BOTOLAN, Zambales -- The world’s worst eruptions in the second half of the 20th century failed to erase the Aeta tribe from the face of the earth.

Fifteen years after Mount Pinatubo let out its biggest blasts in their ancestral abode on June 15, 1991, the Aeta population in the provinces of Zambales, Pampanga and Tarlac has almost doubled from just over 50,000 at the height of the disaster, data from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) in Central Luzon showed.