland of the Sunda shelf, which geographically encompassed what is known as the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, part of Celebes, Borneo, part of the Sulu archipelago, and Palawan.
- On the eastern side, Mindanao was connected with the Sahul shelf of Australia through a series of isthmuses.
In 1891, Eugene Dubois recovered the skeletal remains of a prehistoric human now known as the Java man in a terrace of the Solo River.
The Djetis finds have been redated to be about 1.9 million years ago.
Sometime in the 1930s, R. von Koenigswald recovered bones and skulls of relatively advanced men at the banks of the Solo River.
The Solo specimen was dated approximately between 100,000 and 50,000 BC, while the Wadjak was placed approximately between 50,000 and 30,000 BC.
Excavations in Australia revealed that ancient humans were in the subcontinent as early as 20,000 BC, pushed back to at least 38,000 BC by recent excavations.
In Niah Cave, Borneo, archaeologists recovered skeletal remains of early humans dated 40,000 BC by C-14.
In the Philippines, in 1962, the research team of the National Museum discovered in Palawan a fossilized skull and jaw fragments of ancient humans dated at 24,000 to 22,000 BC by C-14 determination (Recent Calibrated Range Dates corrected the date at 30,500±11,000 BC).
The fossil bones cannot be identified specifically in terms of skin color and other physical traits, except in height and sex.

Alternative Choices

Two choices open to students of prehistory:
- View the peopling of the region as the result of the continuous process of human evolution, radiating to a number of directions as differentiation in ecological settings occurred, following changes in the climatic conditions in the area.
- Look at the islands of Southeast Asia-i.e., Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines as clean slates, demographically, until peopled by groups of humans who immigrated (or drifted) into the region.
Even if one takes the Niah and the Palawan Caves inhabitants as markers for modern population, which began to move around the region as early as 40,000 to 21,000 BC, the problem is still too complex to be resolved by the simple migration hypothesis.

Core Population

It might be argued, on the basis of fossil evidence, that premodern humans represent the core population in the area around which genetic accretions were superimposed, as later groups of people trickled into the region, thus giving rise to new populations, which we now recognize as contemporary Southeast Asians.
This core population could have well evolved in the region as evidenced by the presence of early human fossils in Java (Pithecanthropus erectus) and of modern ones in Niah Cave and the Tabon Caves (Homo sapiens sapien).
Prior to the arrival of the so-called Malays, people were already living in Java, Borneo, New Guinea, Australia, and the Philippines.
The term Malay is an ethnic term, based on the language of the group encountered by the Europeans when they came to colonize Southeast Asia.
Peoples in the region-Indonesians, Malays, Filipinos-are the results of both the long process of evolution and the later demographic events.
Culturally, it is erroneous to state that Filipino culture is Malay in orientation.
Striking similarities between cultures must be considered a result of ecological adaptation.

Myth of Malayan Origin

To say that Filipinos are racially Malays or that Filipino culture is derived from the Malays is to create a myth of origin that has no basis in fact.
Self-respect, cooperation, and understanding among the ethnic groups in Southeast Asia may not be achieved in the near future, unless this myth of an encompassing Malay world is corrected on the basis of existing empirical evidence.
The answer is: Southeast Asians are brown. Westerners are white, Africans are black, and East Asians are yellow.

Summary

The weaknesses of works on Filipino precolonial origins relate to methodological grounds.
Rejecting certain untenable conclusions and offering alternative interpretations is not all that can be done.
More vigorous interdisciplinary research programs in prehistory are needed in order to gather more data.

Migration Theory

Professor H. O. Beyer was the proponent of the theory that the Philippines was originally peopled through a series of waves of migration, each with its own racial and cultural characteristics.
The different waves of migrants were:
1. The primitive type of people similar to the Java Man.
2. The Negritos and other primitive Australoid-Sakai type.
3. The sea-travelling and stone-using Indonesian "A" who came via rafts and plank-built boats.
4. The seafaring group from Indo-China and South China coast to Luzon and Formosa via good-sized dugouts.
5. The more advanced group from Central Asia.
6. The civilized Malays from whom a majority of the contemporary population descended.
7. The people who came to our country during the Christian era.

