HISTO REVIEWER

COVERAGE

A. Introduction: Why history?

1. Joaquin, Nick. 1989. “Culture and History” and “Heritage of Smallness.” in Culture
and History. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, 2004. (Ella)
2. Proust, Marcel. 1913. Excerpts from Remembrance of Things Past, Book I.
3. Morga_Rizal (Chapter 8 of Morga with footnotes by Rizal) (Ella & Josh)
4. Morga_Ocampo (my essay on Rizal's annotations and why these are significant) (Josh)
5. Pigafetta (an excerpt from Pigafetta's account of the Magellan expedition) (Xavier)
6. Fernandez excerpt from her book Palayok.

**will cover all readings, papers and reports.

1. A Heritage of Smallness

● So much effort by so many for so little

● PH as the hardest-working country in the world but in the West, they pile up more
mileage than we who work all day and all week
● We work on such a pigmy scale; the difference is in the way of thinking
● They are accustomed to thinking dynamically. We have the habit, whatever our
individual resources, of thinking poor, of thinking petty
● Explanation for our continuing failure to rise - that we buy small and sell small, that
we aim small and try small, that we think small and do small?
● Are we not confusing timidity for humility and making a virtue of what may be the
worst of our vices?​ Is not our timorous clinging to smallness the bondage we must
break if we are ever to inherit the earth and be independent, progressive?
● History: nipa hut, barangay, petty kingship, slight tillage, tingi trade, miniature
artifacts, folk literature is mostly proverbs, PH literature is still identified with the short
story, timid two story architecture
● Depressing fact in PH history: native aversion to the large venture, the big risk, the
bold extensive enterprise
● Barangay settlements already displayed a PH characteristic: petrified in isolation
instead of consolidating, split instead of growing, remained distinct, never fused
● PH society seemed to fear bigness; we don’t grow like a seed, we split like an
amoeba
● PH provinces are microscopic compared to American states who do not complain
that they cannot efficiently handle the vast area. On the big scale, we can’t be
efficient; we are capable only of the small. Anything larger intimidates. We would
deliberately limit ourselves to small performance
● Foreigners had to come and unite our land for us.​ Great was the King of Sugbu, but
he couldn’t even control the tiny isle across his bay
● Because we cannot unite for the large effort, even the small effort is increasingly
beyond us: the little to learn in school is protested as being too hard
Three theories about us
1. The Filipino works best on a small scale; we feel adequate to the challenge of the
small, but are cowed by the challenge of the big
2. The filipino chooses to work in soft easy materials; we feel equal to materials that
yield but evade the challenge of materials that exist
3. Having mastered a material, craft or product, we tend to rut in it and don’t move on to
a next phase, a larger development, based on what we have learned. We instantly
lay down even what mastery we possess when confronted by a challenge, instead of
being provoked to develop by the threat of competition

● Our cultural history seems mostly a series of dead ends. One reason is a fear of
moving on to a more complex phase; another reason is a fear of tools
● By limiting ourselves to the small effort, we make ourselves less and less capable
even of the small thing. It’s no longer as obvious today that the Filipino writer has
mastered the short story form
● We blame our inability to sustain the big effort on our colonizers: they crushed our will
and spirit, our initiative and originality. But colonialism is not uniquely our ordeal but
rather a universal experience. Other nations went under the heel of the conqueror but
have not spent the rest of their lives whining
● If we have a heritage of greatness it’s in the ​three epic acts of the colonial period
○ the defense of the land during the two centuries of siege: war with the Dutch;
held at bay for half a century the mightiest naval power in the world at the
time
○ the Propaganda Movement; Rizal’s novels had epic intentions
○ the Revolution; the Tagalog and Pampango had taken it upon themselves to
protest the grievances of the entire archipelago
● The trend since the turn of the century, since the war, seems to be back to the
tradition of timidity, the heritage of smallness

