Chapter 2 Philippine Pre History Canvas

Gabriel & Espiritu Salaysay at Saysay Manuscript (Unedited)
Chapter 2
Philippine Prehistory: Fact and Fiction?
The centerpiece of a historian‟s activity is the story. It has been established in
the previous chapter that the re-created story is a product of the analysis of either
primary or secondary sources first examined as to its genuineness. This makes
historical analysis and historiographical reconstruction tedious and rigorous though
what historians could account for is only a minute of the totality of what happened for
few of the elements of reconstruction would have survived.
Preliminary Activity
In Figure 2.1, the skull cap believed that of a human was found in Tabon Cave in
Palawan in 1962.
Figure 2.1 Skull cap found in Tabon Cave

(Image: http://www.alearningfamily.com/main/tabon-man-first-human-philippines/)
In Figure 2.2 several stones believed to have been intentionally chipped into weapons
or tools were found on the same cave on the same rock strata with the same age when
subjected to carbon dating. These were believed to have been made by humans.
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Figure 2.2 Stone implements found in Tabon Cave

(Image: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Upper-row-archaeological-fl-akes-from-Late-
Pleistocene-layers-of-archaeological-sites-in_fig2_290508013).
Process Questions `
 Describe the Tabon Cave skull. What predominant feature of the skull of humans is
present in the Tabon Cave skull, though it is only a cap? This feature would
differentiate the skull cap from the skull of four-legged animals. (If you have a pet
dog, what differentiates the skull of the dog from the skull of that found in Tabon
cave?)
 Describe the stone implements found in Tabon Cave. What feature of the human hand
indentifies the hand which chipped the stone tools found in Tabon Cave? This feature
could sufficiently identify that those tools were made by human hand?
The Tabon Cave skull was ascertained by anthropologists as humans. The answers to
these questions prove they were.
Historical Context of the Documents

Hardly would you be excited to a movie which has no beginning, where the movie
starts in the middle and you are at a loss on how it will end. The beginning of the movie will
dictate what the middle will be and will present a logical progression of the story as it ends.
This is true with any history that concerns a group of people.
Philippine pre-history relies on theories since no one lived to recount how the islands
emerged and how the people in the islands began or even how they got there. Two theories
could give an account of how the islands emerged: a) the land bridge theory and b) the plate
tectonics theory.
The land bridge theory assumes that the islands were a product of high land
elevations connecting mainland Asia via islands in Indonesia. These are called land bridges
for they connections would permit travel from the islands to mainland Asia. During the last
Ice Age, the ice melted, sea water rose, flooding the low water elevations of these land
bridges, leaving behind the higher elevations that form the islands as they are now today. The
theory, however, was placed into question when a Fitjoff Voss, a geologist studied the islands
and their supposed connections to mainland Asia. He found out that the topographic strata of
rocks and soil are different in the islands and the mainland (Agoncillo and Guerrero 1977:22).
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The more accepted theory is the plate tectonics theory which assumes that the islands
came about by virtue of the rising terrestrial feature of the earth due to the collision of active
plates and the product of volcanic eruption. This would presume that the earth is composed of
large cracks that move against each other and would still presuppose that the earth underneath
is not made up of solid substance but a jelly-like material that would permit the cracked solid
crust of the earth to move against each other. Alfred Wegener‟s theory of continental drift
was first taunted when he introduced it the 1950s, when he argued that the earth was first
made up of a supercontinent called Pangaea which cracked and moved away like a jigsaw
puzzle. But the discovery of large lateral fractures on the ocean floor spewing volcanic
materials and forming one plate confirms the theory. It was also found out that the plates are
moving against each other. One large plate along the Pacific is the Pacific ring of fire that
crashes against the South Asian plate. And along the collision of the plates lies islands where
we are located.
Having known our geographic origins, the next question to deal with is the issue of
where the people in the islands come from. Two theories will be presented here: a) the wave
migration theory and b) the core population theory
The earliest known scholar who classified Filipinos into special racial groupings was
J. Montano in 1884-1885. Using anthropometric method, he proposed that the inhabitants of
the country could be grouped into Negritos, Malays and Indonesians (Jocano 1998:38). It was
this classification that Dr. H. Otley Beyer built on. In his wave migration theory, he theorized
that the inhabit ants of the islands came as migrants in groups or waves. The first migrants
were the Negritos from somewhere in the Australian aboriginal region sometime between
25,000 and 30,000 years ago, then came the seafaring Indonesian A at about 5,000 to 6,000
years ago, then the bark-garbed Indonesian B at about 1,500 BC, then the terrace-building
group at about 800 and 500 BC, then the civilized Malays between 800 and 500 BC (Jocano
1998:43).
Figure 2.3 Dr. Henry Otley Beyer holding a ancient earthenware

(http://totallyfreeimages.com/170119/Henry-Otley-Beyer,-standing-with-hand-on-ceramic-pot)
The basic problem of the theory is the lack of empirical evidence for which it rests
more especially the dates of their emigration. No archeological or written record could
account for their coming. How Beyer could have thought of his theory could easily be
understood. Beyer spent most of his scholarly life in the Cordilleras. He was born on June 13,
1833 in Edgewood, Iowa. His first interest in the Philippines was sparked in 1904 when he
visited the Philippine exhibit in St. Lois, Missouri. He graduated in Chemistry at Iowa State
University, took up his Master in Chemistry at the University of Denver and volunteered to
go to the Philippines to avail of the program to teach Filipinos during the American
colonization. From there, he lived in the Cordilleras with the Ifugaos and married Lingaya
Gambuk, the daughter of an Ifugao chief. He went back to the United States to pursue his
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doctoral studies in anthropology at Harvard University. He lectured at the University of the

Philippines and considered today as the father of Philippine anthropology. His life was spent
with the Cordillera tribes and the Cordillera was his research area. The different tribes have
different features. The Ifugaos have distinct features from other tribal groups like Ibaloys or
Kankanais though they are in the same mountainous area with not much differences from
topography and climate that would permit the interaction of geographical and climatic
differences from their features. There would only be one conclusion from those differences.
That is migration.
Figure 2.4 Surviving photograph of the very few images of Dr. Robert Fox
(http://www.elaput.com/tabnrfox.jpg)
But this theory coming from the father of Philippine anthropology was shaken with
the discovery of the Tabon Cave skull cap. The skull cap was discovered by local birds nest
hunters who chanced upon the skull and gave it to the National Museum whose chief
anthropologist was Dr. Robert B. Fox. Fox was born on May 11, 1918, in Galveston, Texas.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Southern California in
1941; his Master in Arts in Anthropology from the University of Texas in 1944; and his Ph.D.
in the same field from the University of Chicago in 1954. His interest in the Philippines led
him to work in the National Museum in time when this great find landed on his assignment.
When carbon dated, the skull was as old as 22,000 to 24,000 years. Fox and his team
excavated the Tabon Cave from 1962 to 1966, which yielded tool implements and ashes
within the same soil strata.
During the initial excavations of Tabon Cave, June and July 1962, the
scattered fossil bones of at least three individuals were excavated, including a
large fragment of a frontal bone with the brows and portions of the nasal
bones. These fossil bones were recovered the rear of the cave along the left
wall. Unfortunately, the area which the human fossil bones were discovered
had been disturbed by Magapode birds. It was not possible in 1962 to
establish association of these bones with a specific flake assemblage.
Although they were provisionally related to either Flake Assemblage II or III,
subsequent excavations in the same area now strongly suggest that the fossil
human bones were associated with Flake Assemblage III for only the flakes
of this assemblage have been found to date in this area of the cave. The
available data would suggest that Tabon man may be date from 22,000 to
24,000 years ago. But only further excavations in the cave and chemical
analysis of human and animal bones from disturbed and undisturbed levels in
the cave will define the exact age of the human fossils. The fossil bones are
those of Homo sapiens (Fox 1970:40).
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Excavations also in Cagayan Valley yielded fossils of extinct animals and in Calao
Cave, a metatarsal of a far older homo sapien was found, older than that of the Tabon Cave
human.
Figure 2.5 Dr. Felipe Landa Jocano