Supportive Evidence

To support the assumption that there were such waves of migrants, archaeological materials were correlated with the material culture and physical traits of the living population, but fundamental elements of archaeological research have not apparently been considered.
Extra Philippine materials that early scholars used in their attempt to establish a wider range of comparison and to indicate the origin of Philippine prehistoric cultures are poorly documented.

Basic Data

Archaeological data indicate that many of the dominant Filipino institutions and traits are products of local adaptation and developments, not carried by the immigrants into the archipelago ready-made.
The geographical location of the Philippines in Southeast Asia has not spared it from the influence of other cultural and historical developments in the region.
The use of shells for making adzes and jewelry was once thought to be a Polynesian development.

Archaeological Excavations

New materials that have been excavated from different sites throughout the country range from the flake tools of Cagayan Valley and the Tabon Caves to the pottery of Calatagan, Bolinao, and Kulaman Plateau. Iron implements and gold ornaments have likewise been recovered.
The people could not have borrowed all their cultural equipment from the outside.
No prehistoric culture that seeped into the Philippines became dominant.
The early Filipinos did not accept trait-complexes entirely from the people they came in contact with, instead, they selected culture traits from the flow of traditions into the archipelago and modified these to suit local needs and ways of doing things.
As anthropologist Robert Fox had pointed out:

Throughout the thousands of years of contact, direct and Indirect with Asia and Southeast Asia, the Filipino people selected and elaborated trait-complexes which were part of the flow ("trickle" would perhaps be a better term) of traditions into the islands. Cultural and social patterns were not borrowed in toto; then, as now, specific external influences were borrowed and reshaped to conform with the existing institutions, values and beliefs, and in response to local needs.

Waves of Migration Reconsidered

The theory of waves of migration has doubtful usefulness to our understanding of Philippine prehistoric society and culture.
- It is too simplistic to be useful in explaining the complex problem of cultural development.
- It is quite unrealistic to assume that the physical characteristics of prehistoric migrating peoples can be correlated with specific cultural developments.
- It is doubtful whether the ancient peoples always arrived in periodic time sequences and with foreknowledge of their destination as implied by the term immigration.
- It is quite difficult to accept that small boatloads of immigrants (or those who were said to have taken overland routes via the land bridges), coming at certain periodic time sequences reducible only in terms of thousands of years, would be capable of maintaining large-scale community patterns in a new land under pioneer conditions.
- The theory does not allow for variant social and cultural developments to take place in response to local ecological development situations, instead, it impresses an orientation that all culture traits as well the physical types of our ancestors were brought into the archipelago ready-made.

Migration & Cultural development

As Andrew Vayda and Roy A. Rappaport, in an article wrote:

If the migration to an isolated place, whether a small island or a large continent, is by a relatively small group of people who are unable to reproduce in full the culture of the population from which they derived, then the new place will be Immediately different from the culture of the homeland. The degree of difference will depend at the outset on the extent to which the migrants are able or unable to reproduce the homeland culture.
Fred Eggan's study of some social institutions in the Mountain Province established that community patterns and other basic institutions have been developed locally and in response to local conditions, and are not a total carryover by the late Neolithic immigrants.
The Philippines has to be viewed as a population unit within which numerous peoples have become integrated through long periods of time, which is the result of what Robert Fox would prefer to call "trickles" of people, perhaps through accidental voyages.

Austronesians

In 1985, Peter Bellwood advanced the theory: the "immigrants" were not Australoid-Sakai or Malayo-Indonesians but Austronesian, moving from South China into Taiwan and reaching the Philippines via Batanes, between 5,000 and 4,000 BC, carrying and introducing their home cultures along the way, especially their language.
Whether migration or movement, it again attributes local cultural developments to the newcomers.
linguistic vocabularies, particularly those related to food crops (like rice) and production techniques (like stone tools) are also used to demonstrate the impact of Austronesian influences.
To conclusively say that the ideas of domesticating plants and animals, of manufacturing and polishing tools for forest clearing, and of boat-building were introduced by the Austronesians is to deny the ancient Filipinos the ability to adapt to local conditions.
It is doubtful if we can attribute to them all the local cultural developments in our country.

