the pre hispanic period

The Pre-Hispanic Period in the Phillipines

The Pre-Hispanic Period in the Phillipines

• What does prehistory mean?• Stone-Age (c.50,000 - c.500 BC)• The Callao Man (c. 41 000 BC )• Tabon Man (c. 24000 or 22,000 BC)• 5000-2000 BC—Austronesian• Early Metal Age (c.500 BC - c.1 AD)• 100 BC onward• Other significant Events before Spanish Colonization

• The Migration Theories

What can you see in the picture?

Philippine Prehistory : Meaning

• It covers the events prior to the written history of what would become the Philippine archipelago. The current demarcation line between this period and the early history of the Philippines, 900 AD, which is the date of the first surviving written record to come from the Philippines, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.

Why shall we study the Prehistoric Period?

• It traces back the primitive culture of the Filipinos.

• It gives a hint of who were the real ancestors of the Filipinos.

• These are events that makes up the past of a Filipino towards his present environment and culture.

• This is an example of the stone age people.

• They are sometimes dressed with animal skins or leaves or sometimes naked.

• They also use tools from stones and bones of animals.

• They don’t have concrete houses like that of what we have today.

The Stone Age c. 50,000 - c. 500 BC

The Stone Age c. 50 000 – c. 500 BC

• The Stone Age covers the c. 50 000 – c. 500 BC.

• The Callao Man period together with the Tabon Man period are some of the Major Prehistoric Ages that was covered by these inclusive years.

• The first evidence of the systematic use of Stone-Age technologies in the Philippines is estimated to have dated back to about 50,000 BC.

• It traces back the events and how the early people in the Philippines live and the culture that they share to survive.

The Stone Age c. 50 000 – c. 500 BC

The Callao Man• The earliest human remains known in the

Philippines are the fossilized remains discovered in 2007 by Armand Salvador Mijares in Callao Cave, Cagayan,Philippines.

• It is a 67,000 years old single 61 millimeter metatarsal that predates Tabon Man.

• It was dated using the uranium series ablation. • It was said to be remains of the Homo sapiens. • It was the earliest human known in the

Philippines.

The Callao Man

• Callao Man was believed to exist approximately in year c. 41 000 BC.

• The primary theory surrounding the migration of Callao Man and his contemporaries to Luzon from what is believed to be the present-day Indonesia is by raft.

• Butchered animal remains were also found in the same layer of sediment, which indicates that the Callao Man had a degree of knowledge in the use of tools, although no stone tools were found.

Tabon Man • Tabon Man refers to fossilized anatomically

modern human remains discovered on the island of Palawan.

• Dr. Robert B. Fox, an American anthropologist of the National Museum of the Philippines discovered the remains on May 28, 1962.

• Tabon Man remains generally got its name “Tabon” from the cave were it was collected, the Tabon Cave in Palawan.

Tabon Man

• Tabon Cave appears to be a kind of Stone Age factory. They have both finished stone flake tools and waste core flakes having been found at four separate levels in the main chamber.

• The Tabon Man fossils are considered to have come from a third group of inhabitants, who worked the cave between 22,000 and 20,000 BCE.

Tabon Man

• The Tabon Man skullcap belongs to modern man, Homo sapiens, as distinguished from the mid-Pleistocene Homo erectus species.

• Tabon Man was pre-Mongoloid or the anthropological term of racial stock that applies to which entered Southeast Asia during the Holocene and absorbed earlier peoples to produce the modern Malay, Indonesian, Filipino, and "Pacific" peoples.

Austronesian Languages Origin5000-2000 BC

• William Henry Scott said that the Negritos were one of the origin and spread of the Austronesian Languages.

• About 25,000 B.C., Ancient Negroid people immigrate to the Philippines over a land bridge then still connecting the archipelago with the Asian mainland.

Early Metal Age

• The earliest metal tools in the Philippines were said to have first been used somewhere around 500 BC.

• It was referred to as the “incipient phase” according to Jocano which is a period between 500 BC and 1 AD.

• This was the time that the metal tool remains were recovered.

100 BC Onward

• The Philippines is believed by some historians to be the island of Chryse, the "Golden One," which is the name given by ancient Greek writers in reference to an island rich in gold east of India.

• Ptolemy locates the islands of Chryse east of the Khruses Kersonenson, the "Golden Peninsula.”

Timeline of the Pre-Hispanic Philippines

25,000 B.C. Ancient Negroid people immigrate to the Philippines over a land bridge

then still connecting the archipelago with the Asian mainland. They are food gatherers and hunters, and the forefathers of

today's Negritos. These people use bows and arrows and stone made implements. They live in caves.

