[U]Ancient Taiwan was inhabited by dark-skinned people that also populated South Africa
6,000-year-old skull found in Taitung cave was that of a woman who was 139 cm tall
The discovery of a 6,000-year-old skull of a Negrito woman confirms legends by almost all of Taiwan’s Indigenous tribes of “little Black people” that span centuries.
Those who know the legacy best in Taiwan belong to an existing aboriginal group that killed what they believe to be the last village of Negritos in a battle over women 1,000 to 2,000 years ago.
The group that remains, the Saisiyat, dances for three straight bonfire-lit nights every two years to remember them. Their latest memorial ended early on Monday morning.
“There’s a bit of guilt, so we’re apologising to them,” said Chu Fung-lu, master of ceremonies for the memorial held in Wufeng Village deep in the mountains of central Taiwan. “We want them to protect us, to give us safety.”
Taiwan’s Negritos, gone for good now may have reached Taiwan from Madagascar via the islands of Southeast Asia, scholars say.
Taiwan’s Council of Aboriginal Affairs quietly acknowledges the dark-skinned tribe, called the “small people.” Some scholars say that as many as 90,000 may have lived in Taiwan.
On Oct. 4, a journal article article was published in World Archeology titled “Negritos in Taiwan and the wider prehistory of Southeast Asia: new discovery from the Xiaoma Caves.” The authors of the study report that cranial morphometric studies of a skeleton found in the Xiaoma Caves in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township “for the first time, validates the prior existence of small stature hunter-gatherers 6,000 years ago.”
With the exception of the Yami (Tao) people on Orchid Island, Taiwan’s 15 other indigenous peoples have legends about “little Black people” who were short in stature, with dark skin, and frizzy hair who lived in remote mountain areas. Some 258 accounts of these peoples by Indigenous tribes have been recorded by researchers in the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese colonial period, and since 1945.
Qing Dynasty records state that these dark-skinned peoples spoke languages that were different from the Austronesians. The Saisiyat have legends of extensive contact with the “Black pygmy people,” who they called the Ta’ai.
Saisiyat say they learned much in the way of medicine, singing, dancing, and other rituals from the Ta’ai. However, because they claimed that Ta’ai often harassed their women, so the Saisiyat killed most of them by laying a trap.
They soon came to regret this act because the tribe suffered many misfortunes afterward and it was two surviving elder Ta’ai members who taught the Saisiyat the Pas-ta’ai ritual. This ritual has since been performed every two years for many centuries, with a grand ceremony practiced once every 10 years.
Scientists found the skull was that of a female and her cranial features and size were closest to Philippine Negritos and the people of India’s Andaman Islands.