Dr. M. Moszkowski found that in Geelvink Bay the hair is not always ulotrichous (woolly), as is usual with Papuans, especially on Biak and Padeido Islands the hair often recalls the cymotrichous (curly) hair of Veddas. Other points of resemblance with wild tribes of Further Asia are:—A very dainty graceful bone-structure, small hands and feet, relatively short limbs compared to the trunk, low stature, few being above 156 cm. and most below 150 cm. (4 ft. 11 ins.), and now and then the characteristic convex upper lip of the wild tribes (Zs. f. Ethnol. XLIII. 1911, pp. 317, 318). On these grounds Moszkowski inclines to think that the islands of Geelvink Bay were originally peopled by pre-Malayan wild tribes allied to the Vedda, Sakai, Toala, etc., and thus the present population is the result of crossing between these and immigrant Melanesians; true Malays came later. Moszkowski has not yet published any head measurements of these interesting people, and the evidence is insufficient to decide whether this is a Pre-Dravidian or a Negrito element in the population of these islands, the curly character of the hair may be due as elsewhere in New Guinea to racial mixture; the photograph of a “Vedda-type” from Padeido island is by no means convincing (l.c. p. 318).
Finally Guppy, Ribbe and Rascher report the occurrence of very short people in the interior of the larger islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and of the Solomon Islands; recently Thurnwald refers to very small people in the mountainous interior of Bougainville who speak a non-Melanesian language, one man from Mari mountain had a stature of 1·39 m. (4 ft. 6-1/2 ins.). In the mountains the mixed population consists of types recalling the Solomon Islanders and “representatives of a small short-legged, broad-faced, short-skulled, very hairy, wide-nosed people.” (Zs. f. Ethnol. XLII. 1910, p. 109.)
Discussing the pygmies of Melanesia von Luschan referred in 1910 (Zs. f. Ethnol. XLII., p. 939) to bones brought a century ago from the Admiralty Islands which must have belonged to individuals 1·32-1·35 m. (4 ft. 4 ins.-4 ft. 5 ins.) in stature; it is unlikely that the type persists, though Moseley mentions an unusually short man, a little over 5 ft. (Journ. Anth. Inst. 1877, p. 384). In the collection made by the German Marine Expedition there are a number of extremely small skulls from New Ireland, which von Luschan is convinced belong to pygmies. Finsch brought from New Britain over thirty years ago the smallest known skull of a normal adult person; it came from the S.W. coast of Gazelle Peninsula. Like four other extremely small feminine skulls from New Britain this one is dolichocephalic (ceph. index 73). Von Luschan is of opinion that the small people of Melanesia represent an older stratum of population than their tall neighbours.
While other travellers have come across what is now accepted as a pygmy element in the population, the members of this Expedition have for the first time proved the existence of a pygmy people, known as the Tapiro, who may be regarded as predominantly Negritos. The hair is short, woolly and black, but seemed brown in two or three cases, there is a good deal of hair on the face and of short downy hair scattered about the body. The skin is of a lighter colour than that of the neighbouring Papuans, some individuals being almost yellow. The stature averages 1·449 m. (4 ft. 9 ins.), ranging from 1·326 m. (4 ft. 4-1/4 ins.) to 1·529 m. (5 ft. 0-1/4in.). The cephalic index averages 79·5, varying from 66·9 to 85·1. Features: The nose is straight and though described as “very wide at the nostrils,” the mean of the indices is only 83, the extremes being 65·5 to 94. The eyes are noticeably larger and rounder than those of Papuans. “The upper lip of many of the men is long and curiously convex.”