(http://philippinesreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Felipe-Landa-Jocano.jpg)
This led Dr. F. Landa Jocano, one of Fox‟s associates in some archaeological
diggings to formulate the core population theory. Jocano was a born on February 5, 1930 in
Cabuatan , Iloilo. His educational background was as interesting as his career. He was a
product of public school in Iloilo but ran away to Manila for his parents could hardly support
his schooling. He worked his way to graduate at Arellano High School but went back to Iloilo
to finish his Bachelor of Arts degree in Central Philippine University in Iloilo in 1957.It was
in Iloilo when he got interested in Philippine folklore, which led him to write to Fox who
offered him a job at the National Museum as a janitor. But his typing skills were far better
useful than his cleaning skills that he became part of the museum‟s typing pool. This exposed
him to museum‟s data and led him to write about Philippine legends surrounding plant and
animal life, which were serialized in Manila Times and which the Department of Education
got interested to include them in their high school teaching supplement Diwang Kayumanggi.
At this point, he was promoted from being a janitor to research aid, to scientist 1. He got a
grant to study at the University of Chicago where he earned his masters and doctorate in
Anthropology. After a few teaching stints while taking his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago,
he went back to the Philippines to teach at the University of the Philippines. At that time, the
Tabon Cave finds have already been a breakthrough in Philippine anthropology.
Since bone fragments were also found in Java, Indonesia and Peking, China, with the
same age and features as that found in Tabon Cave, Jocano theorized that these people-groups
belong to one population, thus his core population theory.
It might be argued, on the basis of fossil evidence that premodern human

represent the core population in the area around which genetic accretions
were superimposed, as later groups of people trickled into the region, thus
giving rise to new populations which we now recognize as contemporary,
Southeast Asians. The core population could have well evolved in the region
as evidenced by the presence of early human fossils in Java (Pithecanthropus
erectus) and of moderns ones in Niah and Tabon Caves (Homo sapiens
sapien). However, the continuity of the process has not yet been verified due
to the lack of adequate data but the evolutionary markers are present (Jocano
1998: 53-54).
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If one migration theory is not enough, another migration theory was proposed in 1985
by Peter Bellwood. Rather than migration, he coined it movement, and the movement did not
belong the the Australoid-Sakai or Malay-Indonesian (Negrito-Malay-Indonesian migration)
but by the Austronesians, a people from Southern China who traveled via Taiwan and Batanes
between 4,000 to 5,000 B.C. But the same questions haunt this theory on the size of the
movement to influence the settlers as regards any physical evidence to account for its
verification (Jocano 1998: 64-65).
How the wave migration theory forced itself into academic discussion was not only
due to Dr. Beyer‟s stature but because of a document which was thought of as the star
evidence to support the wave migration theory. The document was today known as the
Maragtas tale. The document came in two versions. Fr. Tomas Santaren while he was
serving in Janiuay, Iloilo in 1858 wrote the Spanish version which was published as an
appendix to Fr. Angel Perez‟s book Igorotes studio geografica sobre algunos distrito del
norte de Luzon. Pedro Monteclaro wrote it in Hiligaynon in 1901 which he published in 1909
(Jocano 1998: 66). Beyer acknowledged the authenticity of the document and Prof. Gregorio
Zaide a known historian reinforced its claim when he acknowledged that the datus whose
names appeared in the tale have genealogic evidences in the island of Borneo where the datus
where believed to have originated.
Figure 2.6 Photograph of Dr. William Henry Scott

https://en.wikipedia.org/widi/William_Henry_Scott_(historian)
This document fell in the hands of Dr. William Henry Scott a historian who despised
to be called an anthropologist. Scott was born on July 10, 1921 in Detroit, Michigan to a
Protestant family. His interest in archeology came when he earned a scholarship in an
Episcopalian-affiliated Cranbrook School in Michigan. He was not able to pursue his interest
yet when he joined the US Navy in 1942 and fought during the Second World War until 1946.
He joined the Episcopalian mission in China where he taught and studied in Shanghai,
Yangchow and Beijing until 1949. He was a victim of alien deportation from China after it
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fell in the hands of the communists in 1949. He then went to Yale University in 1951 where
he enrolled in Chinese language and literature and took up his masters in Columbia
University. He was recalled back to military service during the Korean War and after less
than a year of service, he tried to go back to his teaching career, this time, in Japan, but
opportunities presented to him were in the Philippines instead, where he was assigned in St.
Mary‟s School in Sagada under the Episcopalian mission. There he taught English and
history. In his stay in the Philippines, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Santo Tomas
which his dissertation Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine History was
published in 1968. This book was revised in 1984, incorporating more assumed prehispanic
materials that he debunked including the Code of Kalantiaw.
The Maragtas is actually the tale of the Ten Bornean Datus, who fled from Borneo to
escape from their cruel Sultan Makatunaw. Sailing on a vessel called Balangay (the root word
for the term Barangay) with their expedition leader Datu Puti, they reached the island of
Panay where they met a Negrito chieftain Marikudu. They offered a golden salakot to his
wife Maniwantiwan where they were permitted to permanently inhabit while the Negritos
relocated to the mountains. Datu Sumakwel, now their leader and Datus Bangkaya,
Paiburong, Padohinog, Dumangsol, Dumalogdog and Lubay and their families remained in
the island while Datus Balensula and Dumangsil chose another settlement and stayed in Taal,
Batangas. Content with settlement of his fellow datus, Datu Puti went back to Borneo.The
descendant of Datu Sumakwel was Datu Kalantiaw of Panay. During his rule, he enforced a
code of rules that specified civil behavior, formulation of laws and the administration of
justice. Taken for their worth, these documents that seemed to be primary sources, which
when authenticated, are the evidences to support the wave migration theory in utmost detail
while the Code of Kalantiaw would document the level of civilization the settlers would have
developed. The set of laws was translated and was published in 1918 in English by the former
director of National Library and Museum Dr. James A. Robertson.
The Monteclaro documents, the Povedano manuscripts which will be analyzed in this
chapter, emerged during early 1900s at a time when the Filipino academic community was
longing for proof of prehispanic culture which could prove that we were “civilized” prior to
the coming of Spain. Politically, since the beginning of 1900s when the Philippines was under
the Americans, ancient manuscripts and artifacts of prehispanic origin, once proven genuine,
would provide the archeological and historical link of where we could have originated prior to
the coming of Spain, debunking the professed ideas of Spanish colonizers that we were once
uncivilized until they came. The Americans, however, as the new colonizer could also pin
down the former colonizer with this malicious label having propagated that the Spanish
missionaries were responsible for the burning and destruction of ancient records branded by
them as paganistic. Thus, when these alleged ancient manuscripts came in the open, even by
just portraying the life and local history of Panay and Negros, Robertson was so excited to
have accepted them as important finds, took photographs of them and took the reproductions
to the United States universities where Asian and Philippine studies as a discipline had its
home. The Code of Kalantiaw is one of Robertson‟s translations and here are a few of the
laws:
I. Ye shall not kill; neither shall ye do hurt to the aged; lest ye incur the
danger of death. All those who infringe this [order shall be condemned] to
death by being drowned with stones in the river, or in boiling water.
II. Ye shall obey. Let all your debts with the headmen (principales) be met
punctually. He who does not obey [shall receive] for the first time one
hundred lashes. If the debt is large, [he shall be condemned] to be beaten to
death.
III. Obey: let no one have women that are very young; nor more than he can
support; nor be given to excessive lust. He who does not comply with, obey,
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and observe [this order] shall be condemned to swim for three hours [for the
first time], and for the second time, to be beaten to death with sharp thorns;
or for the second time, [he shall be] lacerated with thorns.
IV. Observe and obey ye: let no one disturb the quiet of graves. When passing
by the caves and trees where they are, give respect to them. He who does
not observe this [order] shall be killed by ants, or beaten with thorns until
he dies.
V. Ye shall obey: he who [makes] exchanges for food, let it be always done in
accordance with his word. He who does not comply, shall be beaten for one
hour, he who repeats [the offense] shall be exposed for one day among ants.
(Agoncillo and Guerero1977: 28-29)
These materials are the sources of Scott‟s critique with which two types of criticisms
as used by historians have been well discussed in the work of Gottschalk (1969). These are
external and internal criticisms.
========================================
Reading 2.1
Chapter VI
The Problem of Authenticity or External Criticism1

By Louis Gottschalk
So far it has been assumed that the documents dealt with have been authentic. The
problem of authenticity seldom concerns the sociologist or psychologist or an anthropologist,
who generally has a living subject under his eye, can see him as he prepares his
autobiography, and can cross-examine him about doubtful points. Even in the law courts the
question of authenticity of documents becomes a difficult problem only on rare occasions,
when the writer or witnesses to the writing cannot be produced. But for historical documents
these occasions are not rare. They are in fact frequent for manuscript sources; and if doubt as
to authenticity arises less often fro printed sources, it is because usually some skilled editor
has already performed the task of authenticating them.
Forged or Misleading Documents

