Phil Prehistory 2

PREHISTORIC PHILIPPINESANTHROPOLOGY OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLEPart 1

Philippine History & Culture LecturesBy: HANNIBAL F. CARADO

LAND CONNECTIONS DURING THE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Sunda_and_Sahul.png

TIMELINE OF PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Pre-historic400,000 BC — People belonging to

the species Homo Erectus set foot on the Philippines

50,000 BC — Early humans made stone tools in the Tabon Cave in Palawan

40,000 BC - Negritos start to settle


Pre-historic20,000 BC - Tabon Man made stone

tools in the Tabon Cave4500-300 BC — Multiple

Austronesian migrations from Taiwan

c.3000 BC — Presumed date of the Angono Petroglyphs


10th-15th centuries900 AD — End of prehistory. Laguna

Copperplate Inscription, the earliest known Philippine document, is written in the Manila area in Kawi script.

c.900 AD — Rise of Indianized Kingdom of Tondo around Manila Bay.

900s AD — People from Southern Annam called Orang Dampuan establish trade zones in Sulu


10th-15th centuries1001 - Song Shih document records

tributary delegation from the Buddhist Kingdom of Butuan on 17 March.

1175 - Kingdom of Namayan reaches its peak.

1240 - Tuan Mash`ika, an Arab, travels and introduces Islam to Sulu.


10th-15th centuries1300s — Birth of the Baybayin,

Hanunoo, Tagbanwa, and Buhid scripts from Brahmi.

1380 - Karim Al-Makhdum arrives in Jolo and builds a Mosque.

1457 AD - Sultanate of Sulu founded by Sharif Al-Hashim.


16th century1500 - Rise of Kingdom of Maynila

under the Bolkiah dynasty1521 - Ferdinand Magellan landed

on Homonhon and Cebu, claiming the islands for Spain

TABON MANTabon man

refers to fossilized human remains discovered on the island of Palawan in the Philippines on May 28, 1962 by Dr. Robert B. Fox.

TABON MANThese remains,

the fossilized fragments of a skull and jawbone of three individuals, were and are the earliest human remains known in the Philippines.

TABON MANThese fragments

are collectively called "Tabon Man" after Tabon Cave, the place where they were found on the west coast of Palawan.

TABON MANPhysical

anthropologists who have examined the Tabon Man skullcap are agreed that it belonged to modern man, homo sapiens, as distinguished from the mid-Pleistocene homo erectus species.

TABON MANNothing can be

concluded about Tabon man's physical appearance from the recovered skull fragments except that he was not a Negrito.

LAGUNA COPPERPLATE INSCRIPTION


The Laguna Copperplate inscription (also shortened to LCI) is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines.


The plate was found in 1989 by Alfredo E. Evangelista in Laguna de Bay, in the metroplex of Manila, Philippines, the LCI has inscribed on it a date of Saka era 822, corresponding to April 21, 900 AD.

LAGUNA COPPERPLATE INSCRIPTIONThe Laguna Copperplate

Inscription is highly important in revising the ancient history of the Philippines, which prior to the LCI discovery was considered by some western historians to be culturally isolated from the rest of Asia, as no evident pre-Hispanic written records were found at the time

LAGUNA COPPERPLATE INSCRIPTIONWhen the script was translated it

was found that the document dated itself to the Saka year 822, which in the old Hindu calendar corresponded to approximately April 21, 900 A.D.


This meant that the document pre-dated the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, taking the pre-Hispanic written history of the Philippines to about the same time as the reference to the Philippines found in the official Chinese Sung History for the year 972.

ANGONO PETROGLYPHS

•uploaded by Lloyd Intalan (en:User:LFIntalan). Info: •Rock carvings (petroglyphs) from the Philippines.•Photo Lloyd Intalan 2005.

ANGONO PETROGLYPHS

The Angono Petroglyphs is the oldest known work of art in the Philippines.

There are 127 human and animal figures engraved on the rockwall dating back to 3000 BC.

ANGONO PETROGLYPHS

These inscriptions clearly show stylized human figures, frogs and lizards along with other designs that may have depicted other interesting figures but erosion may have caused it to become indistinguishable.

