The finding of a 6,000-year-old Negrito woman’s skull confirms the long-standing legends of almost all of Taiwan’s indigenous “little black” tribes.

Several distinct Negrito ethnic groups occupy remote regions of South and Southeast Asia. Their contemporary populations include the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ Andamanese, Peninsular Malaysia’s Semang and Batek, southern Thailand’s Maniq, and the Philippines’ Aeta, Ati, and thirty other ethnic groups.

Although the Negrito peoples share striking physical similarities with the Central African pygmies, they are genetically more closely connected to the Austronesian populations that surround them.

Although various populations have settled in Taiwan since the Pleistocene, it is known as the homeland of the Austronesian-speaking peoples. According to popular belief, Paleolithic hunter-gatherers were displaced or assimilated by Neolithic Austronesian farming tribes.

   However, some evidence has indicated that scant numbers of non-Austronesian people continued to live in the remote mountains into the 19th century.

For the first time, a cranial morphometric analysis of human skeletal remains found in the Xiaoma caves in eastern Taiwan supports the existence of small-statured hunter-gatherers 6,000 years ago during the preceramic epoch.

This female exhibited noteworthy skull similarities and low height characteristics with the indigenous tribes of Southeast Asia, particularly the Negritos in northern Luzon.

The study, according to the authors, led by Hsiao-chun Hung, an archaeologist at ANU (Australian National University), provides information on the broader prehistory of Southeast Asia and solves the several hundred-year-old mysteries of the “little black” legends in the Austronesian tribes of Formosa.

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