Forgeries of documents in whole or in part without being usual, are common enough
to keep the careful historian constantly on his guard. “Historical documents” are fabricated
for several reasons. Sometimes they are used to bolster a false claim or title. A well-known
example is the donation of Constantine, which used to be cited on occasion to bolster a theory
1
Lifted from his book by Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History: a primer of historical method,
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, pp. 118-169. (Source notes and footnotes were intentionally
deleted from this reading.)
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that the popes had a wide territorial claim in the west. In 1440 Lorenzo Valla proved, chiefly
by means of anachronisms of style and allusion, that it had been forged. At other times
documents are counterfeited for sale. Counterfeit letters of Queen Marie Antoinette used to
turn up frequently. A Philadelphia autograph dealer named Robert Spring once manufactured
hundreds of skillful forgeries in order to supply the demand of collectors. A recent notorious
example of forgery was the “correspondence” of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, palmed
off on the Atlantic Monthly in 1928.
Sometimes fabrication is due to less mercenary considerations. Political propaganda

largely accounts for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a “document” pretending to reveal a
ruthless Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Sometimes historical “facts” are based only on
some practical joke, as in the case of H.L. Mencken‟s much cited article on the “history” of
the bathtub or of Alexander Woollcott‟s mocking letter of endorsement of Dorothy Parker‟s
husband (of which he never sent the original to the supposed addressee, although he did send
the carbon copy to the endorsee). The Memoires of Madame d‟Epinay are a striking example
of fabrication of a whole book that has beguiled even respectable historians.
Sometimes quite genuine documents are intended to mislead certain contemporaries

and hence have misled subsequent historians. A statement supposed to be that of Emperor
Leopold II‟s views on the French Revolution misled Marie Antoinette and subsequently even
the most careful historians until it was exposed in 1894 as a wishful statement of some French
émigrés. In days when spies were expected to open mail in the post, writers of letters would
occasionally try to outwit them by turning their curiosity to the advantage of the one spied
upon rather than to that of the spy of his employer. And when censors might condemn books
to be burned and writers to be imprisoned, authors could hardly be blamed if they sometimes
signed others‟ names to their work. For instance, it is hard to tell whether some works
actually written by Voltaire are not still ascribed to others. It is thus possible to be too
skeptical about a document which may be genuine though not what it seems. Bernheim has
provided a list of documents that were once hypercritically considered unauthentic but are
now accepted. Perhaps it was hypercriticism of this kind that led Vincent Starrett to write his
verse entitled “After Much Striving for Fame”:
It would be rather jolly, I think,

To be the original authority
On some obscure matter of literature or faith
Upon which, in one‟s leisure,
One had jotted down an inaccurate pamphlet;
And forever thereafter
To be quoted by all post-Vincentian borrowers
In a pertinacious footnote.
Occasionally misrepresentations of the nature of printed works result from editors‟

tricks. It is still a matter of dispute which of the many writings attributed to Cardinal
Richelieu were in fact written or dictated by him; and little of the so-called Memoires de Jean
de Witt and Testament politique de Colbert were in fact written by John de Witt and Colbert.
The memoirs attributed to Condercet and to Weber, foster-brother of Marie Antoinette, and
several works ascribed to Napoleon I are by others than their alleged authors. Even issues of
daily newspapers have been manufactured long after the dates they bear. The Moniteur
furnishes some good examples. Several Diaries of Napoleon have been made up by others
from his writings. The circumstances of the forgery or misrepresentation of historical
documents may often themselves reveal important political, cultural, and biographical
information – but not about the same event or persons as if they were genuine.
Test of Authenticity
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To distinguish a hoax or a misrepresentation from a genuine document, the historian

has to use tests that are common also in police and legal detection. Making the best guess he
can of the date of the document, he examines the materials to see whether they are not
anachronistic: paper was rare in Europe before the Fifteenth century, and printing was
unknown; pencils did not exist there before the sixteenth century; typewriting was not
invented until nineteenth century; and India paper came only at the end of that century. The
historian also examines the ink for signs of age or for anachronistic chemical composition.
Making his best guess of the possible author of the document, he sees if he can identify the
handwriting, signature, seal, letterhead, or watermark. Even when the handwriting is
unfamiliar, it can be compared with authenticated specimens. One of the unfulfilled needs of
the historian is more of what the French call “isographies” – dictionaries of biography giving
examples of handwriting. For some periods of history, experts using techniques known as
paleography and diplomatics, first systematized by Mabillon in the seventeenth century, have
long known that in certain regions at certain times handwriting and the style and form of
official documents were more or less conventionalized. Seals have been the subject of special
study by sigillographers, and experts can detect faked ones. Anachronistic style (idiom,
orthography, or punctuation) can be detected by specialists who are familiar with
contemporary writing. Often spelling, particularly of proper names and signatures (because
too good or too bad or anachronistic), reveals a forgery as would also unhistoric grammar.
Anachronistic references to events (too early or too late or too remote) or the dating of a
document at a time when the alleged writer could not possibly have been at the placed
designated (the alibi) uncovers fraud. Sometimes the skillful forger has all too carefully
followed the best historical sources and his product becomes too obviously a copy in certain
passages; or where, by skillful paraphrase and invention, he is given away by the absence of
trivia and otherwise unknown details from his manufactured account. Usually, however, if the
document is where it ought to be – for example in a family‟s archives, or among a business
firm‟s or lawyer‟s papers, or in a governmental bureau‟s record (but not merely because it is
in a library or in an amateur‟s autograph collection) – its provenance (or its custody, as the
lawyers call it), creates a presumption of its genuineness.
Garbled Documents
A document that in its entirety or in large part is the result of a deliberate effort to
deceive may often be hard to evaluate, but it sometimes causes less trouble than does the
document that is unauthentic only in small part. For such parts are usually the result, not of
studied falsehood, but of unintentional error. They occur most frequently in copies of
documents whose originals have disappeared, and are generally due to that kind of error of
omission, repetition, or addition with which anyone who has ever made copies soon becomes
familiar. Sometimes they are the result, however, not of carelessness but of deliberate
intention to modify, supplement, or continue the original. Such a change may be made in
good faith in the first instance, care being exerted to indicate the difference between the
original text and the glossary or continuations, but future copyists are often less careful or
more confused and make no such distinctions.
This problem is most familiar to classical philologists and Bible critics. For they
seldom have copies less than eight centuries and several stages of reproduction removed from
the original – that is to say, copies of copies of copies, and sometimes copies of translations of
copies of translations of copies, and so on. The philologists give to this problem of
establishing an accurate test the name textual criticism, and in Biblical studies it is also called
lower criticism. The historian has borrowed his technique from philologists and Bible critics.
Restoration of Texts
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The technique is complicated but can be briefly described. The first task is to collect
as many copies of the dubious text as diligent search will reveal. Then they are compared. It is
found that some contain words or phrases or whole passages that are not contained in others.
The question the arises: Are those words, phrases or passages additions to the original text
that have found their way into some copies, or are they omissions from the others? To answer
that question it is necessary to divide the available copies into one or more “families” – that
is, groups of texts which closely resemble each other and therefore seem to be derived,
directly or indirectly, from the same master copy. Then by a comparison of the texts within
each family an effort is made to establish the comparative age of each in relation to the others.
If the members of the same family are largely coped from each other, as this arrangement is
families frequently shows, the oldest one is in all probability (but not necessarily) the one
nearest the original. This process is continued for all the families. When the copy nearest the
original in each family is discovered, a comparison of all of those “father” copies will usually
then reveal words and passages that are in some but not in others. Again the question arises:
Are those words and passages additions to the copies that have them or omissions from the
copies that do not? The most accurate available wordings of the passages added or omitted by
the respective copyists are then prepared. Changes in handwriting, anachronisms in style
grammar, orthography, or factual detail, and opinions are errors unlikely to have been those of
the original author frequently reveal additions by later hand. When the style and contents or
passages under discussion may be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were
parts of his original manuscript but were omitted by later copyists; and when they cannot be
attributed to the author, it is safe to assume that they were not part of his original manuscript.
In some cases, a final decision has to await the discovery of still more copies. In many
instances the original text can be approximately or entirely restored.
By a similar method one can even guess the contents, at least in part, of a “father”
manuscript even when no full copy of it is in existence. The historian Wilhelm von
Giesebrecht, a student of Ranke, attempted to reconstruct a text that he reasoned must be the
ancestor of several eleventh-century chronicles in which he had noted striking similarities. By
adding together the passages that appeared to be “descended” from an unknown chronicle, he
made a guess as to its contents. Over a quarter of a century later the ancestor chronicle was in
fact found, and proved to be extensively like Giesebrecht‟s guess.
Science Auxiliary to History

The problem of textual restoration does not frequently disturb the present-day
historian, chiefly because many experts, engaged in what the historian egocentrically calls
“science auxiliary to history,” provide him with critically prepared texts. Since Jean Francois
Champollion in 1822 learned to decipher hieroglyphics, part of the work of Egyptologists and
papyrologists has been to provide the historian with texts and translations of inscriptions and
papyri found in the ancient Nile Valley, whether in Egyptian hieroglyphic or in cursive
hieratic and demotic or in Greek. The Assyriologists, since Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1847
deciphered Old Persian cuneiform and in 1859 Babylonian cuneiform, have been publishing
and translating the texts found on the clay tablets of the ancient Tigris-Euphrates civilizations.
Biblical criticism, even before Erasmus, was directed to the effort of bringing the text of both
the Old and New Testaments as close as possible to the original wording and of explaining as
fully as possible the Hebrew and Hellenistic civilizations which they reflected. Philology, as
already explained, deals among other things with the derivation from variant texts of the most
the most authentic ones (especially of classical literature). The classical epigrapher restores
and edits the texts of Greek and Latin inscriptions found on the gravestones, monuments, and
buildings of ancient Greece and Rome. The paleographer, since the time that Mabillon first
formalized the principles of paleography and diplomatics, has been able to authenticate
medieval charters and other documents by their handwritings, which have been found to vary
from place to place and from time to time, and by their variant but highly stylized conventions
23
and forms, and to publish easily legible printed versions of them. The archeologist excavates
ancient sites and provides the historian with information derived from artifacts such as
statues, mausoleums, pottery, buildings…
Identification of Author and of Date