At the same time that the Expedition discovered pygmies in Netherlands New Guinea, Mr. R. W. Williamson was investigating the Mafulu, a mountain people on the upper waters of the Angabunga river in the Mekeo District. He has shown (The Mafulu Mountain People of British New Guinea, 1912) that in all probability these and some neighbouring tribes are a mixture of Negritos, Papuans and Papuo-Melanesians. Their invariably woolly hair is generally dark brown, often quite dark, approaching to black and sometimes perhaps quite black, but frequently it is lighter and often not what we in Europe should call dark; a beard and moustache are quite unusual. The skin is dark sooty-brown. The average stature is 1·551 m. (5 ft. 1 in.) ranging from 1·47 m. (4 ft. 10 ins.) to 1·63 m. (5 ft. 4 ins.). They are fairly strong and muscular, but rather slender and slight in development. The average cephalic index is 80 and ranges from 74·7 to 86·8. Features: The average nasal index is 84·3, the extremes being 71·4 and 100. The eyes are dark brown and very bright. The lips are fine and delicate.
It is worth noting that Pöch had in 1906 measured two Fergusson Island men with statures 1·403 and 1·425 m. (4 ft. 7-1/4 ins., 4 ft. 8 ins.), who told him that “all the people in that tribe were as small or smaller.” (Zs. f. Ethnol. XLII. 1910, p. 941.)
On reading through the brief synopses which I have given it is apparent that, with the possible exception of the Andamanese, each of the Negrito peoples shows considerable diversity in its physical characters and this is more evident when more detailed accounts and photographs are studied. There appears to be sufficient evidence to show that a very ancient ulotrichous, low brachycephalic, pygmy population once extended over the Malay Peninsula and a great part (at least) of Melanesia and New Guinea, but the existing groups do not appear to be homogeneous judging from the diversity in stature, head index and nasal index. Stature, as has already been stated, is always recognised as subject to considerable variation, but the bulk of the measurements of these peoples fall below 1·5 m., and therefore indicate a predominant very short population. The head indices mainly show low brachycephaly; the occasional very low indices may be due either to a Pre-Dravidian mixture or in New Guinea, at all events, to a Papuan strain. The former existence of a Pre-Dravidian stock in New Guinea is highly probable, nor must it be overlooked that there may have been a hitherto undescribed pygmy or very short dolichocephalic ulotrichous stock in New Guinea and Melanesia. The nasal index of these Negrito peoples is very suggestive of racial complexity. Judging from photographs, in the absence of measurements, the Andamanese have by no means a broad nose, and a mesorhine index is found in all the other groups, some of the Tapiro and Mafulu are even leptorhine. A constantly recurring feature is the convex upper lip, but that also occurs among the Sakai. The problem now is to determine what foreign elements have modified these pygmies, and whether the Negrito stock itself will not have to be subdivided into at least two groups.
The Negritos have certain cultural characters more or less in common, some of which differentiate them from their neighbours. There is very little artificial deformation of the person. The Tapiro and Mafulu alone do not tattoo or scarify the skin; Skeat says that the Semang “do not appear as a race to tattoo or scarify,” and the Aeta scarify only occasionally. The nasal septum is not pierced for a nose-stick by the Andamanese and Aeta nor among the purer Semang tribes, but the Tapiro and Mafulu do so. The Semang women possess numerous bamboo combs which are engraved with curious designs of a magical import, similar combs are possessed by nearly every Aeta man and woman. The Andamanese have no combs.
With regard to clothing, the male Andamanese are nude, the females wear a small apron of leaves or a single leaf, but one tribe, the Jarawa, go nude. The male Semang frequently wear a loin-cloth, or simply leaves retained by a string girdle, sometimes the women wear this too or a fringed girdle made of the long black strings of a fungus, but more usually a waist-cloth. The Aeta men wear a loin-cloth and the women a waist-cloth. The Mafulu men and women wear a perineal band of bark cloth, while the Tapiro men wear a unique gourd penis-sheath. A gourd or calabash is also worn by men on the north coast of New Guinea, but not further west than Cape Bonpland, in this case the hole is in the side and not at the end as among the Tapiro.
The Negritos are collectors and hunters, and never cultivate the soil unless they have been modified by contact with more advanced peoples.