AETA, a Negrito tribe of the Philippine Islands, woolly haired, dark-skinned, dwarfish (the male stature is about 4ft. 9in.) inhabiting the mountainous districts of the larger islands and some of the smaller. They are characterized by a large and clumsy foot with abnormally divergent great toe. The social unit is the family ; polygamy is permitted, but monogamy pre vails. The dead are normally buried, but the bodies of those whom it is wished to honour are exposed on platforms or in trees. Bows and poisoned arrows are used, long spears and darts barbed with flint or shell. Fire is made by means of a flexible thong pulled to and fro in a notch in a cleft stick. They pray to a great serpent to show them yams and honey.
The Aeta were long recognized as the owners of the soil in spite of the arrival of Malayan settlers, and in Luzon they levied taxes upon the Tagalog and other tribes (until these arrived in such numbers as to push them back into the hills) taking the heads of defaulters. For much longer, perhaps even yet, they kept a debit and credit account of heads with the Igorots and other neighbours.
See Reed, Negritos of Zambales, Ethnolog. Survey of the Philip pines, II. (1904) ; Worcester, Non-Christian tribes of N. Luzon, Philippine Jnl. of Science, I. (1906) ; A. L. Kroeber, Peoples of the Philippines, American Museum of Natural History (1919).
(J. H. H.) AETHELBALD, king of Mercia, succeeded Ceolred, A.D. 716, at the beginning of the period of Mercian supremacy. His activities as a:warrior were slight; in 733 he raided Somerset as far as Somerton, and led unimportant campaigns against the Northumbrians and the Welsh. In 752 Cuthred of Wessex led a successful raid into Oxfordshire against him. Aethelbald encour aged the development of the church, making large grants of land, and publishing a decree in 749 which freed ecclesiastical lands from all obligations to the king except the trinoda necessitas.
See Bede, Hist. Ecc. (ed. Plummer), v. 23 and Continuatio s.a. 740, 75o, 757; Saxon Chronicle (Earle and Plummer), s.a. 716, 733, 737, 740, 741, 743, 755; Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum, ii. pp. 264, 279, 283-284; P. Jaffe, Monumenta Moguntiaca, iii. pp. 168-177; W. de G. Birch, Cartul. Saxon., 178 (1885-93).