Some guess of the approximate date of the document and some identification of its
supposed author (or, at least, a surmise as to his location in time and space as this habits,
attitudes, character, learning, associates, etc.) obviously form an essential part of external
criticism. Otherwise, it would be impossible to prove or disprove authenticity by
anachronisms, handwriting, style, alibi, or other tests that are associated with the author‟s
milieu, personality, and actions. But similar knowledge or guesses are also necessary for
internal criticism, and therefore the problem of author-identification has been left for the next
chapter.
Having established an authentic text and discovered what its author really intended to
say, the historian has only established what their witness‟s testimony is. He has yet to
determine whether that testimony is at all credible, and if so, to what extent. That is the
problem of internal criticism.
Chapter VII
The Problem of Credibility or Internal Criticism

The historian first aims in the examination of testimony to obtain a set of particulars
relevant to some topic or question that he has in mind. Isolated particulars have little meaning
by themselves, and unless they have a context or fit into a hypothesis they are of doubtful
value. But that is a problem of synthesis, which will be discussed later. What we are now
concerned with is the analysis of documents of credible details to be fitted into a hypothesis
or context.
What is Historical Fact?

In the process of analysis the historian should constantly keep in mind the relevant
particulars within the document rather than the document as a whole. Regarding each
particular he asks: Is it credible? It might be well to point out again that what is meant by
calling particular credible is not that it is actually what happened, but that is as close to what
actually happened as we can learn from a critical examination of the best available sources.
This means verisimilar at a high level. It connotes something more than merely not being
preposterous in itself or even than plausible and yet is short of meaning accurately
descriptive of past actuality. In other words, the historian establishes verisimilitude rather
than objective truth. Though there is high correlation between the two, they are not
necessarily identical. As far as mere particulars are concerned, historians disagree relatively
seldom regarding what is credible in this special sense of conforming to a “critical
examination of the sources.” It is not inconceivable that, in dealing with the same document,
two historians of equal ability and training would extract the same isolated “facts” and agree
with each other‟s findings. In that way the elementary data of history are subject to proof.
A historical “fact” thus may be defined as a particular derived directly or indirectly

from historical documents and regarded as credible after careful testing in accordance with
the canons of historical method. An infinity and a multiple variety of facts of this kind are
accepted by all historians: e.g., that Socrates really existed; that Alexander invaded India…
24
Even some apparently simple and concrete statements, however, are subject to
question. If no one disputes the historicity of Socrates, there is less agreement regarding
Moses and earlier figures of Hebrew folklore. If no one doubts that Michelangelo sculptured
his “Moses,” a few still think that Shakespeare‟s plays were in fact written by Francis Bacon.
Doubt regarding concrete particulars is likely to be due, however, to lack of testimony based
on first-hand observation rather than to disagreement among the witnesses. In general, on
simple and concrete mattes where testimony of direct observation is available, the testimony
can usually be submitted to test of reliability that will be convincing either pro or cont to most
competent and impartial historians. As soon as abstractions, value judgments, generalizations,
and other complexities enter into testimony the possibility of contradiction and debate enters
with them. Hence, alongside the multitude of fats generally accepted by historians, exists
another multitude debated (or at least debatable) by them.
The Interrogative Hypothesis

In analyzing a document for its isolated “facts,” the historian should approach it with
a question or a set of questions in mind. The questions may be relatively noncommittal. (E.g.:
Did Saul try to assassinate David? What were the details of Catiline‟s life? Who were the
crusading companions of Tancred? What was the date of Erasmus‟ birth? How many men
were aboard De Grasse‟s fleet in 1781? What is the correct spelling Sieyes? Was Hung Hsui-
chu‟an a Christian?) It would be noted that one cannot ask even simple questions like these
without knowing enough about some problem in history to ask a question about it, and if one
knows enough to ask even the simplest question one already has some idea and probably
some hypothesis regarding it, whether implicit, or explicit, whether tentative or flexible or
formulated and fixed. Or the hypothesis may be full-fledged, though still implicit and in
interrogative form (e.g.: Can the Jews be held responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus? Did the
medieval city develop from the fair? Why did the Anabaptists believe in religious liberty?
How did participation in the American Revolution contribute to the spread of liberal ideas
among the French aristocracy? Why did Woodrow Wilson deny knowledge of the “secret
treaties”?) In each of these questions a certain implication is assumed to be true and further
clarification of it is sought on an additional working assumption.
Putting the hypothesis in interrogative form is more judicious than putting it in

declarative form if for no other reason than that it is more noncommittal before all the
evidence has been examined. It may also help in some small way to solve the delicate
problem of relevance of subject matter, since only those materials are relevant which lead
directly to an answer to the question or indicate that there is no satisfactory answer.
The Quest for Particular Details of Testimony

As has already been pointed out, every historical subject has four aspects - the
biographical, the geographical, the chronological, and the occupational or functional With a
set of names, dates, and key-words in mind for each of these aspects, the historical
investigator combs his document for relevant particulars (or “notes” as he is more likely to
call them). It is generally wise to take notes on relevant matter whether or not it at first
appears credible. It may turn out that even false or mistake testimony has relevance to an
understanding of one‟s problem.
Having accumulated his notes, the investigator must now separate the credible from
the incredible. Even from his “notes” he has sometimes to extract sill smaller details, for even
a single name may reveal a companion of Tancred, a single letter the correct spelling of
Sieyes, a single digit the exact number of De Grasse‟s crew, or a single phrase the motives of
Wilson‟s denial. In detailed investigations few documents are significant as a whole; they
25
serve most often only as mines from which to extract historical ore. Each bit of ore, however,
may contain flaws of its own. The general reliability of an author, in other words, has
significance only as establishing the probable credibility of his particular statements. From
that process of scrupulous analysis emerges an important general rule: for each particular of a
document the process of establishing credibility should be separately undertaken regardless
of the general credibility of the author.
Identification of Author
As has already been pointed out, some identification of the author is necessary to test
a document‟s authenticity. In the subsequent process of determining the credibility of its
particulars, even the most genuine of documents should be regarded as guilty of deceit until
proven innocent. The importance of first establishing the author‟ general reliability is
therefore obvious. Where the name of the author can be determined and he is a person about
whom biographical data are available, identification is a relatively easy task. Because, in most
legal and social science investigations, the witness or the author of a document is personally
known and available to the investigator, that question generally presents no insurmountable
difficulties to lawyers and social scientists.
The historian, however, is frequently obliged to use documents written by persons

about whom nothing or relatively little is known. Even the hundreds of biographical
dictionaries and encyclopedias already in existence may be of no help because the author‟s
name is unknown, or if known, not to be found in the reference works. The historian must
therefore depend upon the document itself to teach him what it can about the author. A single
brief document may teach him much if he asks the right questions. It may, of course, contain
explicit biographical details, but to assume that would be begging the question. Even where it
is relatively free from first-person allusions, much may be learned of the author‟s mental
processes and personal attitudes from it alone…
From a short document, it would thus appear, it is possible to learn much about the
author without knowing who he was. In the case of Gettysburg Address a trained historian
would probably soon detect Lincoln‟s authorship, if it were unknown. But even if he had
never heard of Lincoln, he would be able to tell that, in attempting to judge the truth of the
particulars stated in that address, he would have to consider it as probably a public
exhortation by a prominent antislavery Northerner after a Mamore victory over the
Confederate States in the American Civil War. Many documents, being less modest and less
economical of words than the Gettysburg Address, give their authors away more readily.
Determination of Approximate Date

It would be relatively easy, even if the Gettysburg Address were a totally strange
document, to establish its approximate date. It was obviously composed “four-score and
seven years” after the Declaration of Independence, hence in 1863. But few strange
documents are so easily dated. One has frequently to resort to the conjectures known to the
historian as terminus non ante quem (“the point not before which”) and the terminus non post
quem (“the point not after which”). These termini, or points, have to be established by internal
evidence – by clues given within the document itself. If the date 1863 were not implicitly in
Gettysburg Address, other references within the speech could point obviously to the
beginning of the American Civil War as its terminus non ante quem, and since the war was
obviously still going on when the document was composed, its terminus non post quem would
be the end of the Civil War. Hence its date could be fixed approximately, even if the first
sentence had been lost, as somewhere between 1861 and 1865; and if we were enabled by
other data to guess at “that great battlefield,” we might even narrow that margin. Some
26
documents might not permit even a remote guess of their termini, but were the author is
known, one has at least the dates of his birth and death to go by.
The Personal Equation