Maragtas Account

The Maragtas states that ten Bornean datus came and purchased the island of Panay from the Negritos and introduced their homeland cultures in our country.
Fr. Tomas Santaren recorded the first version in Spanish, in 1858, while Pedro A. Monteclaro wrote the second version in Hiligaynon, in 1901 and published in 1907.
In 1914, Luther Parker incorporated the Maragtas in his work entitled The Early Bisayans.
Later, H. 0. Beyer (1916, 1921, 1947a, 1947b), Joshue Songcuya (1917), and other writers used the account to show the link between the Philippines and the Sri-Visayan Empire, to explain why central Philippines was named Visayas, and to characterize the degree of civilization the ancient Filipinos had before the coming of the Spaniards.

Maragtas & Scholars

Prof. H. 0. Beyer wrote in 1947:

The document contains a wealth of data on pre-Spanish Panay and It is undoubtedly the most important single document in early Philippine history. Together with the Pavon manuscripts from Negros, It constitutes the real foundation for the history of the Visayan people in Borneo and the Philippines.
The authenticity of the Negros (Pavon and Povedano) manuscripts has been debunked.
In Volume I of his widely distributed textbook entitled Philippine Political and Cultural History (1957), Gregorio Zaide used the Maragtas as an argument for the so-called wave of Malayan immigrants.
Many contemporary students of Filipino prehistory and culture apparently share the views advanced by Beyer and Zaide.
Professors Teodoro Agoncillo and Milagros Guerrero, for example, in their History of the Filipino People (1980 ed.), expressed the opinion that the Maragtas is "possibly a legend or at least semihistorical."
Juan Orendain, in his book entitled Ten Datus of Madiaas (1963), came out with a categorical view that the Maragtas is an authentic historical document and that the chronicled events in it are true.

Discrepancies in the Maragtas

Shift from written accounts to oral narratives in evaluating the Maragtas is disturbing.
Santaren and Monteclaro failed to describe the primary source of the document.
H. O. Beyer argued that the original text was written in old syllabary, although the document was preserved in Romanized Bisayan in early Spanish days, he also expressed two conflicting views on this matter.
Gregorio Zaide (1949) claimed that the term Maragtas is a Sanskrit derivation meaning "Great People."
Both Santaren and Monteclaro never described the characteristic features of the language of the original text from which they were copying, although contemporary historians have contended they did.
Where did these writers obtain their sources, and how did they arrive at these dates?
The reference to the followers of Mohamet as intriguers, who are envious, lying, and without any reason or right shows ecclesiastical bias.
Tom Harrison, former curator of the Sarawak Museum, disagreed with these views and suggested that the events in the Maragtas must have occurred in the second half of the 19th rather than the 16th century.
Tom Harrison and Najeeb Saleeby’s estimates are close to the date given by for the stabilization of Muslim influences in southern Philippines although the weakness lies mainly in its use of the legend to justify a supposedly historical document.

Maragtas as a Document

Fr. Santaren referred to those small, black-skinned inhabitants of Panay as Ates or Negritos.
Monteclaro frequently used phrases such as amo sadto anay ,sa mahibal-an naton karon, ugaling sa karon, and masunsun naton mabatian karon confuses the reader as to whether he was referring to conditions described in the old manuscripts or to the Ati culture as he knew it during his time.
In describing the Negrito language, Monteclaro references that the Negritos traded only among and had conversation with themselves; which is impossible.
The use of the term kuarta in the text indicates knowledge of the Spanish-derived concept of money as a medium of exchange.
Sumakwel and Bangcaya were described to have gone around the island of Panay to distribute numerous plants to their followers, but many of the plants were from Middle America and introduced during the Spanish period indicating events in these documents seem to have occurred, if they are historically valid, in the 16th, the 17th, and the 19th centuries

Summary

We have reviewed the assumptions of the migration theory, examined the data used to support it, and challenged the validity of the conclusions reached.
It is time to drop the idea of the Maragtas as a historical document and to accept it as a piece of folklore.