2. Culture and History

● Introduction of the potato was a more important event in the history of the germans
than all the martial victories of King Frederick the Great
○ Made possible the industrialization of Europe and the rise of the proletariat
(1) Rescued the European masses from age-old hunger
(2) It developed them into a sturdier working class
(3) More and more people were released from farm work and became
available for factory labor
(4) Industrial progress meant more income for the masses, better homes and
schools, and increasing political power
○ (5) The rising standard of living in turn produced an art, a literature, a science
and a technology that made European culture supreme
○ The image today of European as a highly civilized, cultured, and progressive
individual can be traced back to the coming of the potato
 ● Abolishing the potato will not restore European man to his pre-potato condition.
Developments such as industrialization, democratization, and modernization have so
radically altered European man that he would still remain what he has become even
if he stopped eating potatoes
● Potatoes are the culture and history that cannot be cancelled in a desire to recover a
former innocence
● Identity is like the river in philosophy​; “You can never step into the same river twice.”
nevertheless, the Pasig remains the Pasig, though from one moment to the next, it’s
no longer the same river
● Static view of identity​: We tend to regard culture and history as static happenings. We
tend to believe that culture is simple addition, history is mere addition: we are a fixed
original identity to which certain things have been added, layer upon layer. If we
remove the layers, we end up with the true basic Filipino identity
● Culture is like a laboratory experiment in physics where the moment you add a new
ingredient, the original mixture becomes completely transformed into something
different
● With additions of events in history to our culture, the identity of the Filipino
was so transformed that there can be no going back to the original.
● Culture and history are the flowing waters that make it impossible to step into the
same river of identity twice.
● The identity of the Filipino today is of a person asking what is his identity
● A human being must keep growing and that process is irreversible. Only the retarded
have a fixed identity.
● Certain militants of today would call it nationalism when it’s the exact opposite. How
can we say we are being nationalist when we advocate a return to our pre-1521
identity when that was a clan identity, a tribal identity? ​To recapture our pre-1521
identity, we would have to abolish this nation called the Philippines.
● The Philippines was not ipso facto the archipelago we know today; our geography
was a political creation and was still changing, or being changed, up to the 18th
century.
● Neither of the cultural geography, nor of the political geography, nor of the spiritual
geography of Asia was the pre-hispanic Philippines even part of. Asia was never
home to us. ​We belonged to the word of the South Seas.​ In Tahiti, Samoa, even in
Hawaii, what survives of the aboriginal culture arouses in the Filipino some deep
ancestral emotion. If we are to identify the pre-hispanic Filipino with a cultural
geography: the pagan world of the South Seas was where he belonged. Our true
relatives are the Polynesians.
● However, ​identity is not what we were but what we have become, what we are at this
moment. And what we are at this moment is the result of how we responded to
certain challenges from outside
12 greatest events in PH history
1. The introduction of the wheel
2. The introduction of the plow
3. The introduction of road and bridge
4. The introduction of new crops
5. The introduction of new livestock
 6. The introduction of the factory
7. The introduction of paper and printing
8. The introduction of the roman alphabet
9. The introduction of calendar and clock
10. The introduction of the map and charting of the PH shape
11. The introduction of the arts of painting and architecture
12. The introduction of guisado
13. The introduction of the Bell; through the sound of the bell, Spain created the
beginnings of a national community where before, there was only a riot of identities

● These are the greatest because they have been affecting us since the 16th century
and will continue to affect this nation as long as there are Filipinos. These are the
events that first informed the identity called a Filipino
● Of lasting value, of lasting importance: these are the qualities which distinguish the
twelve events basic to our history. They are vital, to the life of the Filipino
● Culturally, Don Felipe Segundo is our godfather - the thirteen epochal events
occurred under his auspices
● The average Filipino thinks that Spain brought us nothing but religion but Spain
brought us corn and camote, coffee and tobacco, beef and bread, potatoes and
tomatoes, lechugas and repollo and even many of the trees that give our landscape
so distinctly Philippine a look
● Our culture and history is a process and the novelty is this nation-in-the-making
called the Philippines, this identity-in-progress called the Filipino

3. Proust reading
● Author took a bite of petites madeleines
● All memories came rushing back
● eating the food transported the author back in time to his/her childhood