This analysis of the Gettysburg Address (under the false assumption that is authorship
is unknown) indicates the type of question the historian asks both anonymous and avowed
documents. Was the author an eyewitness of the events he narrates? If not, what were his
sources of information? When did he write the document? How much time elapsed between
the event and the record? What was his purpose in writing or speaking? Who were his
audience and why? Such questions enable the historian to answer the still more important
questions: Was the author of the document able to tell the truth; and if able, was he willing to
do so? The ability and the willingness of a witness to give dependable testimony are
determined by a number of factors in his personality and social situation that together are
sometimes called his “personal equation,” a term applied to the correction required in
astronomical observations to allow for the habitual inaccuracy of individual observers.
The personal equation of a historian is sometimes also called his “frame of reference,” but it
probably will be found more expedient to restrict the latter term to his conscious philosophy
or philosophies of life in so far as they can be divorced from personality traits and biases of
which he may or may not be aware.
General Rules
In a law court it is frequently assumed that all the testimony of a witness, though
under oath, is suspect if the opposing lawyers can impugn his general character or by
examination and cross-examination create doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in
modern law courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus tends to be
overemphasized. In addition, hearsay evidence is as a general rule excluded; certain kinds of
witnesses are “privileged” or “unqualified” and therefore are not obliged to testify or are kept
from testifying; and evidence obtained by certain means regarded as transgressing the
citizen‟s rights – such as “third degree,” drugs, wire-tapping, or lie detector – are ruled out of
some courts. The legal system of evidence, says James Bradley Thayer, “is not concerned
with nice definitions, or the exacter academic operation of the logical faculty… Its rules …
are seeking to determine, not what is or is not, if its nature, probative, but rather, passing by
that inquiry, what among really probative matters, shall nevertheless, for this or that practical
reason, be excluded, and not even heard by the jury.” Courts of law, in the Anglo-Saxon
system at least, go on the assumption that if one side presents all the permissible testimony in
its favor and if the other side presents all the permissible testimony in its, the truth emerge
plainly enough for the judge and jury from the conflict or harmony of the testimony, even if
some kinds of testimony are not permissible; and possibly where much and recent testimony
is available, the innocent suffer less often by such an assumption than the guilty escape.
The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge and jury all in
one. But as judge he rules out not evidence whatever if it is relevant. To him any single detail
of testimony is credible – even if it is contained in a document obtained by force or fraud, or
is otherwise impeachable, or is based on hearsay evidence, or is from an interested witness –
provided it can pass four tests:
(1) Was the ultimate source of the detail (the primary witness) able to tell the truth?
(2) Was the primary witness willing to tell the truth?
(3) Is the primary witness accurately reported with regard to the detail under
examination?
(4) Is there any independent corroboration of the detail under examination?
27
Any detail (regardless of what the source or who the author) that passes all four tests
is credible historical evidence. It will bear repetition that the primary witness and the detail
are now the subjects of examination, not the source as a whole…
Hearsay and Secondary Evidence

The historian, let us repeat, uses primary (that is, eyewitness) testimony whenever he
can. When he can find no primary witness, he uses the best secondary witness available.
Unlike the lawyer, he wishes to discover a nearly as possible what happened rather than who
was at fault. If he sometimes has to make judgments, he does not have to pass sentence and
hence he does not have the same hesitation as a judge to permit evidence that practice has
ruled out of courtrooms.
In cases where he uses secondary witnesses, however, he does not rely upon them
fully. On the contrary, he asks: (1) On whose primary testimony does the secondary witness
base his statements? (2) Did the secondary witness accurately report the primary testimony as
a whole? (3) If not, in what details did he accurately report the primary testimony?
Satisfactory answers to the second and third questions may prove the historian with the whole
or the gist of the primary testimony upon which the secondary witness may be his only means
of knowledge. In such cases the secondary source is the historian‟s‟ “original” source, in the
sense of being the “origin” of his knowledge. In so far as this “original” source is an accurate
report of primary testimony, he tests its credibility as he would that of the primary testimony
itself.
Thus hearsay evidence would not be discarded by the historian as it would be by a

law court, merely because it is hearsay. It is unacceptable only in so far as it cannot be
established as accurate reporting of primary testimony. A single example will perhaps suffice
to make that clear. A White House correspondent stating what the president had said at a
press conference would be a primary source of information on the president‟s words. The
same correspondent telling a presidential secretary‟s version of what the president had said
would be a secondary or hearsay witness, and probably would be successfully challenged in a
courtroom and yet if the correspondent were a skilled and honorable reporter and if the
presidential secretary were competent and honest, the correspondent‟s account might be a
thoroughly accurate statement of what the president in fact had said. Even the most
punctilious historian might retain that kind of evidence for further corroboration.
Corroboration
A primary particular that has been extracted from a document by a process of external
and internal criticism so far described is not yet regarded as altogether established as
historical fact. Although there is a strong presumption that it is trustworthy, the general rule of
historians (we shall note exceptions, however) is to accept as historical only those particulars
which rest upon the independent testimony of two or more reliable witnesses.
The importance of the independence of the witnesses is obvious. Independence is not,

however, always easy to determine, as the controversy over the Synoptic Gospels well
illustrates. Where any two witnesses agree, it may be that they do so because they are
testifying independently to an observed fact, but it is possible that they agree only because
one has copied from the other, or because one has been unduly influenced by the other, or
because both have copied from or been unduly influenced by a third source. Unless the
independence of the observers is established, agreement may be confirmation of a lie or of a
mistake rather than corroboration of a fact.
28
It frequently happens, however, especially in the more remote phases of history, that
diligent research fails to produce two independent documents testifying to the same facts. It is
also evident that for so many historical questions – this kind that would especially interest the
student of biography – there often can be no more than one immediate witness. Of the
emotions, ideals, interests, sensations, impressions, private opinions, attitudes, drives, and
motives of an individual only that individual can give direct testimony, unless their outward
manifestations are sufficiently well understood to serve as reliable index. Even when those
inner experiences are known from the testimony of others to whom the subject may have told
them, they arrest ultimately upon his own powers of introspection. The biographer is in this
regard no better off than the psychologist – and worse off if his witness is dead and beyond
interview. And all history is biographical in part. The biographer does, however, have one
advantage over the psychologist – he knows what his subject is going to do next. He therefore
can reason from response to sensation, from act to motive, from effect to cause. The
completed behavior pattern may give confirmation to the biographer of the inward
psychological processes of his subject.
It follows, then, that for statements known or knowable only by a single witness, we
are obliged to break the general rule requiring two independent and reliable witnesses for
corroboration. Hence we must look for other kinds of corroboration. A man‟s professed
opinions or motives will seem more acceptable as his “honest” opinions or “real;” motives if
they are not in keeping with the pattern of behavior that would be “fashionable” in the society
in which he moved but at the same time are in keeping with what otherwise is known of his
general character. The very silence (i.e. absence of contradiction) of other contemporary
sources upon a matter appearing to be common knowledge may sometimes be a confirmation
of it. In other cases, a document‟s general credibility may have to serve as corroboration. The
reputation of the author for veracity, the lack of self-contradiction within the document, the
absence of contradiction by other sources, freedom from anachronisms, and the way the
author‟s testimony fits into the otherwise known facts help to determine that general
credibility.
******
Reading 2.2
Chapter 4
The Maragtas2
By Dr. William Henry Scott
Pedro Alcantara Monteclaro‟s Maragtas or History of Panay from the first

inhabitants and the Bornean immigrants from which the Bisayans are descended to the
arrival of the Spaniards, was published by the Kadapig sang Banwa (Advocate of the Town)
at the el Tiempo Press, Iloilo, in 1907. It is written in mixed Hiligaynon and Kin-iraya, the
22
Lifted from his book by William Henry Scott, Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of
Philippine Prehistory. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1984, pp. 91-103. 104 (Source notes and
footnotes were intentionally deleted from this reading.)
29
author having been a native of the border region between these two Visayan dialects. A
second edition was published by the Makinaugalingon Press in 1929, and a third edition in
1957 by Sol Gwekoh under a copyright held by the author‟s son Juanito L. Monteclaro which
differs from the original only in certain orthographic reforms and a more colloquial version of
the title.
Pedro Monteclaro was born in Miag-ao, Iloilo on 15 October 1850, graduated from
the Seminario Colegio de Jaro in 1865, was twice married, and had five children. He served
as Teniente Mayor in 1891, and Gobernadorcillo in 1892-1894, and became a local hero
during the Revolution and the American invasion both for his leadership and diplomacy. He
served as Liaison Officer during the American occupation of the area, and was the first
President of Miag-ao (1901-1903), during which period he began the researches which
resulted in his publication of the Maragtas. He was also known as a poet in both the
vernacular and Spanish, and a few of his Visayan songs have survived. He died on 13 April
1909, and is memorialized in the name of the local Philippine Constabulary base, Camp
Monteclaro, at whose gate his statue stands.
The word maragtas is used by the author as the equivalent of the Spanish historia and
glossed in the 1957 edition with Visayan sayuron (“account”), thought commentators have
regularly sought some Sanskrit origin for the word. (Guillermo Santiago Cuno, for example,
considered it a corruption of a Sanskrit term meaning “great people” or “great country.”)
Present-day speakers of Visayan, however, know the word only as the title of this book or of
some prehispanic manuscript believed to be its origin. It is in consideration of this latter
opinion that the provenance and contents of the book must be examined in detail.
Provenance – Consideration of the provenance of the Maragtas must begin with the
author‟s own statement as set forth in its “Foreword to the Readers,” which is here quoted in
full:
I wrote this Maragtas, a history of the first inhabitants of the island

