Models of migration to the Philippines
Encyclopedia
There have been several models of early human migration to the Philippines. Since H. Otley Beyer
first proposed his wave migration theory, numerous scholars have approached the question of how, when and why humans first came to the Philippines. The question of whether the first humans arrived from the south (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei as suggested by Beyer) or from the north (Yunnan via Taiwan as suggested by the Austronesian theory) has been a subject of heated debate for decades. As new discoveries have come to light, past hypotheses have been reevaluated and new theories constructed.
, founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines. Heading that department for 40 years, Professor Beyer became the unquestioned expert on Philippine prehistory, exerting early leadership in the field and influencing the first generation of Filipino historians and anthropologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists,and students the world over. According to Dr. Beyer, the ancestors of the Filipinos came in different "waves of migration", as follows:
Unfortunately, there is no definite evidence, archaeological or historical, to support this "migration theory". On the contrary, there are sufficient reasons for doubting it, including the following:
. 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 trench
es. The resulting violent earthquake
s 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.
Philippine historian William Henry Scott
has pointed out that Palawan and the Calamianes Islands are separated from Borneo by water nowhere deeper than 100 meters, that south of a line drawn between Saigon and Brunei does the depth of the South China Sea
nowhere exceeds 100 meters, and that the Strait of Malacca
reaches 50 meters only at one point. Scott also asserts that the Sulu Archipelago
is not the peak of a submerged mountain range connecting Mindanao and Borneo, but the exposed edge of three small ridges produced by techtonic tilting of the sea bottom in recent geologic times. According to Scott, it is clear that Palawan and the Calamianes do not stand on a submerged land bridge, but were once a hornlike protuberance on the shoulder of a continent whose southern shoreline used to be the present islands of Java and Borneo. Mindoro and the Calamianes are separated by a channel more than 500 meters deep. Writing later in 1994, Scott would conclude that "It is probably safe to say that no anthropologist accepts the Beyer Wave Migration Theory today."
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 Negritos 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. 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, kayumangging 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.
Austronesian
groups descended from Yunnan Plateau in China and settled in what is now the Philippines
by sailing using balangay
s or by traversing land bridge
s coming from Taiwan
. Many of these Austronesians settled on the Philippine islands and became the ancestors of the present-day Filipinos and later colonizing most of the Pacific islands and Indonesia to the south. The Cagayan valley of northern Luzon
contains large stone tool
s 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.
and developed Pre-Austronesian. Proto-Austranesian then later developed and spread among seafarers from the area to the rest of Island Southeast Asia and areas along the South China Sea. In support of this idea Solheim notes there is little or no indication that Pre- or Proto Malayo-Polynesian was present in Taiwan. According to Solheim, "The one thing I feel confident in saying is that all native Southeast Asians are closely related culturally, genetically and to a lesser degree linguistically."
H. Otley Beyer
Henry Otley Beyer was an American anthropologist, who spent most of his adult life in the Philippines teaching Filipinos and other scholars about Philippine indigenous culture...
first proposed his wave migration theory, numerous scholars have approached the question of how, when and why humans first came to the Philippines. The question of whether the first humans arrived from the south (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei as suggested by Beyer) or from the north (Yunnan via Taiwan as suggested by the Austronesian theory) has been a subject of heated debate for decades. As new discoveries have come to light, past hypotheses have been reevaluated and new theories constructed.
Beyer's Wave Migration Theory
The most widely known theory of the prehistoric peopling of the Philippines is that of H. Otley BeyerH. Otley Beyer
Henry Otley Beyer was an American anthropologist, who spent most of his adult life in the Philippines teaching Filipinos and other scholars about Philippine indigenous culture...
, founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines. Heading that department for 40 years, Professor Beyer became the unquestioned expert on Philippine prehistory, exerting early leadership in the field and influencing the first generation of Filipino historians and anthropologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists,and students the world over. According to Dr. Beyer, the ancestors of the Filipinos came in different "waves of migration", as follows:
-
- "Dawn Man", a cave-man type who was similar to Java manJava ManJava Man is the name given to fossils discovered in 1891 at Trinil - Ngawi Regency on the banks of the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia, one of the first known specimens of Homo erectus...
