Jerry Joshua G.

Diaz GROUP I

BSA 1-1 3rd report

Culture and Technology in Prehistorical Period

Underneath the Philippines 300,000 sq. meter land, lies priceless treasures made by ancient Filipinos hundreds of year ago. These treasure reflects how reach our culture is. We may have not known it, but there are researchers that will prove this statement. One of the many people who did studies and researches about the prehistory of the Philippines is Mr. Wilhelm Solheim. According to him, Before the Second World War, the study of Philippine History is monopolized by one man, H. Otley Beyer. He doesnt believe on depending his work on factual reports but rather on adjuncts to occasional summary papers. Our people have our ancestry in the mainland of Southeast Asia. Small Groups took place from several general areas, set foot on our area of responsibility and subsequently evolved locally with the contacts of the people within the Philippines and the people from the outside. We are basically Southeast Asian, meaning our ancestors may have come from different parts of the Southeast Asia, but we are still able to develop traits that are uniquely Filipino. Major Field work is done since 1950 for the study of the Prehistory of the Philippines. It is executed through the Philippine National Museum by Chief Anthropologist Robert B. Fox, Alfredo Evangelista and several others of the museum staff. They have excavated caves from different parts of the Philippines, first; the caves in Sorsogon Province where they had found a jar-burial stone-tool assemblage with no metal remains which is against Beyers Reports that there is no Neolithic pottery in the Philippines. They had explored and excavated small islands off the east coasts of Southern Luzon where they found a jar-burial stonetool assemblage similar to what they had found with the jars and it was similar to the decorated Kalanay complex pottery of Masbate. The major work undertaken by the National Museum has been in a number of caves in Palawan. It is discovered by Fox and Santiago. Many other discoveries were uncovered. Some of these were Tabon Caves four-flake tool industries that is found which yielded radiocarbon dates between about 30,000 BC and 7,000 BC; burial jars, agate bracelets, and jade and stone beads which have radiocarbon dates of around 800 BC. There are also assemblage found but now, it contains rare bronze objects, jade ornaments, glass and gold. This phase is probably about 600 and 200 BC. Iron was added to this assemblage probably around 200 BC. Solheim claims that there are 2 factors present in the study of Philippine prehistory that are not found to any extent in the other Southeast Asian Countries. They are private collector and antiquity shops. For the last ten to 15

years, many wealthy Filipinos have been collecting cultural elements to the Philippines. Another person who did reports on Prehistory and Culture of the Philippines is Mr. Felipe Landa Jocano. According to him, it is the geographical Orientation that matters when it comes to the study of our cultural heritage, not in spatial origins. He admits that our culture is influenced by others because there is no cultural isolates in this world. We are blinded by our beliefs that Filipino Culture is ambiguous in character that we just imitate other cultures, specifically those cultures of the countries that invade us. Many Filipino People didnt appreciate how rich our culture is. Man has been here since the middle of the Pleistocene or Ice Age according to Anthropologists and Prehistorians Scientific dating technique has been a great help for knowing how long ago a given plant or animal or even things and remains lived. Carbon 14 technique has been used to date the recent archaeological findings in Palawan. Here they found fossilized human bones with stone tools. For thousand of years, diverse influences such as Chinese, Indo-Chinese, Indo-Malayan and Hindi-Indonesia contributed to shape and reshape the life ways of early Filipinos. Filipinos did not borrow trait-complexes entirely from the people they came in contact with; rather, they selected culture-traits from the flow of traditions and modified these traits to suit local needs and ways of doing things. Sadly, Filipino culture is a priceless treasure where only few people appreciate. We dont know how rich our cultural heritage is because we are blinded by western influences and false beliefs. Just like what F. Landa Jocano said, even if the structure of the identity is a mixture of elements from different and often incongorus sources; it is still the Filipino image because it is reflective of Filipino way of life, world view, temperament, behavior pattern and social structure. If its not for these cultures, how can we call ourselves Filipinos? We must be proud of our race, not ashamed of it. Every culture has its own values. We must try to open up our mind on things that we really should know for us not to be lead in wrong direction and beliefs. We should also keep in mind what Jocano said Technology is a manifestation of the culture itself. If its not because of the past, we can never have our future.