of Panay, with great reluctance for fear I might be considered too
presumptuous. I would therefore have refrained from writing it but for my
burning desire to reveal to the public the many data which I gathered from
the records about the first inhabitants of the island of Panay, the arrival of
Datus from Borneo, their possession and settlement of our land, their spread
to different parts of the Island, and their customs and habits until the
Spaniards came and ruled the Philippines.
In order that the readers of this Maragtas should not accuse me of

having merely composed this book from imagination, I wish to mention two
manuscripts I found. One of these was given to me by an 82-year-old man,
who had been the first teacher of the town and who said it had been given
him by his father who, in turn, got it from his father, the old man‟s
grandfather. The long years through which the manuscript must have passed
wore out the paper so much that it was almost impossible to handle. Worse
yet, it was only written in a black dye and smeared with sap which had
burned the paper and made it almost useless. The other manuscript I found in
a bamboo tube where my grandfather used to keep his old papers. This
manuscript, however, was hardly legible at all, and was so brittle I could
hardly handle it without tearing it to pieces. Having located one manuscript, I
concluded there would most likely be another copy somewhere, so I decided
to inquire of different old men and women of the town. My search was not in
vain for I then came across the afore-mentioned old man in the street, who
even gave me the manuscripts dealing with what happened in the town of
30
Miag-ao from the time of its foundation. I copied these records in a book on
12 June 1901, as a memoir for the town of Miag-ao, but did not publish them
for the reasons stated. Besides, I was waiting for someone better qualified to
write a history of the Island of Panay from the time of its first inhabitants.
I should like my readers to know that my purpose in writing this

Maragtas is not to gain honor for myself but to transmit to others what I read
in the records I collected.
The author therefore claims the Maragtas as an original work based on various data
that he collected - which, considering its many ethnographic, linguistic and historic details, its
many Spanish terms, and such modern theories as a geological connection between Palawan
and Borneo, is exactly what it sounds like. The publisher‟s introduction is equally clear:
The following account of history called Maragtas written by Mr.

Pedro A. Monteclaro describes the different ways of life of the first
inhabitants of Panay Island… [and] is of great importance as a collection of
many different passages which heretofore have been scattered.
The dramatic description of the two nearly illegible documents among these data is
intended, as the author explicitly states, to show that the work is not sheer fiction: he carefully
records the exact date when he first copied them down but neither states nor implies that they
are transcribed in the present work; moreover, the contents of one of them – “what happened
in the town of Miag-ao from the time of its foundation”- does not directly concern the subject
matter and is relegated to the last page of the epilogue. In the same epilogue, he emphasizes
his having consulted “all old men of every town” by giving his reason – “my documents did
not give me clear and complete data on the things of the past.”
CONTENTS
The Maragtas consists of a publishers introduction by Salvador Laguda, the author‟s

“Foreword to the Readers,” six chapters and epilogue entitled, “Author‟s concluding
statements to his countrymen in the island of Panay.”
The first chapter of the Maragtas is a kind of anthropological treatise on the former
customs, clothes, dialect, heredity, organization, etc., of the Aetas (i.e., Negritos) of Panay,
with special mention of the heroic Marikudo, son of old Chief Polpulan. The second chapter
begins the narrative of the coming of the ten datus from Borneo, fleeing the tyranny of Datu
Makatunaw, and their purchase of the island of Panay from Marikudu. The price agreed upon
is a solid gold hat and basin, until the Negrito chieftain‟s wife, Maniwantiwan, also demands
an ankle-length necklace from the wife of one of the Bornean datus in consideration of which
the natives add a bushel of live crabs, a long tusked boar and a full-antlered white deer. The
names of the datus are given as follows:
Puti, leader of the expedition and a relative of Makatunaw‟s and his wife Pinangpang,
who return to Borneo, leaving Sumakwel in charge of the Panay settlement; Sumakwel and
his wife Kapinangan, later known as Aloyon, whose sister Bangkaya‟s wife; Bangkaya and
his wife Katurong, Kapinangan‟s sister, who settle in Aklan and whose son Balingsanga can‟t
pronounce the sound r, transmitting this speech defect to present-day Hiligaynon speakers in
that province; Paiburong and wife Pabulanan, whose sons-in-law later attack, loot and kill the
Bornean tyrant in revenge; Padohinog and his wife Ribongsapaw; Dumangsol and his wife
31
Kabiling; Dumalogdog and Lubay, both bachelors and Balensuela and Dumangsil who settle
in Taal.
Chapter 3 tells the romance of Sumakwel, Kapinangan and her lover Gurung-gurung,
a charming little tale in its own right. Given a hint of what‟s going on by his slaves, the
cuckolded husband hides in his attic above the room in which the illicit affair is taking place
and spears his rival flagrante delicto, moving his wife to sigh, “Ah, how many times have I
told Sumakwel not to leave that spear up there where it might fall down and hurt somebody!”
Kapinangan then cuts up Gurung-gurung‟s body to bury it piece-meal secretly, and for her
pain is taken to sea on Sumakwel‟s order to be drowned in a weighted jar. The slaves charged
with the execution, however, take pity on her and put her ashore on an unknown island where,
in due time, Sumakwel, happens to go ashore. There he sees a beautiful girl in a house
window and learns that she is Aloyon, a goddess-queen served by the local Negritos and, his
ardor fanned by the flute-playing of one of his faithful slaves, he falls in love and marries her,
never realizing the she is his former wife.
On their way home, Sumakwel‟s brother-in-law, Bangkaya, saves a woman from a

