Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Philippine history is frequently dismissed as “beginning with the Spanish and
ending with the Americans”, yet the modern country is a result of many diverse
influences - Malay, Chinese, Spanish and American - that have collided in the
archipelago down the centuries. While the influence of Spain and the US is
significant, recent scholarship has thrown light on the native and Islamic
civilizations that flourished here before Magellan's arrival in 1521, and - thanks
to new archeological discoveries - their highly developed trade links with the
rest of Asia. Today one issue looms over all others: in 1960 the population of
the Philippines was just 27 million; in 2014 it was estimated to have topped
100 million. Such explosive growth has meant that real economic gains made
in the last fifty years have had a negligible effect on poverty and it remains,
along with corruption, one of the country's biggest problems.
Prehistory
Human fossil remains found in Palawan suggest that humans first migrated to the
Philippines across land bridges from Borneo during the Ice Age, some fifty thousand
years ago. Carbon dating of fossilized human remains discovered at the Tabon Caves in
Palawan showed so-called “
Tabon Man
” was living in the cave about 22,000 years ago.
Deeper excavations of the caves indicated humans were in the area from 45,000 to
50,000 years ago.
he
Aeta
or Negritos, the country's indigenous people, are said to be descended from
these first migrants. Successive migrations populated the islands through the centuries.
Malays
from Indonesia and the Malay peninsula streamed into the archipelago more
than two thousand years ago, sailing across the Sulu Sea and settling first in the Visayas
and southwestern Luzon. Their outrigger boats, equipped with lateen sails, each carried
a family or clans led by a chief. Once ashore, they remained together in villages
- known as barangays, after the name for their boats (
balangays
). The bulk of Filipinos
today, at least in the Visayas and Mindanao, are descended from these Malay settlers.
Hindu kingdoms and Islamic sultanates
The early Malay communities gradually developed into a complex patchwork of
kingdoms such as the Rajahnates of Butuan and Cebu, influenced by the powerful
Hindu empires
in Java and Sumatra. Several archeological finds hint at the
sophistication and wealth of these early civilizations: the Laguna Copperplate
Inscription, the earliest writing found in the Philippines, dates from around 900 AD
and concerns a debt of gold in the Hindu-Malay state of Tondo, around today's Manila
900-1535
1380
1475
So-called “Classical States”
period; the archipelago ruled by
Hindu-influenced kingdoms
Karim ul' Makdum
establishes the Islamic
Sultanate of Sulu
Shariff Mohammed Kabungsuwan
establishes the Islamic Sultanate
of Maguindanao
