Angelo, I have been wanting to look deeper into this subject, and your
letter gave me the inspiration to search for the answers to some questions
that I've been pondering for over a year. I just found a good account of the
first people to populate Oceania, and although it may seem to have no SCUBA
content, it is information that will enrich a dive trip to Oceania. Also,
what follows will clarify the role of pygmys and indigenous aborigines. And,
if there are any Oceania experts on the list who think the information below
has any misinformation, such as dates, please let me know. I think the dates
given for arrival on Melanesia, are later than I've read elsewhere.
Brad
><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·.¸¸><((((º>
http://www.ualberta.ca/~vmitchel/
Philippine Prehistory - The First Inhabitants - 40,000 BP
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands in the South China Sea
situated between Taiwan to the north and Borneo to the south. Just 2,000 of
its islands are inhabited and only 500 are larger than a kilometre square.
The nine largest islands of Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Panay, Mindoro, Samar,
Negros, Leyte and Cebu make up 90% of the nation's land area.
Over the past two million years, the earth has undergone twenty cycles of
glaciation. During these ice ages, glaciers accumulate on land a substantial
quantity of the earth's water in the form of ice and cause the water levels
in the world's oceans to drop. At the height of the last ice age, the sea
levels around the Philippines were at least 50 metres lower than they are
today. The present sea beds surrounding the Malay peninsula and the islands
of Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Palawan were all above water making one huge
extension to the continental land mass of Asia.
The earth's climate began warming 18,000 years ago and the oceans regained
their present high levels about 8,000 years ago.
No pre-hominid or hominid species such as australopithecus or homo erectus
has been found in the Philippines. The first human beings probably reached
the Philippines about 40,000 years ago at roughly the same time as they
reached Australia and New Guinea. The Philippines, like Australia and New
Guinea, were never actually joined to the south east Asian mainland but, at
the low ocean levels, the water barrier was much less. The earliest human
bones found in the Philippines were on Palawan of modern type and date to
22,000 B.P. although stone tools from Palawan date back to 30,000 B.P.
The original people of the Philippines were the ancestors of the people
known today as Negritos or Aeta. They are an Australo-Melanesian people with
dark skin and tight, curly brown hair. They are also distinctively small and
of short stature. As the Pygmies in the equatorial forests of Africa, the
Aeta are believed to have adapted locally to the tropical jungles of the
Philippines.
The Aeta are a nomadic hunting and gathering people who forage in small
family bands with an informal organization and leadership. They were once
widespread throughout the Philippines but are now found only in the remote
highland areas of Luzon, Palawan, Panay, Negros and Mindanao.
Austronesian Expansion - Taiwan 4,000 BC
By 5,000 BC an especially potent and versatile culture combining fishing and
gardening had developed on the south coast of China. As well as growing
their food on land, these maritime gardeners were accomplished at fishing
the waters in the Straits of Taiwan from boats with hooks and nets. Between
4,000 and 3,000 BC, these fishermen-farmers crossed the 150 km of the
Straits and settled on Taiwan.
It is important to note that the fishermen-farmers who crossed the straits
to Taiwan were not the Sino-Tibetan speaking Han Chinese who today make up
the great majority of the Chinese population. Linguistic evidence from
Taiwan suggests that they spoke an Austronesian language closely related to
the Tai-Kadai language family that is the dominant language group today in
Laos, Thailand and the north and east of Burma.
On Taiwan, the Austronesian speaking fishermen-farmers honed their
sea-faring skills. They soon embarked on one of the most astonishing and
extensive colonizations in human history known as the Austronesian
expansion. By about 2,500 BC, one group, and just one group of Austronesian
speakers from Taiwan had ventured to northern Luzon in the Philippines and
settled there. The archaeological record from the Cagayan Valley in northern
Luzon shows that they brought with them the same set of stone tools and
pottery they had in Taiwan. The descendants of this group spread their
language and culture through the Indo-Malayan archipelago as far west as
Madagascar off the east coast of Africa and as far east as Hawaii and Easter
Island in the central Pacific Ocean.
For the most part, the Austronesians encountered unoccupied coasts and
islands. Where they met hunting and gathering cultures, their horticultural
productivity and population growth soon overwhelmed the aboriginal
occupants. All the surviving Aeta populations in the Philippines speak
Austronesian languages. Where they met established agrarian cultures, such
as along the coasts of Vietnam (Champa) and Indo-China, their incursions
were limited.
The speed of the Austronesian expansion was also a consequence of their
maritime culture. Under the pressure of an expanding population, adventurous
colonizers would prefer to settle new lands on coasts and islands before
pressing inland and away from the sea. Furthermore, the Austronesian kinship
system gave higher status, prestige and authority to the lineages most
closely related to the society's founder. Austronesian culture put a premium
on founding new colonies that gave an additional incentive to continued
expansion. As it was, there were many new coasts and islands available for
occupation and settlement.
Over the next thousand years to 1,500 BC, the Austronesians spread south
through the Philippines to the Celebes, the Moluccas, northern Borneo and
eastern Java. One branch went east from the Moluccan Island of Halmahera
about 1,600 BC to colonize eastern Melanesia (1,200 BC) and Micronesia (500
BC). The migration had continued well into Polynesia by 0 AD and on to
Hawaii and Easter Island by 500 AD. The Austronesians finally reached the
last uninhabited land on earth, New Zealand, sometime around 1,300 AD.
Other Austronesians continued west through Borneo and Java to Sumatra and
settled the coasts of the Malay peninsula and southern Vietnam by 500 BC.
From Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, they learned to master the semi-annual
winds of the Indian Ocean monsoons. Around 100 AD, they crossed the Bay of
Bengal and made contacts with Sri Lanka and southern India. The western
branch of the Austronesian expansion reached its furthest extent by 500 AD
plying the monsoons to colonize Madagascar.
From Taiwan to New Zealand and Madagascar to Easter Island, the Austronesian
language family is made up of more than a thousand languages and dialects.
(Estimates vary from 900-1200 according to how dialects are distinguished
from languages.) Measured by geographical extent, number of languages or
number of speakers it is one of the world's largest language groups. In the
Philippines there are some 87 Austronesian languages. The five largest,
Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon and Bicolano account for
three-quarters of the population.
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