4. (morga ocampo) Rizal’s Morga and Views of Philippine History

● Rizal’s annotations on Morga's works are written for the ​intention of sparking
nationalism rather than documenting the accurate history of prehistoric Philippines​ to
highlight the underlying principle of how the Spanish may have contributed in keeping
a record of the prehistoric history and culture of the Philippines. By saying that a
prehistoric Philippines did indeed exist, but Rizal had the voice to say that the
Spanish should be condemned for the fact that they did so with the intention of
colonialism, particularly spreading Christianity to gain control over more territory for
capital and goods
● Rizal’s annotations were censored, had the language barrier where it had a limited
audience catered to Spanish speakers and not as popular compared to his novels
Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo since they were treated more as a secondary
work.
 Philippine History:
● “Rewriting Philippine history”
○ Spanish records of Philippine history have already been documented when it
was discovered.
○ Jose Rizal first wrote Philippine history in the perspective of the colonized
rather than the colonizer.
● Antonio Regidor was supposed to publish Rizal’s annotations, but backed out after
no profit was gained, which Rizal anticipated knowing he wrote it solely for the
country.
○ Rizal ended up publishing it himself in France where he asked Ferdinand
Blumentritt to write the introduction.
● Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas
○ 8 chapters (first 7 containing political events):
1. Of the first discoveries of the Eastern Islands
2. Of the government of Dr. Francisco de Sande
3. Of the government of don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa
4. Of the government of Dr. Santiago de Vera
5. Of the government of Gomes Perez Dasmariñas
6. Of the government of don Francisco Tello
7. Of the government of don Pedro de Acuña
8. An account of the Philippine islands

Rizal’s Choice of Morga:

● Morga was “more objective”
○ Original book of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas was rare
■ Published in Mexico in 1609
○ Not a religious writer
○ More than an eyewitness, involved in the events as well
○ Was more sympathetic to the indios
○ Most accurate edition: Wenceslao Emilio Retana
■ Has most of the primary material (Archivo General de Indias) and
secondary material
■ Inaccessible; for Spanish readers
● Civil history, not religious or ecclesiastical history
○ Only secular general history of the Philippines in print
○ Austin Craig makes the point: No history of the Philippines, but a history of
Spain in the Philippines
● Morga was more trustworthy
● Morga was more sympathetic
● Morga was a primary source - witnessing and participating
● Straightforward historical annotations
○ Corrects and amplifies the points
● Strong anticlerical bias
○ Religious interpretations of events as “pious lies”
○ Aim was not to record history but to tell of their religious achievements and
educate readers
 ○ No to Dominicans
● Discrediting the work of Diego de Aduarte

Rizal’s Interpretation of Philippine History:

● Historical work is accurate
● Flaws in reconstruction of prehistoric Philippines

5. (morga rizal) Jose Rizal’s Events in the PH islands (footnotes are highlighted)