MODELS OF MIGRATION

WAVE MIGRATION THEORYThe most widely

known theory of the prehistoric peopling of the Philippines is that of H. Otley Beyer, founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines.

WAVE MIGRATION THEORYProfessor Beyer

became the unquestioned expert on Philippine prehistory, exerting early leadership in the field and influencing the first generation of Filipino historians and anthropologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists, and students the world over:

WAVE MIGRATION THEORYAccording to Dr. Beyer, the

ancestors of the Filipinos came in different "waves of migration", as follows:◦"Dawn Man", a cave-man type who was

similar to Java man, Peking Man, and other Asian homo sapiens of 250,000 years ago.

◦The aboriginal pygmy group, the Negritos, who arrived between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago via land bridges.

WAVE MIGRATION THEORY◦The sea-faring tool-using Indonesian

group who arrived about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago and were the first immigrants to reach the Philippines by sea.

◦The seafaring, more civilized Malays who brought the Iron age culture and were the real colonizers and dominant cultural group in the pre-Hispanic Philippines.

WAVE OF MIGRATION THEORYRECONSIDERED

WAVE OF MIGRATION THEORY(Reconsidered)

It is too simplistic to be useful in explaining complex problem of cultural development

It is quite unrealistic to assume that the physical characteristics of prehistoric migrating people can be correlated with specific cultural developments


It is doubtful whether the ancient peoples always arrive in periodic time sequences and with foreknowledge of their destination by the term “immigration.”


It is quite difficult to accept that small boatloads of immigrants coming at certain periodic time sequences, would be capable of maintaining large-scale community patterns in a new land under pioneer conditions.


It impresses an orientation that all cultural traits as well as the physical types of our ancestors were brought into the archipelago ready-made.

THE AUSTRONESIANS

THE AUSTRONESIANSAnother, more contemporary theory

based on the study of the evolution of languages suggests that starting 4000-2000 BC Austronesian groups descended from Yunnan Plateau in China and settled in what is now the Philippines by sailing using balangays or by traversing land bridges coming from Taiwan.

THE AUSTRONESIANSMost of these Austronesians

primarily used the Philippines as a pit-stop to the outlying Pacific islands or to the Indonesian archipelago further south. Those who were left behind became the ancestors of the present-day Filipinos.

THE AUSTRONESIANSThe Cagayan valley of northern

Luzon contains large stone tools as evidence for the hunters of the big game of the time: the elephant-like stegodon, rhinoceros, crocodile, tortoise, pig and deer. The Austronesians pushed the Negritos to the mountains, while they occupied the fertile coastal plains.

THE AUSTRONESIANSRECONSIDERED

THE AUSTRONESIANS(Reconsidered)

How big Austronesian group was there to be able to replicate their home culture in a frontier area?

How do we recognize a tool shape as Austronesian and not part of local response to local needs?


What were the languages of indigenous groups before their contacts with Austronesians?

When did the language break take place?

What happened to the original language? Linguistic drift is not an overnight phenomenon but a slow process.


It is doubtful if we can attribute all the local developments in our country to the Austronesians. It cancels out our ancestors intellectual capability to create new ideas in response to local needs.


Unlike in later years, trade items carry the brand name of the manufacturer. Their origin is known and their material can be readily identified. This is not the case with the so-called Austronesians.


How do we date a word? Glottochronology did not work. Many modern linguists have given it up.

THE AUSTRONESIANS(F. Landa Jocano)

The first inhabitants of the Philippines did not come from the Malay Peninsula.

Jocano believes that the present Filipinos are products of the long process of evolution and movement of people.

This not only holds true for Filipinos, but for the Indonesians and the Malays of Malaysia, as well. No group among the three is culturally or racially dominant.

THE AUSTRONESIANS(F. Landa Jocano)

Hence, Jocano says that it is not correct to attribute the Filipino culture as being Malayan in orientation.

According to Jocano's findings, the people of the prehistoric islands of Southeast Asia were of the same population as the combination of human evolution that occurred in the islands of Southeast Asia about 1.9 million years ago.

References:

F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage, PUNLAD Research House, Inc., Quezon City, 1998

Phil Prehistory 2

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