Introduction

Within the narrow confines of the Malayan Peninsula existed a microcosm of the human diversity to be found throughout Asia. The present-day majority populations include representatives from South Asia and China, recent migrants in response to economic developments in mining and plantation agriculture, and the Malays, also migrants from the islands of Indonesia over the past several hundred years. The traditional view has been that earlier waves of migration to the peninsula were the source for the so-called “aborigines” or Orang Asli (“Original People”) who, although a tiny minority of the current population, contribute even greater diversity to the Malayan human mosaic.

The classic anthropological literature (summarized in Carey 1976) divided the Orang Asli into three groups on the basis of both biological and cultural characteristics: Semang (or “Negritos”), Senoi, and Melayu Asli (proto- or “aboriginal” Malays). The Semang hunter-gatherers were considered the oldest cultural and biological stratum, a remnant of a once widespread population of Oceanic Negritos which also included the Andaman Islanders and several groups of foragers in the Philippines. These early inhabitants of Southeast Asia were small-statured, dark-skinned, and “frizzy-haired,” hence the name “Negrito.” The Senoi, swidden farmers, were linked to the Veddas of Sri Lanka to the west and some viewed them as the residue of a population that colonized Australia (Skeat and Blagden 1906). Phenotypically, the Senoi peoples were lighter in skin color and were wavy-haired.