● Narrative of the PH islands both during their gentility (non-conversion) and after the
Spaniards had conquered them; and other peculiarities:
● The Islands of the waters of the Oriental ocean​ are commonly called ​“The Islands
of the West”​ by those who sail to them through the Castile demarcation line, for the
reason that, from the time one leaves Spain, one takes a route until one reaches said
islands from East to West. They are called ​Oriental Islands​ by those who navigate
through India of Portugal, from West to East.
● Properly called Philippine Islands; they are numerous, large and small, subject to the
Crown of Castile. They lie within the tropic of Cancer
● Islands were alleged to be deserted and uninhabitable but found not to be the case.
● Cebu was first island which Spain conquered.
● Capital government and principal settlement of the Spaniards were transferred to
Luzon
● People in Camarines and neighboring provinces around Manila are natives of the
island, middle-sized, of a color similar to a quince fruit, and both the men and women
have good features, with very black hair, scarce beard and are quite ingenious in
every way, keen and quick-tempered and quite resolute
● Natives from as far north as Cagayan are the same; however those of Manila and
other neighboring communities were immigrants or Malayan natives
● In some provinces of Luzon, there are natives who are of black complexion, kinky
hair, not tall in stature, clever and robust but barbarians with very little mental
capacity with no fixed settlements
● Luzon native clothing before the advent of Spaniards in the land:
○ Men: clothes made of cangan fabric, no collar, short sleeves, length beyond
the waist, bahag, kerchief wrapped over the forehead, gold chain on neck,
gold bracelets, strings of stones tied around their legs
● Women in Zambales wore sayas with white cotton sheets wound around the waist
down to the feet while principal women wore scarlet or silk with gold thread with gold
jewelry
● Men and women are clean and neat, dress gracefully and are careful with their hair
and teeth
● Women do needlework, weave blankets, spin cotton, keep house, cook meals, raise
chicken and pigs, do the house chores. Men engage in field work, fishing, boating,
farming
● Daily food is rice, boiled fish, pork or venison, boiled sweet potatoes, etc
● Drank tuba (juice or sap of the palm tree), when it is fermented, it becomes liquor
● Weapons: generally, medium spears, shields of light wood, four inch white dagger on
the waist
● Vessel: bangkas or vintas; used to transport merchandise
● May fruit trees in the land: santol, mabolo, tamarind, jack fruit, anonas, papayas,
guayaba, oranges, citrus and lemons, bananas
● Large varieties of chickens, wild deer, wild boar, porcupine, carabaos, country fowl,
turtle doves, small maya birds etc. There were no horses, mares, or donkeys in the
islands until the Spaniards brought them over from China and New Spain
● Fishing of all kinds of fish is very greatly indulged in and is quite productive; this
industry is quite general in the country
● There is an abundance of seafood: sardines, bass, bacocos, dace eels, biduca,
tanguingue, flounders, plantanos and tarakitos, pin-pointed fish, golden fish, eels,
large and small oysters, mollusks, crabs, shrimps, sea-spiders, marine crabs etc
● Usually eaten by natives: lawlaw/dilis (salted and small dried sardines)
● Buyo chewing is indulged in by the natives and the Spaniards regularly. It is a habit
among well-to-do natives as a show of greatness and luxury to carry with them buy
when they go out of their house