caesarian-section operation by massage and is rewarded with different kinds of seeds which
he and Sumakwel then plant all around the island.
Chapter 4 concludes the tale of the ten datus, telling about their political
arrangements and their circumnavigation of the island, and Chapter 5 is another
anthropological sort of treaties describing language, commerce, clothes, customs, marriages,
funerals, mourning habits, cockfighting, timekeeping techniques and calendars, and personal
characteristics. The final chapter gives a list of Castillan officials between 1637 and 1808, and
the epilogue contains a few eighteenth-century dates from Miag-ao.
Sources – Several of the heroes of the Maragtas appear in Panay folklore. Dr. Juan
C. Orendain, who played as a child in the town founded by Datu Sumakwel, recalls having
been admonished against laziness by reference to the great lawgiver who punished the lazy
but rewarded the hard-working, and a haunted clump of bamboos he planted is still pointed
out. Over on the Iloilo coast, a rock called Embidayan is considered by San Joaquin folk to be
the very meeting place where the island was bartered away by the Negritos. Paiburong is
mentioned in the Hinilawod, a folk epic recorded by F. Landa Jocano from the Sulod, a pagan
people of the interior who still practice jar burial and bone-washing, and Aloyon‟s name is
preserved in the name of riverside barrio between Jamtik and San Jose. Both Bangkaya and
Padohinog are common family names (in Capiz and Iloilo, respectively), and Bangkaya is
also one of the deities supplicated by Sulod prayers. From Mindanao comes the name of a
Datu Bangkaya, too, a Maguindanao ruler whose third son was still living in 1597 and whose
mother, according to Muslim tarsilas, was a Bilan woman found in crow‟s egg. Kaya, as a
matter of fact, is widespread Indonesian and Malay name, and abangkaya is an old Bornean
title. A Brunei legend tells how Bornean Sultan Bulkeiah made Philippine conquests in the
early sixteenth century, setting out with a ganta of pepper seeds to each of which he gave the
name of an island, which legend has reminded R.A. Brewsher of Sarawak of Maragtas Datu
Bankaya‟s collection of seeds.
There are also some additions and contradictions. A local savant, Augurio
Paguntalan, shows enquirers the spot in San Jose where Datu Sumakwel met his death in
quicksand, and a Negrito legend gives the name of the first of their people to meet the
Borneans as Salakot (i.e. “hat”). The people of Barrio Aloyon think their barrio is so named
because Sumakwel‟s wife Kapinangan settled there under that name after her husband set her
aside for unfaithfulness. The “Primitivos habitants de Cabatuan,” a paper sent to the National
Library by the President of Cabatuan, Iloilo, in response to Executive Order No. 2 in 1922,
names Dulun as the original proprietor of Panay and Abras as his son who sold it to Jumuad
32
and Jumadap, “ascendants de la raza visaya,” and the same document specifically states that
the banks of the rivers were not included in the sale. The same legend was still current among
Aklan Negritos in 1965; Dr. Orendain jokingly challenged some of them planting crops in a
riverbed near barrio Piyapi between Engaña and San Jose about their “encroachment” on land
their ancestors had sold to the Visayans to which they good naturedly retorted that their
ancestors had not included the river banks in the sale. Folklore from other Negrito informants
– including the late Tan Martin, who died in 1948 after ranking as an Aeta chietain for 50
years – insists that the actual barter took place, not on the seacoast, but in central Iloilo in
what is now the municipality of Dueñas.
Monteclaro himself must have run into such discrepancies because his publisher says,
“According to the author, the Maragtas should not be considered as containing facts all of
which are accurate and true, because many of his data do not tally with what we hear from old
men” (p. 25).
“History of the first Datus.” – Chapter 2 and 3 of the Maragtas differ from the rest
of the book in being almost straight narrative, and their content appears in an earlier source –
a mid-nineteenth-century document, or copy of it, which was annotated and translated into
Spanish by Father Tomas Santaren, OSA, in January in 1858, and subsequently published as
“Historia de los primeros datos que, procedentes de Borneo, poblaron estas islas (History of
the first datos who, coming from Borneo, populated these islands)” as Appendix III of the
1902 Igorrotes: studio geografica y etnografica sobre algunos distritos del norte de Luzon of
Father Angel Perez, OSA. These two chapters recount the same events and contain no real
historic data not contained in the Historia and contradict in only where it is confused or is
self-contradictory; they omit its long list of names (including the site of the barter, which
agrees with the Negrito claim mentioned above – Dueñas), but their genealogical information
is limited to it, as is presumably reflected in Monteclaro‟s own remark, “The offspring of the
other datus are not mentioned in the manuscript from which this Maragtas is first taken” (p.
87). Moreover, the Maragtas and Historia have in common the precise details of
Kapinangan‟s affair with Gurung-gurung (including the form of Sumakwel‟s name, which in
Antique folklore used to be Simakwel), which romance is nowhere else reported before the
publication of the Maragtas, having been unknown even to Orendain in his childhood in the
very place where it supposedly occurred. Monteclaro‟s publisher also says unambiguously,
“The scattered sources from which this work is written came from friars who tried to keep a
record of what they had done and seen in this island” (p. 59).
The document translated by Father Santaren tells the same story of the ten (nine?)
datus, their purchase of the island from the Negritos, and one of their leaders‟ marital
problems, names some of their deities, slaves, and descendants to the fifth generation, and
lists more than 158 placenames connected with their settlement of Panay. To this, Father
Santaren has added the translation of some additional information which he took from a
second document, and alludes to a third, much longer but wholly genealogical in content,
which he does not translate. No information is given about the language of the original or the
condition of the manuscript except that it was old (that is, viejo, not antiguo) and that the last
page got lost, but its style is characterized by the repetitions, abrupt changes of subject,
incomplete plot development, and lack of planning which are the earmarks of oral history
taken down from the lips of reminiscing elders.
All of these stylistic shortcomings are missing from Monteclaro‟s more polished
literary work. The Maragtas, for example introduces new characters with the necessary
biographical identification, while the Historia, in the manner of folk history, often mentions
their names only after they have already played some part in the narrative, occasionally
identifying one incorrectly, and surprising the reader near the end by reference to one already
presumed dead. The Historia presupposes the reader‟s prior knowledge of the places
33
mentioned but the Maragtas cites municipality and province, and an apparent contradiction in
the name of the original settlement is resolved in a section of the Maragtas called “The
transfer of Datu Sumakwel and Datu Bankaya to Malandog with their wives, Kapinangan and
Katurong, respectively, together with their slaves.” The greater length of these two chapters
of Monteclaro‟s results from his descriptions of the clothes, ornaments, weapons, food,
dances and musical instruments of the parleying parties, and such explanatory references as
“the Negrito dialect was understood by one of their men because he had been to this place
before” (p.68). Typical of the expansive Maragtas style is the following imaginative passage
which parallels the Historia’s simple statement that the datus left Borneo is a boat a biniday
and landed at the mouth of the Sirwagan River:
Secretly and quietly, they sailed in their biniday (boat) together with their wives,
slaves and other things which they could carry. They sailed along the island of
Paragwa (Palawan), which was connected with Borneo until an earthquake and the
eruption of volcanos separated the two. While they were reconnoitering the coast of
Paragwa, they stopped their biniday in the middle of the sea to look for a place where
to land. It so happened that they sighted the Island of Panay, so thither they sailed
until they reached a place near Sirwagan River. It is said they had with them a man
who had been to this place (p.67).
In view of the facts that some heroes and events of the legend were known in varied
and conflicting form in early twentieth-century Panay folklore but that the full story and exact
details occur only in these two documents, it is difficult to doubt a common source. Indeed,
considering the internal evidence, there is no reason why the Historia delos primeros datos
could not have been written or dictated by a Filipino as the entire Maragtas – with two
exceptions – could not have been written between 1901 and 1907 with reference to no other
written sources than a list of government officials and Father Santaren‟s translations.
These two exceptions, however, are very important, for one of them appears to be the
constitution of a political confederation and the other an account of some unique custom
“laws.”
The “Maragtas Code.” – The other exceptional passage of historic significance

which does not occur in the Historia de los primeros datos comprises the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th
paragraphs of chapter 5 of the Maragtas. This chapter is a description of a variety of general
cultural information such as social customs, Visayan equivalents of the days of the week, and
dialect differences. Among the customs are four rather stringent sanctions – those too lazy to
work were bonded over to the wealthy until they reformed, failing which they were cast out of
society to live with Negritos and breed halfcaste offspring, polygamy was practiced until
population-control became necessary, whereupon it was restricted to the well-to-do and the
children of those too poor to support them were drowned; unredeemed adultery was punished
by death or disinheritance; and the fingers of thieves were cut off. Whether or not these
statements can be authenticated as an actual Spartan way of life practiced by prehispanic
Filipinos, at least they are not phrased in the Maragtas as “laws.” They are customs expressed
with third-person-plural, past-tense verbs in such subjective terms as “The most serious and
most severely punished offense was laziness” – which, as a matter of fact, is technically
untrue since other offences were punished by mutilation and death. These failings, however,
have been overcome in a legalistic rephrasing called the “Code of Sumakwel” by Orendain,
who performed much the same service of the Vietnamese constitution in 1956.
Although the author of the Maragtas did not provide any data or clues by which the
authenticity of this “code” could be established, and interesting parallel appeared in
Guillermo Santiago –Cuinos‟s “El Codigo de Maragtas” in the 20 February 1938 issue of El
Debate, which professed to have been translated direct from “ancient Filipino writing.” Like
34
Monteclaro, Santiago-Cuino state nothing about the provenance of his sources, but his title
itself is suspect since there is no evidence that the word maragtas has ever been found outside
the title of that 1907 book whose copyright is still held by the author‟s son, and it was not
published in ancient Filipino writing or any other kind of Filipino writing. There is an oral
tradition, however, preserved by Teodoro Agoncillo, which makes an assessment possible –
an account of a confrontation between Jaime de Veyra and Santiago-Cuino in the old National
Language Institute at the time.
The scene took place a few feet from my desk. I noticed that Don Jaime was flushed
and rather excited. From the confrontation and from what Don Jaime told me later,
the junior research [had written] an article in El Debate wherein he said that he found
documents on Maragtas and that he discovered these documents in the mountain of
Madyaas accompanied by then Bishop Gabriel Reyes. I heard Don Jaime tell the
junior researcher that he asked Bishop Reyes about it and the Bishop denied knowing
the researcher personally, or that he had bone to Madyaas. No, Bishop Reyes never
climbed the mountain of Madyaas. “Bishop Reyes,” I heard Don Jaime say, “is Mrs.
De Veyra‟s nephew. Why did you lie about these documents and where are the
documents?”
The available evidence therefore suggests that the “Maragtas Code” should be dated
in the fourth decade of the twentieth century at the earliest.
Use of the “Maragtas” by Historians. – Not much use was made of the Maragtas
by Philippine historians before the Japanese occupation, such references as Josue Soncuya‟s
in his 1917 Historia prehispana de Filipinas having been restricted to a Spanish-speaking
elite. Beyer had an English translation made by four of his anthropology students in 1916
(excluding the revealing introduction and epilogue, however), and what is evidently a Spanish
translation of most of it appeared as the “Municipal history of Miag-ao” sent to the National
Library in 1911. Zaide had an English translation made for his own purposes by Cirilo Dolar
in 1941, and Manuel Carreon, with the help of Visayan-speaking assistants (he could not
speak that language himself), prepared one during the Japanese occupation which was duly
circulated in typescript by the Philippine Executive Commission of the Department of
Education, Health and Public Welfare in September 1943, with a rather chauvinistic
paraphrase appearing in the 1944 Philippine Review (sample: “Although said to be in
primitive stage of civilization, the Negritos had a well-organized form of socio-economic
life”).
This prewar indifference to Philippine history was replaced after national