, Peking ManPeking ManPeking Man , Homo erectus pekinensis, is an example of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing , China...
, and other Asian homo sapiens of 250,000 years ago. - The aboriginal pygmy group, the NegritoNegritoThe Negrito are a class of several ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia.Their current populations include 12 Andamanese peoples of the Andaman Islands, six Semang peoples of Malaysia, the Mani of Thailand, and the Aeta, Agta, Ati, and 30 other peoples of the Philippines....
s, who arrived between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago via land bridgeLand bridgeA land bridge, in biogeography, is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonise new lands...
s. - The sea-faring tool-using IndonesiaIndonesiaIndonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n group who arrived about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago and were the first immigrants to reach the Philippines by sea. - The seafaring, more civilized Malays who brought the Iron ageIron AgeThe Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
culture and were the real colonizers and dominant cultural group in the pre-Hispanic Philippines.
- "Dawn Man", a cave-man type who was similar to Java man
Unfortunately, there is no definite evidence, archaeological or historical, to support this "migration theory". On the contrary, there are sufficient reasons for doubting it, including the following:
-
- 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.
- The empirical archaeological data for the theory was based on surface finds and mere conjecture, with much imagination and unproven data included.
- Later findings contradicted the migration theory and the existence of the "Dawn Man" postulated by Beyer.
- Undue credit is given to Malays as the original settlers of the lowland regions and the dominant cultural transmitter.
Objections to the Land Bridge Theory
In February 1976, 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 AsiaAsia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. 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 trench
Oceanic trench
The oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They are also the deepest parts of the ocean floor....
es. The resulting violent earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
s 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.
Philippine historian William Henry Scott
William Henry Scott (historian)
William Henry Scott was a historian of the Gran Cordillera Central and Prehispanic Philippines. He personally rejected the description anthropologist as applying to himself.-Early life:...
has pointed out that Palawan and the Calamianes Islands are separated from Borneo by water nowhere deeper than 100 meters, that south of a line drawn between Saigon and Brunei does the depth of the South China Sea
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around...
nowhere exceeds 100 meters, and that the Strait of Malacca
Strait of Malacca
The Strait of Malacca is a narrow, stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is named after the Malacca Sultanate that ruled over the archipelago between 1414 to 1511.-Extent:...
reaches 50 meters only at one point. Scott also asserts that the Sulu Archipelago
Sulu Archipelago
The Sulu Archipelago is a chain of islands in the southwestern Philippines. This archipelago is considered to be part of the Moroland by the local rebel independence movement. This island group forms the northern limit of the Celebes Sea....
is not the peak of a submerged mountain range connecting Mindanao and Borneo, but the exposed edge of three small ridges produced by techtonic tilting of the sea bottom in recent geologic times. According to Scott, it is clear that Palawan and the Calamianes do not stand on a submerged land bridge, but were once a hornlike protuberance on the shoulder of a continent whose southern shoreline used to be the present islands of Java and Borneo. Mindoro and the Calamianes are separated by a channel more than 500 meters deep. Writing later in 1994, Scott would conclude that "It is probably safe to say that no anthropologist accepts the Beyer Wave Migration Theory today."
Core Population Theory
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 racial group (Pithecanthropus) with similar culture, but through a gradual process over time driven by environmental factors, differentiated themselves from one another.Jocano's theory of earlier evolution and movement
Anthropologist F. Landa JocanoF. Landa Jocano
Felipe Landa Jocano is an anthropologist and a Professor Emeritus at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines and Executive Director of PUNLAD Research House, Inc...
of the University of the Philippines
University of the Philippines
The ' is the national university of the Philippines. Founded in 1908 through Act No...
contends that what fossil evidence of ancient men show is that they not only migrated to the Philippines, but also to New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. He says that there is no way of determining if they were Negritos 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
Tabon Cave
The Tabon Caves are a set of caves north of Quezon municipality, in the south western part of the province of Palawan on Palawan Island, in the Philippines. The caves are named after the Tabon Scrubfowl. Tabon Caves is bordered on the south by the town proper of Quezon, Bgy. Panitian on the west,...
in Palawan. The discovery may show that man came earlier to the Philippines than to the Malay Peninsula
Malay Peninsula
The Malay Peninsula or Thai-Malay Peninsula is a peninsula in Southeast Asia. The land mass runs approximately north-south and, at its terminus, is the southern-most point of the Asian mainland...
