ABSTRACT
In July 1971 a report by Manuel Elizalde Jr.,1 then Presidential Assistant on National Minorities in the Philippines (Elizalde and Fox 1971) to the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Short-Lived Phenomena from Southern Cotabato, Mindanao
in the Philippines, informed the world of a small, isolated group of hunter-gatherers supposedly living in caves in the rain forests of southern Mindanao in the Philippines. The group of six families numbered approximately twenty-seven individuals, ranging in age from infancy to oldage, including a retarded male albino child with severe skin lesions and an elderly couple both of whom were said to be deaf-mutes. The group had a few metal tools, used stone tools, and were claimed to have no knowledge of agriculture or domesticated plants, including rice. They wore loin cloths, made either of old cotton fabric, bark cloth or the leaves of a ground orchid. They were said to have had no knowledge of tobacco or alcoholic drinks, but were familiar with betel nuts and chewed them with lime and a variety of leaves and bark from plants in their environment.