5,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C. The "New Stone Age". Sea faring Malays from what is today

Indonesia come to the archipelago. These new settlers bring with them polished stone tools, boat building, bark and animal skin cloth making, pottery, rice planting, the process of cooking food in bamboo tubes, the techniques of making fire by rubbing two sticks together. The Negritos begin to move out of caves and settle in a scattered manner along the coasts and rivers.

3,000 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. A second wave of Malay immigrants arrives in the Philippines by sea. Each of their ships accommodated one small clan. Such a ship load of

people was called a barangay.

200 B.C. More civilized Malays in large numbers migrate to the Philippines. They are the racial stock of the majority of today's

Philippine populace.

200 B.C. to 1000 A.D. The Iron Age begun the artistry in the Philippines in all aspects of life and work. Earrings, beads, pendants and bangles made of clay, stone and shells are developed. Body tattooing is used as as filing and blackening teeth which were wrapped with gold foil or studded with gold fillings.

1,000 A.D. to 1,200 A.D. In the Porcelain Age trading begins extensively with Arabia, India, Annan, China and later with the Europeans. Porcelains from different Chinese dynasties are imported.

1200 to 1300. Migrants from Borneo spread into the Southern Philippines.

1300 to 1400. The Hindu empire of Majapahit on Java gains influence over parts of the islands.

1380. Islam reaches the Southern Philippines via Borneo. In islamic areas, slavery is in the following years widely replacing head-

hunting. Would be head-hunting victims become slaves that are bartered to Chinese traders. A new social order is started made up of freemen, commoners, slaves and bonded servants, all under the leadership of a datu.

1450. The Muslim sultanate of Jolo is established on the islands between Borneo and Mindanao.

1475. The Muslim sultanate of Maguindanao is founded on Mindanao. Islam spreads

throughout the archipelago and even reaches central Luzon.

The Migration Theories

Who proposed the Migration Theory?

• Henry Otley Beyer• Dr. Fritjof Voss• Felipe Landa Jocano

Henry Otley Beyer

• He is the founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines.

• He is the head of Anthropology Department for 40 years.

• Professor Beyer became the unquestioned expert on Philippine prehistory.

Dr. Fritjof Voss

• He is a German scientist who studied the geology of the Philippines.

• He 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.

Felipe Landa Jocano

• He is an Anthropologist of the University of the Philippines.

• He suggested the one of the Migration Model of the Filipino people that was named “Core Population Theory.”

Wilhelm Solheim II

• He is an American anthropologist recognized as most senior practitioner of archaeology in Southeast Asia, and as a pioneer in the study of Philippine and Southeast Asian prehistoric archaeology.

• He had his archaeological training at the University of California, Berkeley, and then spent several semesters at the University of the Philippines under Prof. H. Otley Beyer. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 1959.

• In 1997, he joined the staff of the Archaeological Studies Program at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

Migration Theories

• Land Bridge Theory• Beyer's Wave Migration Theory• Core Population Theory• Diffusion of Austronesian languages

Land Bridge Theory

• Early Filipino inhabitants were said to traval thru land bridges.

• This land bridge theory was opposed and was proved in further Migratio Theories proposed by other Anthropologists.

Beyer’s Wave of Migration

Facts presented by Beyer for his Wave of Migration Theory :

1. "Dawn Man", a cave-man type who was similar to Java man, Peking Man, and other Asian homo sapiens of 250,000 years ago.

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


3. 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.

4. 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.


Doubts on Bayer’s Wave Migration1. Beyer used the 19th century scientific

methods of progressive evolution and migratory diffusion as the basis for his hypothesis. These methods have now been proven to be too simple and unreliable to explain the prehistoric peopling of the Philippines.


2. The empirical archaeological data for the theory was based on surface finds and mere conjecture, with much imagination and unproven data included.

3. Later findings contradicted the migration theory and the existence of the "Dawn Man" postulated by Beyer.


4. Undue credit is given to Malays as the original settlers of the lowland regions and the dominant cultural transmitter.

Core Population Theory

• It is a less rigid version of the earlier wave migration theory.

• This theory holds that there weren't clear discrete waves of migration. Instead it suggests early inhabitants of Southeast Asia were of the same ethnic group with similar culture, but through a gradual process over time driven by environmental factors, differentiated themselves from one another.

Core Population Theory

• Jocano 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 Negritos at all.

• He used the Tabon Skull that was found in Palawan as evidence.

Diffusion of Austronesian languages

• 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 pre hispanic period

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