The Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, who are generally called the Semang in the literature, numbered about two thousand in 1974. They live in small groups scattered about the foothills in the northern half of the peninsula (4°N–6°30'N; 100°E–103°E). They speak a number of related languages in the Mon-Khmer language family. Until about 1950 most of the Semang were nomadic hunter-gatherers. The staple of their diet was wild yams, and their main source of meat was arboreal animals—monkeys, gibbons, squirrels, and birds, which they hunted with blowpipes and poisoned darts. They also carried on some trade with neighboring Malay farmers, exchanging such forest produce as rattan and resins for iron tools, salt, cloth, and cultivated foods. They lived in camps of five to fifteen related nuclear families, moving every week or two when the local resources were exhausted. Each...