● Visayan islands: called the lands of the tattooed people; natives are good-looking
and of good disposition, living in better conditions and having nobler manners than
those in the islands of Luzon.
○ They differ in the way they wear their hair: men wear queue and their bodies
are tattooed, with the exception of the face
○ Wore gold and ivory earrings and bracelets, kerchief around the head in the
manner of a turban, vaquero shirts with tight sleeves without a collar, falling
down to the middle of the thighs, closed in front, made of colored hemp or silk
○ They use long g-strings with many folds
○ The women are good-looking, neat and they walk gracefully. They have long
black hair wound around the head, wear multi-colored blankets or sheets
around the waist falling down their legs, and dresses
○ The men and women go out without outer garments (unlike the Tagalogs who
always put on a kind of cloak) and are barefooted, but well-adorned with gold
chains and engraved earrings and bracelets
● Weapons: long knives, short and curved knives, single-edged knives, spears and
cuirasses, vessels and sea craft similar to those used by the natives of Luzon
● Engaged in the same occupations, raise the same fruits and have the same
industries
● Less inclined to tilling of the soil but are proficient seamen and fond of war and
aggressive expeditions
● Mindanao was not entirely pacified
● Language
○ Language spoken in Luzon is different from Visayas
○ In Luzon, there is no uniform language; the Cagayans, Ilocanos, Zambalenos
and Pampangos have their own. The Tagalogs have a rich and abundant
language whereby all that one desires to say can be expressed in varied
ways and with elegance, and it is not difficult to learn and to speak the same
● Writing
○ Writing is well developed
○ 15 Characters resembling Greek or Arabic; 3 vowels, 12 consonants
○ Rizal in footnotes: the same can’t be said today (that writing is well
developed); education now at the hands of the friars, who were accused of
wanting the brutalization of the country
○ Done on bamboo pieces or on paper; the line beginning from right to left as in
Arabic writing
○ Footnotes: it seems they wrote in two ways: vertical and horizontal
● Houses
○ In all the islands, houses were built on the shores of the sea besides the
rivers and streams, natives lived near each other forming barrios or villages
and towns where they plant rice and raise their palm trees, nipa plantations,
orchards of bananas, etc. they establish their devise for trapping fish
○ Houses of ordinary people:
Houses are built on poles or posts high from the ground, with narrow rooms
and low ceilings made of wood, or bamboo, covered with nipa roofing. The
ground is fenced by rods and pieces of bamboo where they raise chickens
and animals and where they pound and clean rice. One goes up the house
through stairs made of two bamboo trunks. On the upper part of the house, is
their open batalan or back piazza where washing and bathing are performed.
Grounds are penetrated by waters
● Prominent people live on built on tree-trunks and thick posts with many sleeping and
living rooms, strong and large boards and trunks, many furnitures, nipa roofing
● No kings or lords, there were principals known among natives, some more important,
each having his own followers and henchmen
○ They govern and rule their subjects, attend to their problems and needs
○ They in turn received the people’s respect and esteem, as well as their
descendants who were exempt from rendering service
○ The privileges of a principalship were also enjoyed by women of noble birth at
par with men
■ Footnote: filipinos were ahead of the Europeans, whose women lose
their nobility when they marry plebeians and among whose descent is
along the male line which offers the least guarantee
● Law
○ Morga says that the laws throughout the islands followed the traditions and
customs of their ancients in accordance with the unwritten statutes
○ Rizal says in the footnotes: “The indio since childhood learned by heart the
traditions of his people...but at least he knew them, and not as it happens
today that wise laws are written, but the people neither know nor understand
them..”
● Had social classes: (Principal People, timaguas = plebeians, and saguiguilires)
○ Namamahayes: slaves whose children will also serve in the same capacity
■ Footnote: they are currently called kasama
 ■ The abundance of slaves and their social condition then made it easy
for Filipino chiefs to lose their independence and liberty, they accepted
tyranny from those who were stronger than they
○ Marriage
■ Tyranny among chiefs or the higher social classes were highly
misinterpreted given the number of inter-marriages among social
classes. The woman carries no dowry which represent a
compensation for being a burden.
○ Inheritance
■ The numerous distinctions of inheritance for legitimate children,
children of slaves but saved their mothers, prove a high degree of
culture and morality of the ancient filipinos
● Slavery/Punishment
○ For the case of thievery, issues like such were treated so severely that many
Filipinos would drown rather than face punishment
○ Also another way of finding the guilty, people were made to chew rice and
spit. The fear causes an increase in heart rate and effects the drying of the
mouth, therefore the badly chewed rice would be the perpetrator
○ Morga mentions that henchmen of principalia were punished, made slaves, or
killed, upon committing any slight offense or fault
○ Rizal says in the footnotes that after the conquest, the evil became worse
since the Spaniards would make them slaves without these pretexts and even
if the indios were not under their jurisdiction. The indios were treated under
inhuman conditions under Spanish rule
○ Morga discusses slavery (namamahay and saguiguilires)
○ Rizal says in the footnotes that Spanish rule encountered little resistance
because of this social condition (slavery). The people were accustomed to
bondage and would not defend them against invaders since it was just a
change of masters while nobles accepted foreign tyranny when they found it
stronger than theirs
● Religion
○ Pagan Filipinos
■ It was the effect of an excess of naturalism and absence of religious or
moral prohibition
○ Gods
■ Every people believed what is their own (Anitos for the Filipinos),
Morga seems to impose the idea of a true God as an absolute and
objective truth that everything else was to be seen as worshipping the
devil
■ “What is more natural than to worship the symbol of the beautiful, of
the eternal, of light, of life, of Divinity itself?” Morga cannot simply just
say that “they did not take paints to reason out how to find Him
○ Death/Burial Rights
■ They buried dead in their own houses, no ceremony or funeral rites;
they would later on indulge in eating and drinking after grieving
(Morga)
 ■ We find it more natural and pious for them to venerate the remains of
the parents to whom they owe everything and they call ‘second gods
on earth,” than to venerate the memory, bones, hair of certain saints
■ There was something more (than what morga describes), eulogies are
given by mourners much like the manner today, the more important
ones were anointed and embalmed with aromatic liquours….
■ Again, for the Filipinos they attributed divinity to their father when they
died, a much more natural than the monastic fanaticism of attributing it
to unfamiliar saints. The Filipinos faced it with tranquility, certain to be
reunited with their Anitos, compared to old men who attributed their
sickness and death as divine ruling
■ “In this connection” that primitive religion of the ancient Filipinos was
more in conformity with the doctrine of Christ and of the first Christians
than the religion of the friars. Christ came to the world to teach the
doctrine of love and hope that may console the poor in his misery, that
may lift up the downcast and may serve as a balm for all the sorrows
of life.”
■ The banquets that occur after (Called Tibao) resulted in the belief that
the one who died will be happy
● Transferring of Natives
○ Could only transfer from one island to the another after paying their tribute
○ Can transfer to an island with a doctrine school but not vice versa (i.e. transfer
to an island without a doctrine school)
○ Only restricted to one barangay and one group
○ Cannot leave their towns for their enterprises/jobs unless granted permission
by the Governor/provincial magistrates and justices
■ Footnote: May be the cause for the decline of agriculture. Process for
getting permission and grants to transfer to their plantations took too
long and was too tedious
● Spaniards Staying in the Philippines
○ Spaniards not allowed to stay for too long except to collect tribute and taxes
■ Footnote: So for the natives not to