. 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
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
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, kayumangging 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.
Diffusion of Austronesian languages
Another, more contemporary theory based on the study of the evolution of languages suggests that starting 4000-2000 BC,Austronesian
Austronesian people
The Austronesian-speaking peoples are various populations in Oceania and Southeast Asia that speak languages of the Austronesian family. They include Taiwanese aborigines; the majority ethnic groups of East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Madagascar, Micronesia, and Polynesia,...
groups descended from Yunnan Plateau in China and settled in what is now the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
by sailing using balangay
Balangay
The Balangay or Balanghai is the first wooden watercraft ever excavated in Southeast Asia. Also known as the Butuan boat, this artifact is evidence of early Filipino craftsmanship and their seamanship skills during pre-colonial times...
s or by traversing land bridge
Land bridge
A land bridge, in biogeography, is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonise new lands...
s coming from Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. Many of these Austronesians settled on the Philippine islands and became the ancestors of the present-day Filipinos and later colonizing most of the Pacific islands and Indonesia to the south. The Cagayan valley of northern Luzon
Luzon
Luzon is the largest island in the Philippines. It is located in the northernmost region of the archipelago, and is also the name for one of the three primary island groups in the country centered on the Island of Luzon...
contains large stone tool
Stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, particularly Stone Age cultures that have become extinct...
s as evidence for the hunters of the big game of the time: the elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
-like stegodon
Stegodon
Stegodon , is a genus of the extinct subfamily Stegodontinae of the order Proboscidea. It was assigned to the family Elephantidae , but has also been placed in Stegodontidae . Stegodonts were present from 11.6 mya to 4,100 years ago...
, rhinoceros
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
, crocodile
Crocodile
A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...
, tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...
, pig
Pig
A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...
and deer
Deer
Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...
. The Austronesians pushed the Negritos to the mountains, while they occupied the fertile coastal plains.
Solheim's hypothesis
Anthropologist Wilhelm Solheim II posited an alternative model based on maritime movement of people over different directions and routes. It suggests that people with distant origins from 50,000 years ago in the area of present day coastal eastern Vietnam and Southern China had moved to the area of the Bismarck Islands south and east of MindanaoMindanao
Mindanao is the second largest and easternmost island in the Philippines. It is also the name of one of the three island groups in the country, which consists of the island of Mindanao and smaller surrounding islands. The other two are Luzon and the Visayas. The island of Mindanao is called The...
and developed Pre-Austronesian. Proto-Austranesian then later developed and spread among seafarers from the area to the rest of Island Southeast Asia and areas along the South China Sea. In support of this idea Solheim notes there is little or no indication that Pre- or Proto Malayo-Polynesian was present in Taiwan. According to Solheim, "The one thing I feel confident in saying is that all native Southeast Asians are closely related culturally, genetically and to a lesser degree linguistically."
New developments
The "out of Taiwan" model based on Austronesian linguistic evidence that had become the mainstream explanation is in turn being challenged by newer findings. Studies based on mitochondrial DNA show greater genetic diversity in southern regions than in northern ones suggesting that a significant migration wave was in a south-to-north direction. Older populations entered Southeast Asia first following the coastal regions from Africa then slowly spread north to populate East Asia.Further reading
- Bellwood, Peter SPeter BellwoodPeter Bellwood is a Professor of Archaeology at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Australian National University in Canberra...
., James J. Fox, and Darrell T. Tryon. (Eds.). (1995). The Austronesians – Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Department of Anthropology as part of the Comparative Austronesian Project, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0731515781. Retrieved 2011-03-04...