The three living Negrito groups today (solid red dots) and a much larger area with many still living or only recently extinct possible Negrito relatives.
25. Prehistory and Theories
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
1. Lots of questions and few answers 2. The home ground of the Negritos and related people 3. The Toalean stone tool industry 4. The Hoabinhian stone tool industry |
1. Lots of questions and few clear answers
Every archaeologist working on prehistorical sites knows: the more you dig the more you find (if you are lucky) and the less you know. Prehistoric finds by themselves usually mean little, an outline of sense only begins to appear when large numbers of finds are available that can be compared, analysed and correlated. There are no large numbers of finds and there is hardly any archaeological activity in the Andamans now. Nor are there vast numbers of researchers actively excavating sites and in Southeast Asia as a whole. Despite the frustratingly frequent use of "could", "is likely" and "perhaps", the picture we paint below is based on some facts and it does make overall sense. This may not be very satisfactory - but it is all that can be offered at the present state of knowledge.
Looking through the technical literature, we have noticed that professional archaeologists reporting on their sites and finds draw comparisons between their finds and those of other sites. There is, of course, absolutely nothing wrong with this, it is part of their work. What strikes us as odd is that even if the evidence discussed has been found in the wider neighbourhood of the the Andaman islands, the Andamanese Negritos are hardly ever mentioned. They seem to be a sort of blind spot among professional prehistorians.
In such a situation, maps laying out what limited evidence there is are surely the best available medication to wilful blindness, overheated speculation, wishful thinking and all the other psychological malfunctions that we are suffer from at time or another. Hence the preponderance of maps in this chapter.
Connecting a specific population (whether extinct or still living) to a specific prehistoric tool technology is something that archaeologists very seldom do, or can do. Indeed, A prehistoric tool industry could have been invented by one people, only to be used by several different peoples later. Professional archaeologists normally talk of "tool industries" without identifying the people who made the tools; in Europe, for example, it took decades of work on countless finds by large numbers of archaeologists before the association of the Mousterian stone tool industry with Neanderthal man was widely accepted.
In the Andamans, the situation is by archaeological standards highly unusual. Only in Tasmania is there something similar. No other prehistoric peoples are known to have inhabited islands in such isolation for so long - and until as recently as the 19th century. In those two cases it is, for once, reasonable to assume that all archaeological finds that have not obviously come from the outside world and predate the 19th century have been made by the Andamanese Negrito (or the Tasmanians in their case). The stone tools found in Andamanese kitchen midden and described in the previous chapter are closely related to a specific stone tool industry, the Toalean (see below). This industry has been found all over the Indonesian archipelago and beyond. However, the conclusion that if the Andamanese tools are Toalean, all Toalean tools must have been made by Negrito is not possible. Other people can have made those tools, copied from Negrito or the Negrito copied from them. The fact that the Andamanese used a Toalian stone technology does indicate that the Negrito ancestors were much more widespread in the past and not nearly as isolated then as they were during the last 2,000 years.
Australia seems to have received its first human immigrants around 50,000 years ago. On their way to Australia, the migrants must have passed through the Indonesian archipelago. Indeed, Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua-New Guinea today number among their citizens genuine Negritos as well as many small groups possibly related to the Negrito(see map below). Most of the suspected relatives are small and secretive groups, barely known and researched. Many are also on the verge of extinction. Do they mark the trail of peoples that moved (quite likely in several waves) through the archipelago and into Australia, there to become the Tasmanian and Australian aborigines? Quite likely, but we don't know for sure yet.
The Andamanese Negrito are a population that has undoubtedly been isolated from the outside world for a long time. The genetic evidence does not allow doubts here. The most immediately convincing reason for such isolation is a long period of residence in the Andaman islands. The handful of Indian archaeological excavations in the islands have so far found an oldest archaeological date for an Andamanese presence of only 2,280 years from the present (with an uncertainty +/-90 years). In prehistory, this is almost yesterday and not old at all. Where were the Andamanese before? Are they recent arrivals in the previously uninhabited islands? Or have the few archaeological trenches been dug in the wrong places? Have the older sites on the ancient coastline been drowned by the rising sea and the higher ones been hidden by the jungle? We can only guess.
