SEAArch – The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

i am malay from malaysian peninsula, with ancestors from sumatra, indonesia. I just want to say that it is wrong, and actually insulting, if one says that malays and negritoes are the same people. we are NOT. in malaysia, negritoes are known as the “orang asli” or the aboriginals.

just like the history of people from thailand, vietnam, laos, cambodia, myanmar, etc… malays in malaysia came from yunnan, china. we are not negritoes. to say that some of us inter-marry the negritoes perhaps because the negritoes converted to islam or perhaps in some odd cases because love is blind; is one thing. But to say that malays are totally originated from negritoes is wrong.

Just like the modern filipinos, we malays are rich in culture, religion, technology, literacy and we are civilised. We have more manners as compared to negritoes.Just like filipinos have more manners as compared to aboriginals.

This reply is not to bash the negritoes, I have respect for all races and all humans are created equal by God. However, I just want to make it clear that there is a distinction (a very clear one at that) between a malay and a negrito.

I am aware that the word malay itself is very wide and thus is subjected to abuse of the meaning. A malay can mean anything from the people in peninsular malaysia, to southern thai people to the whole thai people, to vietnamese to myanmar to laos to cambodians to jakarta people to brunei to filipino people.

To some, javanese is an exclusive ethnic, yet to others, javanese is malay too. Some scholars specify malays to be only of a particular place, yet others categorise the whole of south east asia as malay archipelago.

Thus, perhaps some “malays” may appear very negrito or indeed are negrito by default. But due to cultural interaction, they call themselves malays. But just because some “malays” are negritoes does not mean it is the same for other or for the majority of malays in the malay archipelago. Likewise, just because some filipinos look negrito or has negrito blood, does not mean all of the filipino people are negritoes.

Just like the filipinos, malays are accepted as the “brown chinese” or brown people with slanting eyes. The same has not been expressed to negritoes.

Saying a malay is a negrito is like saying a filipino or a vietnamese or a thai is a negrito. It’s wrong.

Thank you for listening.

First off, I don’t think anything in the initial article equated the Malays with the Negritos. What it says is that the Negritos are the original inhabitants of the territories we now call Malaysia and the Philippines. The evidence for this is quite strong, and the term ‘orang asli’ certainly alludes to that fact. So, certainly, the Malays are not Negritos, but that has never been the point of the article to begin with.

However;

–> Just like the modern filipinos, we malays are rich in culture, religion, technology, literacy and we are civilised. We have more manners as compared to negritoes.Just like filipinos have more manners as compared to aboriginals.

I find this statement extremely offensive and indicative of the author’s own ignorance about what it means to be ‘civilised’. technology, religion and literacy do not a culture make. You’ll find that the negritos that populate the northern states of Malaysia have a rich culture, with their own distinct sets of belief systems, customs and behaviour. They are adept with harnessing the resources of the jungle for subsitence and shelter, all while having a well-documented reputation for being competent linguists, shifting between Malay, Thai, their own tongue and the tongues of the other aboriginal tribes without difficulty. In comparison, we ‘civilised’ peoples have difficulty juggling two languages. The negritos of Malaysia also have an unbelievably low crime rate – that certainly puts us ‘civilised’ peoples to shame. Certainly your comment about negritos lacking manners and culture is unfounded and uneducated.

I agree totally with what Danny & noelbynature have stated. I am abit confused as to what the Malay man was trying to say. In one breath saying that the Negrito people have no manners & then in the next breath saying that we are all created equal by God. If we are created equal by God then all of our mannerisms would also be equal. What is acceptable in one particular tribe is not acceptable in another tribe & so forth. Who are we to determine what good manners are? No person on this planet is created perfect. God never mentioned anything about creating perfect people, only that we are all equal. We are all human beings & deserve to be treated as such. No-one is higher or lower than the other & whoever believes otherwise are extremely bigoted, biased & prejudiced. That is my belief, thank-you.

keep up the blogging I am half caste and live in the uk but married a thai lady – any way yes we all did come from Africa circa 100-60 000 ya – lighter colours are only to get vitamin b as you move north -what is required is information not ignorance – god as someone refereed to above does not exist only evolution mindless and undirectional – so get real and accept the facts how do you think the negroid type got to papua new guieane fly ? they had to walk through asia of course- the mongol people developed from the negroid type in asia ie china /mongolia location then moved south to dispalce the negroid type from indochina thus splitting the negroid type in africa from those in the eastern pacific

The article was interesting, but didn’t offer anything new. Hasn’t it already been known for several decades that the Negritos were the first inhabitants of the Philippines, and the rest of Southeast Asia??? It’s also been clear to me that the Malay stock is genetically different from the Negrito stock. Even the average Filipino knows that. As for the person who said that Malays have more manners as compared to Negritos, we should be more respectful and open-minded about other people’s cultures. It’s easy to judge other people’s cultures and say they have less manners. There are many different kinds of manners. We should not just look at our good manners, and look at the bad manners of others.

Just to clarify a point: I think it’s important to point out at this time that the term Austronesian refers to a linguistic group (as with Dravidian, I think), and so it’s probable that at least some negrito populations here adopted Austronesian languages. Our knowledge of negritos as the earliest inhabitants of Southeast Asia come from skeletal evidence – and those skeletons most closely resemble the negrito populations of Southeast Asia and the aborigines of Australia today.

