The knowledge of this, indeed, is not of long duration.  Public attention was first aroused about thirty years ago concerning skulls from Samar and Luzon, gathered by F. Jagor from ancient caves, to furnish the proof of their deformation.  Up to that time next to nothing was known of deformed crania in the oriental island world.  First through my publication the attention of J. G. Riedel, a most observant Dutch resident, was called to the fact that cranial deformation is still practiced in the Celebes, and he was so good as to send us a specimen of the compressing apparatus for delicate infants (1874).  Compressed crania were also found.  But the number was small and the compression of the separate specimens was only slight.  In both respects what was observed in the Sunda islands did not differ from the state of the case in the Philippines.  Through Jagor’s collections different places had become known where deformed crania were buried.  Since then the number of localities has multiplied.  I shall mention only two, on account of their peculiar locality.  One is Cagraray, a small island east of Luzon, in the Pacific Ocean, at the entrance of the Bay of Albay; the other, the island of Marinduque, in the west, between Luzon and Mindoro.  From the last-named island I saw, ten years ago, the first picture of one in a photograph album accidentally placed in my hands.  Since then I had opportunity to examine the Schadenberg collection of crania, lately come into the possession of the Reichsmuseum, in Leyden, and to my great delight discovered in it a series of skulls which are compressed in exactly the same fashion as those of Lanang.  It is said that these will soon be described in a publication.

It is of especial interest that this method has been noted in the Philippines for more than three hundred years.  In my first publication I cited a passage in Thevenot where he says, on the testimony of a priest, that the natives on some islands had the custom of compressing the head of a newborn child between two boards, so that it would be no longer round, but lengthened out; also they flattened the forehead, which they looked upon as a special mark of beauty.  This is, therefore, an ancient example.  It is confirmed by the circumstance that these crania are found especially in caves, from the roofs of which mineral waters have dripped, which have overlaid the bones partly with a thick layer of calcareous matter.  The bones themselves have an uncommonly thick, almost ivory, fossil-like appearance.  Only the outer surface is in places corroded, and on these places saturated with a greenish infiltration.  It is to be assumed, therefore, that they are very old.  I have the impression that they must have been placed here before the discovery of the islands and the introduction of Christianity.  Their peculiar appearance, especially their angular form and the thickness of the bone, reminds one of crania from other parts of the South Sea, especially those from Chatham and Sandwich Islands.  I shall not here go further into this question, but merely mention that I came to the conclusion that these people must be looked upon as proto-Malayan.