In the present patchy state of our knowledge, we are dealing in probabilities. Most probably, the Andamanese formed part of a large Southeast Asian area inhabited at one time by Negritos of which the Aeta (in the Philippines) and the Mani (in Thailand), the Semang (in Malaysia) and the Aeta (in the Philippines) are also surviving remnants. But were the Andamanese already living on the islands when most of Southeast Asia was Negrito territory or did they only move into the Andaman refuge later? Your guess is as good as ours. Was that more or less unified Negrito population broken up and largely destroyed by the Great Migrations of modern groups speaking languages of the Austronesian (Malayan etc), Austroasiatic (Khmer, Nicobari, etc) and Sino-Tibetan (Thai, Burmese, etc) families from the north between 8,000 and 5,000 years ago? Probably it was.
An enigma within a riddle (if I may be allowed to to mangle Sir Winston Churchill out of context just this once) is the possible relationship between Negritos and Veddoids. The Vedda are the aboriginal people of Sri Lanka and there are many Vedda-like (Veddoid) people in India as well as probably in Southeast Asia. Just how or whether the Negrito groups are related to the Veddoid groups and whether the Vedddoid really are related with each other is - you may have guessed as much by now - quite unknown.
Investigating DNA among these many groups will not only answer a lot of these questions (and no doubt throw up new questions), it will also put dates to the various forking points. Getting answers here is not just of interest to the unworldly few who are interested in the Negrito and Veddoid groups for their own sake, but answers would also throw light on a murky era when Homo sapiens became HUMAN. And those are definitively not questions that interest only specialists.
We reprint an article by L. Cipriani on "The Origins of the Andamanese" on this web-site. Though written in 1955, it is still worth reading for those interested in the subject.
2. The home ground of the Negritos and related people
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The three living Negrito groups today (solid red dots) and a much larger area with many still living or only recently extinct possible Negrito relatives. |
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Groups that may be distantly related to the Negrito outside the Negrito's "home area". All groups shown here are highly problematical as regards their relationships. |
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Groups that may be more or less distantly related to the Negrito inside the Negrito's "home area" in Southeast Asia. Many are quite likely to be genuine Negritos. |
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INDIAN SUBCONTINENT and ISLANDS CONTINENTAL SOUTHEAST ASIA INDONESIA |
PAPUA AND NEW GUINEA THE PHILIPPINES AUSTRALIA The Kalang are an enigmatic ethnic minority people (possibly extinct) in Java who are said to have retained their ancestral religious beliefs despite centuries of Islamic domination.. |
3. The Toalean stone tool industry: a Negrito industry?
Assemblages of relatively small (microlithic) stone tools found in South Sulawesi are of the same Toalean type as the stone tools found in Andamanese kitchen midden (see Chapter 24 "Archaeology").
The Toalean is defined by B. Bulbeck, Pasqua M., and Di Lello A. for Sulawesi (Celebes) as a "mid-Holocene stone flake and blade industry of a number of caves in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, c 6000 BC and later. The industry developed out of preceding flake industries and is characterized by small backed flakes and microliths, and well-made Maros points. The Toalian industry may have continued into the 1st millennium AD and overlapped with pottery from the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest traces of human habitation on Celebes are stone implements of the Toalian culture.