Insights

● Rizal’s footnotes give us an insight on how much things have changed with regard to
the condition of the Filipinos after colonization
● It shows us the contrasting perspectives of a foreigner (Morga) and a native Filipino
(Rizal) on the Philippines

6. Pigafetta’s Account
Context: Pigafetta is an explorer who travelled alongside Ferdinand Magellan
- Starts on the island of Zamal (Samar)
- The Spaniards have a friendly encounter with natives
- They exchanged gifts
- Spaniards: red caps, mirrors, combs, bells, ivory, bocasine
 - Natives: fish, jar of palm wine (uraca), bananas, two coconuts and a
promise to bring more food in the coming days
- Pigafetta talks about the importance of the palm tree
- Produces coconuts
- Produces oil and vinegar
- Distills a liquor when bearing a hole at the heart of the palm
- Sweet but tart
- The natives were very pleasant and conversable
- The Captain-General grew fond of them and took them to his ship
- The natives returned a few days later with coconuts, palm wine, oranges and a cock
- People called the “Caphri” live near the island
- Holes in their ears that could fit an arm
- Naked except for a bark of tree
- Chiefs wore cloth embroidered with silk
- Long black hair up to the waist
- Use daggers, knives and spears ornamented with gold
- A few days later, a different group of natives approached their island
- The Captain General used his slave to interpret their conversation
- Exchanged gifts once more
- The general wished to become “casi casi” or brother to the king [of the new
group of natives] and the king agreed
- The two feasted and continued to exhange gifts
- The Captain-General taught the king some words
- Dined with the prince (son of the king)
- They visited the land of the king
- Very rich in gold; almost everything in the king’s house contained some form
of gold
- On Easter day, they held mass
- The kings willingly worhsipped the cross during the mass
- When asked about their religion, the kings answered that they did not worship
anything but would raise their hands to “Abba”
- The Captain-General asked if the king had any enemies and offered to destroy them
- The king replied that it is not the season to do so
- The Spaniards travelled to another island to buy merchandise (the previous king
recommended)
- They traded
- If the Captain-General wishes to become friends with this king, he would have
to send a drop of blood from his right arm as a sign of sincere friendship
- The Captain-General started to spread their faith by teaching the king how to
pray
- Shared teachings from the bible such as Adam and Eve, creation story, etc.
- Offered to baptize the natives as they did not want to force their faith
- The natives willingly accepted the faith
- Ended with Captain vs. Lapu-Lapu story
- Made clear that the Captain was Magellan
- His death was heroic
- Allowed his men to retreat while he kept fighting
Research on Prehistory
Recent archaeological discoveries in the Philippines and their bearing on the prehistory of
Eastern Asia
Dixon, Roland Burrage. "Recent archaeological discoveries in the Philippines and their bearing on the prehistory
of Eastern Asia." ​Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society(​ 1930): 225-229.

