Sunday, May 18, 2008

The Indonesians


Ages after the Negritos arrived in the country,another group of Asiatic people came over. These were the seafaring Indonesians who sailed on boats to the Philippines from lands farther west in Southeast Asia. They belong to the Mongoloid race with some Caucasoid features. Unlike the Negritos, they are tall, their height ranging from five and a half feet to six two inches.

They reached the Philippines in two main waves of migration, the first coming about 3,000 years ago. The Indonesians who came in the first migratory wave were called Indonesian Type A. They were tall and slender, with relatively light complexion, thin lips and face, a high aquiline nose, a broad and high forehead, and deep-set eyes. The Indonesians who arrived in the Philippines in a second wave were called Indonesian Type B and were shorter in height and bulkier in body, with darker complexion, thick lips, large round eyes, thick-set jaws, and large rectangular faces.

The culture of the Indonesians was far more and advanced than that of the Negritos. It can be described as belonging to the New Stone Age (Neolithic). The Indonesians lived in houses with pyramidal roofs of grass and wooden frames built above the ground or up in trees for protection. They lived by hunting , fishing, and trapping; they practice a type of dry agriculture known as the kaingin system. They raise upland rice, taro(gabi), millet, yam,(tugui), and similar food crops. They clothed themselves with beaten bark,often decorated wiht fine printed design. Their tools consisted of the polished stone axe, adze, and chisel. They used bows and arrows, spears, shields, and blowguns in hunting and fighting. They had one domesticated animals---the dog.

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