History of the Philippines (pre-1521)
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This article covers the vast historical period of the Philippines before the first arrival of Europeans in 1521. This period had shown the immense change that took hold of the archipelago from Stonge Age cultures in 30000 BC to the emergence of developed thalassocratic civilizations in the 4th century AD.
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[edit] Stone-Age humans arrive (30000 BC)
Human fossil records indicate that the Philippines may have been inhabited for thousands of years. According to earlier archaeological findings, the first man in the Philippines came around islands with Asia which Professor H. Otley Beyer, eminent American authority on Philippine archeology and anthropology, dubbed the "Dawn Man". Yet the oldest human fossil found in the Philippines thus far is the 22,000-year-old skull cap of a "Stone-Age Filipino" discovered by Dr. Robert B. Fox, American anthropologist of the National Museum, inside Tabon Cave, Palawan, on May 28, 1962 and dubbed the "Tabon Man".
The Tabon caves of Palawan indicate settlement for at least 30,500 years; these hunter-gatherers used stone flake tools. (In Mindanao, the existence and importance of these prehistoric tools was noted by famed José Rizal himself, because of his acquaintance with Spanish and German scientific archaeologists in the 1880s, while in Europe.)
The custom of Jar Burial, which ranges from Sri Lanka, to the Plain of Jars, in Laos, to Japan, also was practiced in the Tabon caves of Palawan. A spectacular example of a secondary burial jar is owned by the National Museum of the Philippines, a National Treasure, with a jar lid topped with two figures, one the deceased, arms crossed, hands touching the shoulders, the other a steersman, both seated in a proa, with only the mast missing from the piece. Secondary burial was practiced across all the islands of the Philippines during this period, with the bones reburied, some in the burial jars. Seventy-eight earthenware vessels were recovered from the Manunggul cave, Palawan, specifically for burial.
About 30,000 years ago, the Negritos, who became the ancestors of today's Aetas, or Aboriginal Filipinos, descended from their northernly abodes in Central Asia passing through the Indian Subcontinent and reaching the Andamanese Islands. From thereon, the Negritos continued to venture on land bridges reaching Southeast Asia. While some of the Negritos settled in Malaysia, becoming what is now the Orang Asli people, several Negrito tribes continued on to the Philippines through Borneo. They had a Paleolithic culture. They live a nomadic lifestyle, roaming the forests and living in crude dwellings consisting of leaves and sticks. But they were skillfully adept in using the bow and arrow as a primary defense weapon. They also gathered wild plants for consumption.
[edit] 3000 BC onward
After the last Ice Age, the sea level rose an estimated 35m (110 feet), which cut the land bridges, filling the shallow seas north of Borneo. Thus the only method of migration left was the dugout proa, built by felling trees and hollowing them out with adzes. An image of this method of travel can be seen on the Manunggul Jar, a National Treasure of the Philippines.
About 3000 BC, a loose confederation of peoples known as 'Nesiots', from what today is Indonesia, came to the Philippines. They were to become the ancestors of the present-day Luzon and Mindanao hill tribes. There were two waves of successive Nesiot immigration. The first wave saw a people who have light complexions, aquiline noses, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. The second wave of migration were shorter and heavier in physique, having darker complexion, thick lips, large noses, and heavy jaws. Those of the second wave of migration had epics and folk stories mixed with superstitions. From these people came the Luzon hill tribes.
[edit] Austronesian-speakers arrive 4000-2000 BC
Starting 4000-2000 BC[1] 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. Most 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 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.
[edit] Thalassocracies and international trade (400AD - 1521)
[edit] The emergence of Barangay city-states and trade (500AD-800AD)
Since at least the 3rd century, the indigenous peoples were in contact with other Southeast Asian and East Asian nations.
Fragmented ethnic groups established numerous city-states formed by the assimilation of several small political units known as barangay each headed by a Datu or headman (still in use among non-Hispanic Filipino ethnic groups) and answerable to a king, titled Rajah. Even scattered barangays, through the development of inter-island and international trade, became more culturally homogenous by the 4th century. Hindu-Buddhist culture and religion flourished among the noblemen in this era. Many of the barangay were, to varying extents, under the de-jure jurisprudence of one of several neighboring empires, among them the Malay Sri Vijaya, Javanese Majapahit, Brunei, Melaka empires, although de-facto had established their own independent system of rule. Trading links with Sumatra, Borneo, Thailand, Java, China, India, Arabia, Japan and the Ryukyu Kingdom flourished during this era. A thalassocracy had thus emerged based on international trade.
In the earliest times, the items which were prized by the peoples included jars, which were a symbol of wealth throughout South Asia, and later metal, salt and tobacco. In exchange, the peoples would trade feathers, rhino horn, hornbill beaks, beeswax, birds nests, resin, rattan.2
In the period between the 7th century to the beginning of the 1400s, numerous prosperous centers of trade had emerged, including the Kingdom of Namayan which flourished alongside Manila bay,[2], Cebu, Butuan, the Kingdom of Sanfotsi situated in Pangasinan, the Kingdoms of Zabag and Wak-Wak situated in Pampanga[3] and Aparri (which specialized in trade with Japan and the Kingdom of Ryukyu in Okinawa).