● Burial caves found in the Visayan archipelago

○ Human remains associated with Chinese porcelain vessels datatable as far
as the Sung Dynasty
○ The caves showed no signs of materials that dated far back from the era of
the Chinese trade
● 1926 Construction of Dam in the Novaliches River
○ A prehistoric Village and cemetery site was discovered.
○ Brought to the attention of Professor H. Otley Beyer, head of the department
of Anthropology at the University of the Philippines
■ Found eighteen thousand specimens representing five successive
archaeological horizons
○ (1st layer) Uppermost: contained Chinese Celadons, Porcelains and other
ceramic ware, dating back to the early Sung Dynasty
○ (2nd layer) : 2 starta belonging to the Iron Age
○ (3rd layer): 2 purely stone age levels

● Professor Beyer recognition of the two distinct neolithic horizons

○ The later: Characterized by well polished implements associated with fairly
good handmade pottery
■
○ The earlier: only partly polished and associated with a cruddery pottery type

Glances: prehistory of the Philippines

//ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/prehistory-of-the-philippines/?fbclid=IwAR1CG1YxTzYCIp86x
4_44IdLZbxSUt7sae0KC9kTZ-IjEHB16OwVYxiKzJE

● Paleolithic Culture:
○ The pleistocene Epoch:Man’s story in the Philippines began and was dated 1 to 3 million years
ago
○ Cagayan valley- where the earliest presence of people were recognized.
■ Stone tools were in the form of rock formation were sent as proof of the presence.
■ Dates back to 9 to 7 million years roughly around 700,000 years ago
● The Tabon Cave of Palawan
○ Tabon man- the earliest evidence of man in the philippines
■ Homo sapiens sapiens
● Social Life in the New Stone Age
○ In the New Stone Age, man transitioned from “food procurer/gatherer” to “food provider”
 ■ Since this is a time when man learned how to “domesticate” or grow plants and
animals as food sources.
● The first evidence of this is perhaps is when man started replanting the vine
from which a tuber has been taken
○ Tubers such as:
■ Yams
■ Taros
● Can only be grown by means of cuttings
● Played a part in native rituals
● One of the items placed in ritual boxes by ritual
specialists from the people in the Cordillera
mountains
○ belongs to the genus "Dioscorea"
■ “Name” (​Na-me)
■ “Calot” (​Ka-lot)
■ “Biking” ​(Bi-king)
■ Man learned how to grow plants of different varieties with different timelines
● Allowed them to have sources of food all throughout the year
● Allowed them to have different food staples
■ Way of planting: “Kaingin” or slash-and-burn or dry cultivation
○ The effect of this transition is that man now has the time to spend more time with his brethren -
since his survival requires less time to travel in search of food
○ Plus, coupled with this development is the fact that man is able to develop advance tools, that
allowed him to depend less on nature for survival
○ Basically, in this section, man developed advanced ways and tools for survival, that allowed
them to worry less about it which allowed them to spend more time creating relationships.
○ This is also the time when people started to trade “tools” from each other - like earthenware
pottery, farm tools, clothing.
■ The trade is not limited between kinships, it was also between different nationalities
● As evidence by jade beans found in the Manunngul cave in Palawan during
the latter part of the New Stone Age
○ There is no evidence that jade beans are made in Palawan - so this
suggest it came from other places - most probably in the mainland
of asia
● Also as evidence by pottery - since pottery was already being used by
Japanese since 11 thousand BC, a much earlier time than 6 thousand BC
which is the time when pottery is present in both ends of the philippines
○ Suggests that there might be a time that there have been extensive
trading between asian nations
○ “ An interesting feature of life during the New Stone Age in these islands is the appearance of
the first signs of man’s beliefs in the reality of things that are different from the sensible world”
■ As evidenced by
● Man-made things are found together with the remains of the dead, such as:
○ Polished stones
○ Shell adzes
○ Shell disc pendants and shell lime container found in Duyong Cave
burial in Palawan
○ “The society that existed during the New Stone Age in these islands served as the base for the
growth of the populations later to inhabit the country with cultures that are different yet similar
in some ways with each other as members of one family. It is known that the basic populations
here were composed of some aboriginal groups before the Negrito came to be recognized as a
separate ethnic population. It has been suggested, for instance, that the Tabon Man has close
relationships with Bushmen of Australia in a number of physical characteristics. The scatter of
items of material culture in the islands as well as the whole of Southeast Asia showed
 continuous movements of people over wide areas both on land and over water spreading items
of culture, language and people themselves, not in waves of migration, as was thought of
before, but slowly through a long period of time, and in many directions. The peoples of the
Philippines speak different variations of one mother language known as the “Austronesian”
