Centuries after…

You are a historian who is part of a team doing

some archaeological expedition in a site believed
to have been inhabited by humans almost 2
hundred years ago. After days of excavation, what
your team found was a sole page of a magazine
with an image of a naked woman lying on her
back. What will be your historical account about
those people on that particular society in that
certain period with the evidence discovered?
CONCEPTS OF
HISTORY
Dr. AQUILES R. DEJALDE
SOURCE: neotasaday.wordpress.com
Objectives:

 define history
 describe the uses or importance of
history
 identify the sources of history
What is
history?
ἱστορία (Greek)
“inquiry, knowledge by
investigation,
learning”
 History Defined
A. Traditional Definition
 History is the record of
the past
 It is a record of human
past from the time
written records began SOURCE: wikiwand.com
to appear. Laguna Copperplate Inscription
(Year 900)
Requires empirical and observable evidence before one can claim that a particular knowledge is true

Positivism
 Definition of History
B. Modern Definition
 History is the reconstruction of
the past based on written
records, oral history, cultural
artifacts and folk traditions.
 It is the imaginative
reconstruction of the past, the
study of events concerning
people in the past. SOURCE: en.wekepedia.org

Manunggul jars
 HISTORY AS AN ART AND SCIENCE

Historical method –
the process of
critically examining
and analysing the
records and survivals
(artifacts) of the past
 Steps to follow (Historical Method):

• Isolate the problem.

• Collect source materials, including primary
and secondary sources.
• Evaluate source material.
• Formulate hypothesis.
• Report and interpret findings.
 HISTORY AS AN ART AND SCIENCE

Historical imagination
– the process whereby
historian is required to
imagine things that
must have happened
within reasonable
ground
 HISTORY AS AN ART AND SCIENCE

Historiography – the
art of writing history
of the imaginative
reconstruction of
the past from the
data derived by the
process of historical
method
The Flying Elephant of Lena Shoal
 Sources of History

Primary Secondary
sources Sources
•Testimony of •Information from
persons, books or
eye groups other than
witnesses eyewitness
 SOURCES OF HISTORY

Written (Inscribed) Sources – history

that was transmitted through records
Graphic/ Visual Materials and
Artifacts – photographs, heirlooms
and keepsakes, arts and crafts, tools,
old structures, skeletal remains
 SOURCES OF HISTORY

Folklore/ Oral literature

Oral history through interviews
 EXTERNAL • practice of verifying the
CRITICISM authenticity of evidence by
examining its physical
characteristics; consistency
with the historical characteristic
of the time when it was
produced; and the materials
Spoliarium (1884)
by Juan Luna used for the evidence
INTERNAL • the examination of the
CRITICISM
truthfulness of the evidence
- content of the source
- circumstance of its
production
Spoliarium (1884) - author, context, and
by Juan Luna
agenda behind its creation
 UNHISTORICAL DATA

 The Maragtas (The Story)

 The Code of Kalantiaw
 The Legend of Princess Urduja
 History Defined

History is the interpretative and

imaginative study of surviving records
of the past, either written or unwritten,
in order to determine the meaning
and scope of human existence.
 Group Activity: Historians in the Making

Scenario:
Deformed skulls were found in some burial
ground in the Visayas. Upon close examination
of these skulls, it was observed that the shapes
vary. Some had normally arched foreheads but
were flat behind, others were flattened at both
front and back, and a few were flattened
asymmetrically.
normal skull
Also found in the site were sets of
foldable wooden boards, pieces of
wooden planks resembling a tourniquet,
and bandages made of indigenous
materials. One skeleton which is
smaller and quite degraded than the
others was found in-between the fold in
one of those set of wooden material.
You once read in a library a travel diary
of a Spanish priest which talk about his
encounter with this people saying “…
physical appearance matters much to
this people and that they were fond of
embellishing their bodies with tattoos
and other practices to augment their
physical appearance.”
With the given premise, create a
historiography to recreate a particular
aspect in the way the people under
investigation lives taking into account
the relevance of the evidences
presented.
Before the Spanish colonization of the Philippines,
the Bisayans practiced skull moulding as a way of
enhancing one's beauty. As mothers and midwives
are well aware, the skulls of newborn infants are so
soft if they are continuously laid on the same side,
their head become flat on that side. Many societies
have taken advantage of this reality in order to
provide their children a skull shape which conforms
to the local tenets of beauty.
The pre-colonial Bisayan skull moulding was
done with a device called tangad, a comb like
set of thin rod bound to a baby's forehead by
bandages fastened at some point behind.
This hindered the forward growth of the
frontal bone and directed it backward so that
the head grew higher at the rear.
A scientific study of twenty-two specimens found
in the country revealed considerable variation
according to the location and the amount of
pressure, whether between the forehead and the
upper or lower part of the occiput. Thus, some
had normally arched foreheads but were flat
behind, others were flattened at both front and
back, and a few were asymmetrical due to
uneven pressure (Scott, 1995).
In the Bocabulario de la lengua Bisaya of Fr. Mateo
Sanchez (1617), individuals with the desired tangad
profile were called tinangad, but flatness of the back
of the head was called puyak. The opposite of tangad
was ondo and the word was itself a comment on the
Bisayan negative attitude toward unmoulded skulls:
it meant as recorded by Father Sanchez, having the
appearance of a hunchback's hump.
Is History
useful and
relevant?
 Uses or importance of history

A. Bridging the gap

between the
present and the
past
 Uses or importance of history

B. Explaining causes
of things and
events
 Uses or importance of history

C. Projecting the
future
 Uses or importance of history

D. Interpreting
conditions of a
given space and
time
 Uses or importance of history
E. Promoting nationalism
and patriotism
Nationalism- love for one’s
country
Patriotism – willingness to
die/ sacrifice life for
one’s country