[edit] The growth of Literature and Hindu-Buddhist culture (900AD - 1380)
With the growth of a thalassocratic civilization, came the growth of literature. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is from 900 AD (Saka Era year 822) is considered to be the end of prehistory as far as documents are concerned. It was found in the Laguna de Bay of Manila. In 1989, the Philippines National Museum acquired it. The inscription forgives the descendants of Namwaran from a debt of 926.4 grams of gold, and is granted by the chief of Tondo (an area in Manila) and the authorities of Paila, Binwangan and Pulilan, which are all locations in Luzon. The words are a mixture of Sanskrit, Old Malay, Old Javanese and Old Tagalog. The subject matter proves the highly developed society that existed in the Philippines prior to the Spanish colonization, as well as refuting earlier claims of the Philippines being a cultural isolate in Asia; the references to the Chief of Medan in Indonesia claim the cultural and trade links with various other affiliated empires and territories in other parts of the Malay Archipelago. (See Nusantara).
[edit] The Luzon Empire (1279 - 1521)
The Luzon Empire was an ancient empire once located around the Manila Bay region of the Philippines. It's capital was Tondo. It's territories covered most of what is now Central Luzon, extending from the delta region that surrounds Manila Bay, all the way into the interior along head waters of the surrounding rivers in the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan.
Starting the 14th century, some of the independent city-states or barangays of the northern Philippines became tributaries of the Ming Dynasty of China.
[edit] Caste System
By the 9th century, a highly developed society had already established several castes with set professions: The Datu or ruling class, the Maharlika or noblemen, Timawa the freemen, and the dependent class which is divided into two, the Aliping Namamahay(Slave) and Aliping Saguiguilid(Serfs).
[edit] The emergence of Baybayin script from Classical Kawi (1200 onwards)
One example of pre-Spanish Philippine script on a burial jar, derived from Brahmi survives, as most of the writing was done on perishable bamboo or leaves; an earthenware burial jar dated 1200s or 1300s with script was found in Batangas. This script is called in Tagalog Baybayin or Alibata.
[edit] The growth of Islamic Sultanates (1380 - 1521)
In 1380, Makhdum Karim, the first Islamic missionary to the Philippines brought Islam to the Archipelago. Subsequent visits of Arab, Malay and Javanese missionaries helped strengthen the Islamic faith of the Filipinos, most of whom (except for those in the south) would later become Christian under the Spanish colonization. The Sultanate of Sulu, the largest Islamic Kingdom of South East Asia and the Malay Archipelago, encompassed parts of Malaysia and the Philippines. The royal house of the Sultanate claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad.
Around 1405, the year that the war over succession ended in the Majapahit Empire, Sufi traders introduced Islam into the Hindu-Malayan empires and for about the next century the southern half of Luzon and the islands south of it were subject to the various Muslim sultanates of Borneo. During this period, the Japanese established a trading post at Aparri and maintained a loose sway over northern Luzon.
[edit] Scientific claims
Philippine history and Anthropologists had only until very recently been limited to the rare artifacts that were discovered after the Spanish period, which had seen many artifacts from the pre-Hispanic era destroy or reconverted. A good example of which is the Spanish walled city of Intramuros in Manila, whose stone bricks were ripped from the original fortified city wall (known in Malay as a Kota) of pre-hispanic Maynilad. This can explain the development of theories over the 20th century.
In February 1976, Dr. Fritjof Voss, a German scientist who studied the geology of the Philippines, questioned the validity of the theory of land bridges. He maintained that the Philippines was never part of mainland Asia. He claimed that it arose from the bottom of the sea and, as the thin Pacific crust moved below it, continued to rise. It continues to rise today. The country lies along great Earth faults that extend to deep submarine trenches. The resulting violent earthquakes caused what is now the land masses forming the Philippines to rise to the surface of the sea. Dr. Voss also pointed out that when scientific studies were done on the earth's crust from 1964 to 1967, it was discovered that the 35-kilometer- thick crust underneath China does not reach the Philippines. Thus, the latter could not have been a land bridge to the Asian mainland. The matter of who the first settlers were has not been really resolved. This is being disputed by anthropologists, as well as Professor H. Otley Beyer, who claims that the first inhabitants of the Philippines came from the Malay Peninsula. The Malays now constitute the largest portion of the populace and what Filipinos now have is an Austronesian culture.
Anthropologist F. Landa Jocano of the University of the Philippines contends that what fossil evidence of ancient men show is that they not only migrated to the Philippines, but also to New Guinea, Borneo, and Australia. He says that there is no way of determining if they were Negritoes at all. However, what is sure is that there is evidence the Philippines was inhabited as early as 21,000 or 22,000 years ago. In 1962, a skull cap and a portion of a jaw, presumed to be those of a human being, were found in a Tabon Cave in Palawan Province. The discovery may show that man came earlier to the Philippines than to the Malay Peninsula. If this is true, the first inhabitants of the Philippines did not come from the Malay Peninsula. Jocano further 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. 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. The claimed evidence for this is fossil material found in different parts of the region and the movements of other people from the Asian mainland during historic times. He states that these ancient men cannot be categorized under any of the historically identified ethnic groups (Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos) of today. Some Filipino ethnic groups were Hindu-Buddhist pagans while others were Muslims. The Hindu-Buddhist pagans were converted to Christianity by the Spaniards. The Americans later arrived and introduced further cultural changes, which made the Filipinos more and more different from the peoples of other Southeast Asian countries.
[edit] References
- ^ Capitol Hill. Accessed October 12, 2006.
- ^ http://www.pasay.gov.ph/history%20kingdom%20new.htm[dead link – history]
- ^ The Medieval Geography of Sanfotsi and Zabag
[edit] External links
The Philippines: Then and Now, new findings and studies regarding prehistoric Philippines.