family of languages that spread from South Asia eastward and on to the Pacific world. Some of
these languages have many dialects depending on the amount of separation of one group of
people from one another. And the different languages, too, differ in degree from one another
again depending on the amount of time and distance between different culture groups.”
● The Appearance of Metal
○ Appeared during the last two thousand years before the birth of Christ
■ Earliest evidences:
● Brass needle dated around 2000 BC found in Musang Cave in Cagayan
● Bronze tools, glass beads and bracelets, gold beads in Duyong, Uyaw and
Guri Caves in Palawan
■ Earliest metals to appear are gold, bronze, brass, and copper in the form of
ornamental beads, tools like adzes and spearheads
■ First solid evidence of iron tools found in Palawan during 190 BC
● But the earliest date of the presence of iron was found in chamber B of
Manunggul cave in Lipuun Point, Palawan. The second chamber of the cave
produced the famous Manunggul Jar - used as a jar burial
■ The appearance of metal allowed man to use better tools than before - which in turn
resulted into faster labor - more production of crops
● Another crop cultivation method is introduced: mono-cropping
■ The appearance of metal suggests and promotes the outreach capacity of local
people to acquire different kind of tools or metals not produced in the country - which
also suggests that the local people are skilled in using boats at this time for the
purpose of trade
● In 1979, a boat was discovered near the city of Butuan which is made from
the wood which is later on named as “balanghai” which was date in AD 320
● Since the appearance of metal, a newly added skill of building boats is added
- apart from creating tools, pottery, clothings
○ This period is also known as the “Golden Age of Philippine Pottery”
■ Evidence first found in Kalanay Site in the island of Masbate
● The Ceramic Age
○ “A New wave of changes took place in the Philippines at about A.D. 1000 marked by the
appearance in archeological site of high- fired ceramics”
■ Proof that the trade between other nations travelled further to the west
■ First high-fired ceramics came from Laurel, Batangas in the form of the base and
portion of the side of a stoneware jar
● Which part of it is decorated with a reddish purple glaze - which is a glaze
used during this period in the kilns of Fayum, Egypt
○ Suggesting the earliest proof of the Arab with the east
■ Stoneware ascribed from the 5 dynasties of China was also found:
● Jarlet made of many colored glaze was found in Butuan city (which was
arabic in origin)
● A blue-green jar fragment was also found in Butuan city which was identified
as Persian in origin
● These evidences suggests that extensive trade happened between China
and Middle easterns - which became the outlet for Philippine trade for these
products
○ Basically, in this age, there was a lot of demand for high-fired ceramics - probably because of
its decorative appearance - which made it have high value
 ■ Because of the demand, there were a lot of trading and travelling going on - since
majority of these beautiful high-fired ceramics came from China and the Middle East
areas - which requires travel through the seas for trade
■ A lot of shipwrecks were involved
● The Ceramic Age Society
○ “By about A.D. 1000 complex societies would already have evolved in the Philippine
archipelago so that continuing and established trade through long distances over water
became possible. In specific key areas, there were large concentrations of populations
although still based on domestic economy, on the other hand, were also engaged in marketing
activities that included different networks both local and overseas. The communities that built
up along estuaries, floodplains, lakeshores, coasts and other similar areas would have grown
in size. There would be a wider dispersal of inland communities; which in turn would affect the
environment. More and areas would have been brought under cultivation, and a recession of
the forest line would result from this. In well protected bays, coves, estuarines where ships
could lie in safely, ports developed where the nuclei of foreign trade are located and radiated.
Among such township thus far located by archeological works are the estuarine and coastal
areas of Northern Luzon about Aparri and Ballesteros.”
■ Because of the extensive trade between nations - with only ships as the main
transportation between trades - people began flocking areas near seas
■ This is the age when Philippines has began densely populated
■ “The overseas trade took advantage of the existence of these local trade networks
and made use of these systems in order to distribute their own goods specially into
the interior, and where there were no good port facilities where their ships could berth
while conducting their business. Thus, systems of wholesale were adapted where the
Chinese merchants for instance would wait a number of months for their clients to
dispose in retail the bulk of items they have received.”
○ Basically, the Philippines at this age has adapted a system in which trading is the major source
of income
■ More advanced tools have now been introduced - and now in large quantities
■ The crop cultivation have now become established