Aeta

The Aeta are the Negrito peoples of Luzon and among the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines, reaching the islands tens of thousands of years ago over Sunda land bridges, long before the Austronesian expansion. They are dark-skinned, curly-haired forest people; after the Austronesian arrival their languages became Austronesian tongues rich in older non-Austronesian words.

They lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers in family bands, roaming the Zambales ranges with bows, trading forest goods for lowland rice and iron. Their name derives from a proto-Malayo-Polynesian word for dark-skinned person.

After the Spanish conquest of Luzon in 1571 they proved fierce and elusive: Legazpi's men reported their marksmanship, but reduccion failed as the Aeta withdrew into the mountains. They suffered slaving raids, Zambal raiders selling captives to Borneo and China, yet bands kept mobile forest life and animist mountain and ancestor spirits through the Spanish period.