The ethnological history of the whole of the Melanesian region is obscure, but as the result of recent investigations certain broad features may be recognised. The earliest inhabitants were probably a black, woolly-haired race, now represented by the pygmies of New Guinea, remnants of a formerly widely extended Negrito population also surviving in the Andaman Islands, the Malay Peninsula (Semang) and the Philippines (Aeta). A taller variety advanced into Tasmania and formed the Tasmanian group, now extinct, others spread over New Guinea and the western Pacific as "Papuans," and formed the basis of the Melanesian populations[330]. The Proto-Polynesians in their migrations from the East Indian Archipelago to Polynesia passed through this region and imposed their speech on the population and otherwise modified it. In later times other migrations have come from the west, and parts of Melanesia have also been directly influenced by movements from Polynesia. The result of these supposed influences has been to form the Melanesian peoples as they exist to-day[331]. G. Friederici[332] has accumulated a vast amount of evidence based chiefly on linguistics and material culture, to support the theory of Melanesian cultural streams from the west. He regards the Melanesians as having come from that part of Indonesia which extends from the Southern Islands of the Philippine group, through the Minahasa peninsula of Celebes, to the Moluccas in the neighbourhood of Buru and Ceram. From the Moluccan region they passed north of New Guinea to the region about Vitiaz and Dampier Straits, which Friederici regards as the gateway of Melanesia. Here they colonised the northern shores of New Britain, and part of the swarm settled along the eastern and south-eastern shores of New Guinea. Another stream passed to the Northern Louisiades, Southern Solomons, and Northern New Hebrides. The Philippine or sub-Philippine stream took a more northerly route, going by the Admiralty group to New Hanover, East New Ireland and the Solomons.