The so-called Negritos are the direct-descendants of Africa’s Homo sapiens. The s/c Negritos (Seed People) of southwest Asia, India, Andaman Islands, southern Thailand, northern Malaysia, the Philippines, other parts of S.E.Asia, West Papua New Guinea, other parts of Melanesia, northern Australia are the first Africans outside of Africa (humanity’s mother continent). The so-called Malays are the direct-descendants of the so-called Negritos and so-called Mongoloid people. Importantly, every race on the planet Earth have a genetic DNA that is traced back to a little African woman. Thank you for reading!

The last comment is of questionable ignorance relating the history of Puerto Rico with that of Philippines. (No offense but they should know better before they say anything) Any way I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that all men where from Africa originally even though I have enough African ancestry. Our Theories of the origins of man are evolving and not absolute. So new(or old) information may shed new light on the subject. And to finalize the designation is based on the illusion that we are only these corporeal shells we call the human body. If we truly take science into account then we must also make room for what does not include what appears the dogma of mainstream so called scientific hearsay I.E.
1. All humans originated in Africa.
2. Evolution theory solely placed on physical attributes but not the metaphysical cause beyond those. I.E. you are only this human body with no relation to anyone or anything else in the universe or creation or what possibly lies beyond. Also including that we are the only inhabitable planet or entities with communicable intelligence.
3. That Human existence on this planet is limited to a mere 100,000 years or so and that of civilized humans even more so. This limits the idea of the possibility that humans have been migrating across the globe for hundreds or thousands of millennia and that possibly far in the forgotten pre-colonist history of places like the Philippines is when the Negritos may have came there. But we have been ingrained by colonial wisdom that this cannot be especially of the Africans which by logic where primitives of no accomplishments fit only for saviourship from savagery and simple matters of servitude. Which ultimately translates to some as free land and free labour. The colonial ideaology is to impress, sometimes by any means, upon others that they are first and superior in everything, religion, science, culture etc, and those to be colonized have little or nothing to offer.

In my opinion most of these scientific dogmas where and are theories propagated by colonist and where born ultimately from the need to usurp human property and intellectual rights often denigrating and smothering the wisdom of others intended to be colonized or enslaved. I could summon a variety of logical reasons for it has been done to almost all native people on planet earth! But this is generally overlooked and would require a lengthy essay that cannot be done here. We are trying to narrow a vast and complicated subject to fit within the grasp of our local myopic view like trying to fit the universe in a nutshell which is just is not humanly possible. If it where we would have created the universe as a by product of our minds and bodies. And not the other way around our bodies and minds as by products of universal elements. I challenge anyone to assert that they have done more than simply parrot the words of the official anonymous or generally accepted superficial sources. And I ask does that satisfy one who is truly looking for an answer?

Of course having said that, it would also be interesting to know weather it was people of southeast asia that travelled to Madagascar or viceversa… I haven’t found any theory on that … It would also be interesting to know if there are further linguistic ties behion the island of Madagascar and into any of the local continental languages of Africa

I am a Malay from the northern tip of peninsular malaysia close to the border of Thailand..in my local dialect, i would say “nyiok” for cocunut…when I met this person from Baguio of Luzon island, Filipina, I got surprised when she told me that in her local dialect, they also use “nyok” for cocunut. Whereas, in our standard malay language (national language)in Malaysia; the cocunut is “kelapa” which is similar with Javanese of Indonesia. Ironically, the Indonesian language (national language of Indonesia) is using “Nyior” for cocunut.

Now, I am the firm believer that the Malay as a race is “generic” that could represent the indigenious people of Filipina (Tagalog, Ilakano, visyas, tausug etc), Indonesian (javanese, sundanese, minang, achech, balinese etc, Malaysia (kedah, kelantan, trengganu etc), borneo island (Dusun, Dayak, Iban, Murut, Melanau etc, the native of Taiwan, the Maoris of NZ, the people of Tahiti, Fiji etc, the malagasy of Madagaskar……..

It is similar with the CHINESE also which is generic..the chinese are comprise of various clan/sub-etchnic namely cantonese, hakka, han, fuchow, teochew, hokkien, manchu etc. If they speak in their own dialect, i am willing to cut my finger that they could not understand each other. That is why they are striving for mandarin language as a unification language among the chinese people all over the world including Singapore. Therefore, the CHINESE itself as a race is generic. It is just an example.

The first Presidend of Indonesia namely Sukarno is Javanese. However, he realized that in order to unite the people of the Malay Archipelago (Malaysia, Filipina, Borneo, Singapore, southern Thailand, Irian Jaya, Sulawesi, Timur2; he must adopted the Malay language (Bahasa Indonesia) as the national language of Indonesia. Unfortunately, the same move was not adopted by the first President of Filipina namely Macapagal who is Tagalog clan, who had declared that the Tagalog became the national language of the Filipina. That is the missing part between the Filipinos with the rest of their malay brothers and sister from Malaysia and Indonesia.

If we can UNITE ourselves as one MALAY race and one MALAY language; definitely the language itself would become one of the 3 largest languages in the WORLD.