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Archaeological sites with Toalean stone tools. The Toalean stone tool industry flourished from ca. 5,500 to 3,500 and may have continued until less than 2,000 years before the present in precisely the area that today still harbours the most negritoid people and all three of the fully Negrito populations on the Andamans, in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. |
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Representative "classical Toalean lithics" from southern
Sulawesi. Toalean tools differ somewhat from site to site over the large area the industry covered. The best-researched and documented area researched is the industry from South Sulawesi where dates of organic material associated with stone tools range from a little over 10,000 to around 300 years before the present. G.55.8.1 - backed blade G.56.1.1 - Maros point G.63.4.4, G.80.2.2 and G.85.2.2 - geometric microliths T.28.1.274 and T.28.1.337 - Maros points - |
Bone points and a range of stone points appeared across the peninsula (of southern Sulawesi) in the early Holocene; this probably occurred as part of the expansion of archery and improved spear technology in Island Southeast Asia at the time. The technologically most specialized Toalean tools, namely backed microliths and Maros points, were evidently confined to the southwest of the peninsula. Backed microliths occur in contexts spanning some six millennia, but Maros points were largely restricted to the immediately pre-ceramic period, approximately 5,500 to 3,500 years before the present. The distribution of these tool types closely matches the area where late Holocene pottery in the ornate "Sa Huynh-Kalanay" tradition has been recorded, and where Makasar languages are spoken today. Sulawesi's southwest peninsula may have effectively been an island throughout much of the Holocene, and its southwest fringe runs hard against a major cordillera. Thus, physiographic constraints laid the basis for the division of the peninsula into two "social landscapes" that display long-term continuity throughout the Holocene, notwithstanding fundamental changes in subsistence patterns and technology.
Stone tool finds dominate while finds of wood, bone and other materials are rare because stone is so much more durable. R.J. Rabett (in his "The Early Exploitation of Southeast Asian Mangroves: Bone Technology from Caves and Open Sites", Asian Perspectives, Vol. 44, 1:154-179, Spring 2005, University of Hawaii Press) has the following to say on the subject:
Newly completed research suggests that during the period from the terminal Pleistocene to mid Holocene, bone tools may have featured prominently in coastal subsistence. There are indications that this technology may have had a particular association with hunting and gathering in the mangrove forests that proliferated along many coasts during this period. The study of these tools thus represents a rare chance to examine prehistoric extractive technologies, which are generally agreed to have been predominantly made on organic, non-preserving media. The evidence presented also suggests that prehistoric foragers from this region possessed a good working understanding of the mechanical properties of bone and used bone implements where conditions and needs suited the parameters of this material.
4. The Hoabinhian stone tool industry: the forerunner?
The Hoabinhian stone tool industry flourished from around 17,000 (formerly thought only 10,000) to around 3,000 years from the present. Its relationship to the Toalean stone industry is unclear but Hoabinhian may have been a forerunner, the trigger for other tool traditions.
The people who used Hoabinhian tools lived in widely different environments, from coastal mangrove swamps, dry grass lands, dense forests to mountainous areas. There may have been many different and perhaps only distantly related populations, all using their specialised versions of the original Hoabinhian tools.
There is no evidence so far that Negrito groups used Hoabinhian tools. Such tools have not been found in association with human remains. However, two sites on the map below (the red dots) are kitchen midden - and both are in what even today is still Negrito territory.
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red dots: Hoabinhian finds in kitchen midden red squares: Hoabinhian sites in caves and rock shelters
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Hoabinhian stone tools differ from Toalian tools above all in their size: they are much larger and heavier (adapted courtesy G. Clark, World Prehistory, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, 1977, ISBN 0 521 21506 4) |
A "sumatralith" is an oval to rectangular shaped stone artefact made by unifacially flaking around the circumference of a cobble. It is often used to infer the Hoabinhian character of a lithic assemblage.
Since the term was first used the describe assemblages from sites in Vietnam, many sites throughout mainland and island Southeast Asia have also been described as having Hoabinhian components. The apparent concentration of more than 120 Hoabinhian sites in Vietnam reflects intense research activities in this area rather the location of a centre of the prehistoric Hoabinhian activity. Archaeological sites in Sumatra, Thailand, Laos, Burma and Cambodia have been identified as Hoabinhian, although the quality and quantity of descriptions vary and the relative significance of the Hoabinhian component at these sites can be difficult to determine. Beyond this core area some archaeologists argue that there are isolated inventories of stone artefacts displaying Hoabinhian elements in Nepal, South China, Taiwan and Australia (Moser 2001).
Whether the Hoabinhian was the direct forerunner of the Toalian stone tool industry is not known, but it is possible.
Most of the Sunda archipelago is today part of the Republic of Indonesia. Only the western part of Kalimantan (Borneo) is part of Malaysia (Sarawak) while the eastern part of New Guinea is independent. And then there is the eastern part of Timor island, a Portuguese colony since 1596, annexed to Indonesia until 1999 and after a long and bloody struggle put under UN administration in 1999. The country has been fully independent since 2002.
The island of Timor has played an important role in prehistory as one of the major stepping stones for migrants across Wallacea. Under the new conditions it is now being turned into an archaeological power house. Local archaeologists with the help of Australian experts are uncovering the new country's historic and prehistoric past to the point where the island may rapidly becoming an attraction to interested tourists.
Stone tools dating back to 40,000 years have been found and a number of caves professionally excavated with interesting results. No less than nine new prehistoric wall-paintings (very rare in insular Southeast Asia) have been discovered since 2000, bringing the total number of known wall paintings in East Timor to 15. We are reproducing a sample below. Also, among the oldest known evidence of human occupation of Island Southeast Asia have come from Lene Hara Cave, dating to over 35,000 years ago. Dozens of other ancient sites, some of which were radiocarbon dated to between 40,000 and 10,000 years are also being excavated. Some of these sites, and potentially many more in the large unsurveyed portions of the country, could reveal many more clues about East Timor's central role in Asian-Australian prehistory.
The archaeologists in East Timor now hope to establish a connection between the stone tool types found in East Timor and those used in early Australia.
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Rock art is rare in insular Southeast Asia but more and more are being discovered in East Timor (courtesy Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Times Books Limited, 1988, ISBN 0-7230-0306-8) |
Archaeological results of Bui Ceri Uato cave in Eastern Timor, going back around 9,000 years (adapted courtesy Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Times Books Limited, 1988, ISBN 0-7230-0306-8)
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PH - Pothole (where a wooden support, probably for corn parching platforms, was once anchored) 1. layer of hard goat dung
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Resources used by, and their importance to, the inhabitants of Bui Ceri Uato cave varied considerably over the millennia. |
6. Migrations and biodiversity lines
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The Sunda archipelago (much of which makes up Indonesia) is the largest geographical bottleneck for land animals in the world (including early Homo sapiens). The difficult crossing, with island-hopping over fairly large bodies of water, must have taken place some time before 50,000 years ago. Niah cave on Borneo was inhabited by humans around that time. The dark green area was dry land 50,000 years ago. The two pink arrows mark the two most likely migration routes of the first humans to Australia. The dark blue area marks Wallacia, a major hotspot of speciation between Wallace's line in the west and the Sahul self in the east. |
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Archaeological sites (black dots) 1. Tabon cave site (inhabited by humans 25,000-10,000 years ago) 2. Niah cave site (inhabited by humans 50,000-25,000 years ago) 3. Ngandong site (inhabited by humans 50,000-25,000 years ago) 4. Wajak site ( (inhabited by humans 50,000-25,000 years ago) |
Biodiversity lines 1. Huxley's line (proposed 1868) 1a. Huxley's modified line 2. Wallace's line (proposed 1860) 3. Sclaters' line (proposed 1857) 4. Weber's (Mayr's) line (proposed 1902) 5. Lydekker's line (proposed 1896) |
Many questions of prehistory thrown up by archaeology cannot be solved by archaeology alone. There will always be gaps in the evidence. Genetics looks set to become a new source of evidence and one that has the potential to fill many of these gaps. The impact that it will have on prehistoric studies is not yet being felt fully, but that will change dramatically over the next decade or so. Surprises and shattered theories are certain - as are new gaps and controversies.
At the moment, genetics of ancient remains is developing so fast that articles reporting results are overtaken by new results before they are even published.
Please also refer to our Chapter 6 "Genetics" and to two articles on genetic results on this web-site: Kashyap et al on the "Molecular relatedness of the Andamanese", Thangaraj et al on "Genetic affiliations of the Andaman and Nicobar Islanders" and, as part of Chapter 6, Endicott et al "The Genetic Origins of the Andaman Islanders".
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Last change 30 March 2006
limestone blocks fallen from the cave roof