independence by a sanguine enthusiasm perhaps typified by Beyer‟s startling – and
unsupported – statement in 1949 that the Maragtas was prehispanic document. This myth was
given wider circulation by another anthropologist, the late Tom Harrison, editor of the
Sarawak Museum Journal, by publishing the Carreon translation in 1957 with an introduction
which persists in referring to Monteclaro not as the author of the Maragtas but as the mere
redactor or transcriber of some ancient Philippine legend, an illusion strengthened by Carreon
sub-title, “The earliest known Visayan text”; the expansion of Santiago-Cuino‟s completely
unsubstantiated 1938 claims into “a painstaking study of the original Maragtas manuscript”;
and the invocation of Zaide‟s name as an authenticating associate, viz., “After careful study of
the genealogy and contemporary rule of Datu Makatunaw in Borneo, Dr. Gregorio F. Zaide…
agrees with Soncuya that this code was promulgated in 1212: (pp. 51-58 and 98-99). (In
actual fact, Soncuya doesn‟t mention the “code” at all in his Historia prehispana, and Dr.
Zaide stated in a personal interview on 23 October 1966 that he never made any such study
and did not collaborate with the 1943 translation in any way except to lend Carreon a copy of
the Dolar translation.) This translation in turn has been given word-by-word attention by other
ethnologists seeking clues to such Philippine details as specific crops or agricultural
35
techniques, presumably on the assumption that although Monteclaro adulterated some original
preshispanic document with a sprinkling of Spanish words like dios, volcan, and junta, he
preserved the rest of it intact. And to these curious examples of historiography were to be
added others more peculiar still.
In 1948, Miss Aurora Inson submitted a her master‟s thesis to the Colegio del
Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, Iloilo, an English translation of part of what she described as the
Hiligaynon “original copy of the prehispanic history of the Island of Panay by the late Capitan
Pedro Monteclaro,” obtained from a member of the Monteclaro family who was then parish
priest in Miag-ao. Correspondence with priests assigned to Miag-ao since the War, however,
indicates that they are not relatives of Monteclaro, and do not remember having supplied any
such document to Miss Inson.
Then in 1955, a Mr. Jose E. Marco offered to negotiate the sale of the real Monteclaro
manuscript between the author‟s granddaughter, Mrs. Maria Ibanay Alendron of Janiuay, and
the University of Chicago‟s Philippine Studies Program. This offer was accepted, official bills
of sale exchanged, and the document taken to paleographic experts at the Newberry Library
who promptly branded it an obvious and clumsy forger, Mrs. Alendron subsequently proving
to be unknown to the Janiuay postal authorities. This spurious Maragtas contains
autobiographical data dated when the real Monteclaro would have been four years old, and
neatly accounts for the similarity between the Maragtas and the Historia de los primeros
datos by a marginal note in what is presumably the hand of Father Santaren: “Annote y saque
copia de este original unico que existe en estra provinsia para mi obra y efectos opostunos.”
The same document was ill-advisedly used by F. Landa Jocano, then a young doctoral
candidate in Chicago, for the publication of a sort of exposé called “The Maragtas a historical
document.”
The Maragtas has also received literary attention. It was used “with poetic license to
suit my own epic purpose” by Ricardo Demetillo in his 1959 prize-winning poem, Barter in
Panay, which has been called “the first literary epic of the Philippines.” Dr. Orendain also
published Ten datus of madiaas in 1963 in the style of an historical novel because his
researches in 1960-1961 at the request of the Monteclaro heirs a definitive English edition
had disclosed too many local variations for easy resolution.
Speculations on the date of the legendary Bornean migration have taken three
different points of departure, none of which has proved very productive. The similarity
between the Philippines and Borneo terms Bisaya/Visaya, as well as the name of the medieval
“Sri-Vishaya” empire, has been extensively discussed with no more than inconclusive or
negative results. Again, since the island of Panay was not under Muslim domination when the
Spaniards arrived, it has been argued that the migration must have taken place before the
introduction of Islam into Borneo, and modern scholars in Borneo have specifically suggested
that both Datu Puti and Datu Bankaya were Muslims. Or recourse has been made to Josue
Soncuya who recommends the thirteenth century on the grounds that this is the “period
alluded to by the unpublished chronicles (Philippine Library, historical documents) from the
municipalities of Mambusao, Capiz and Bugasong, Antique, which are dated in the year
1212.” Judging from evidence which has survived the Battle of Manila, however, these
documents appear to have been assigned to this year – not dated – by the public school
teachers who submitted local histories to the National Library in 1911. Moreover, Soncuya
was notably loose in his use of dates, calculating 1212 as being 16 generations after 1160, for
instance.
Summary. – The Maragtas is an original work by Pedro A. Monteclaro published in

mixed Hiligaynon and Kin-iraya in Iloilo in 1907 which claims to be nothing more than that.
It was based on written and oral sources then available, and contains three sorts of subject
36
matter – folk customs still being practiced or remembered by old folks, the description of an
idealized political confederation whose existence there are reasonable grounds to doubt and
for which there is no evidence, and a legend recorded in 1858 of a migration of Bornean
settlers, some of whom are still remembered as folk heroes, pagan deities, or progenitors of
part of the present population of Panay. There is no reason to doubt that this legend preserves
the memory of some actual event, but it is not possible to date the event itself or to decide
which of its details are historic facts and which are the embellishments of generation of oral
transmission.
Chapter 5
The Contributions of Jose E. Marco to Philippine

Historiography
The first time a reputable scholar presented a Philippine document which claimed to
be prehispanic in origin was when Dr. James A. Robertson, Librarian of the Philippine
Library and Museum, published an English translation of the “Code of Calantiao” in “Social
structure of, and idea of law among, early Philippine people; and a recently discovered pre-
hispanic criminal code of the Philippine Islands” in H. Morse Stephens and Herbert E.
Bolton‟s The Pacific Ocean in history (New York 1917).
The code itself was contained in one of five manuscript accessions made by the
Library in 1914, all of which were received from Mr. Jose E. Marco of Pontevedra,
Occidental Negros, and all of which Robertson considered rare, authentic, and very valuable.
Rare they certainly were for they contained such information as the date of the invention of
coconut wine, and if they were authentic, they were valuable indeed, for they are full of
details of early Philippine culture so unparalleled in other sources as to be of interest not only
to Filipinologists but students of Southeast Asian ethnohistory generally. The authenticity of
these documents must therefore be seriously considered. Since all of them were obtained from
the same person, this consideration must begin with his earlier career as a contribution to
Philippine historiography…
Several very important additions to the manuscript wealth of the Library were
received from Mr. Jose E. Marco, who has proved a good friend to this institution on many
occasions. These consist of the following:
1. Historia de la Isla de Negros by the Encomendero Diego Lope Povedano, 1572,

written on parchment. This is an exceedingly valuable manuscript of the pre-
Spanish history of the Philippines, for besides times of historical ethnological
interest, it contains a key to the transcription of the old Bisayan characters in use
at the time of Spanish discovery.
2. Map of Negros (1572) by Povedano, on parchment.
3. Las antiguas leyendas de la Isla de Negros, by Fr. Jose Maria Pavón, who was
stationed at Mamamaylan [sic.], in Occidental Negros, 1838-1839. In two leather-
bound volumes 16 x 11 cm. of 267 and 394 pages respectively. These volumes
are most valuable for the early history and stories of Negros. Pavón seems to
have had access either to Povedano‟s work above mentioned or to the work of
another author who had access to it. The first volume contains the only ancient
criminal code of the Filipinos which has yet come to light and it is claimed that
this was taken from an old Bisayan ms. of 1433…
37
The Povedano Manuscript of 1572

The parchment original of Diego Lope Povedano‟s La Isla de Negros y las
Costumbres de los Visayos y Negritos, probably the only Philippine document known on
parchment instead of paper was destroyed like everything else in the razing of the Philippine
Library in 1945, but good photographs of every page exist in Robertson Collection of
Filipiniana in Duke University, and the Spanish text has been published in E.D. Hester‟s The
Robertson text and translation of the Povedano manuscript of 1572.
Provenance – The provenance of the document is almost unknown. Jose E. Marco

mentions it as accompanying the Povedano map which in November of 1913 was in the
possession of the former servant of Governor Valdivieso, but gives no hint as to where it was
between Povedano‟s day and the nineteenth century thefts which finally brought it into his
hands. That it was not included in the lead box with the map is made clear by the inventory of
the contents of the box signed by Valdivieso and two witnesses: the box contained nine
volumes, none of which could have been the clearly titled La Islas de Negros y Costumbres
de Los Visayos y Negritos – eight of them were books of anting-antings and the ninth was an
“official witnessed document of 24 leaves concerning the founding of the town, the prison,
and other buildings.” Forty years later, Marco was to tell a different story that the manuscript
had come from an old convent cook who had looted the Himamaylan parish in 1899, the
manuscript having been given him by the family of the “mendicant Fr. Ramon Andres” who
had them from Povedano‟s own hand.
Contents – La Isla de Negros is straight ethnography – 17 pages of legends about the

origin of the world and local place-names, 14 marriage customs, religion, and calendars, and
ten-page description of the Bisayan alphabet, both of the latter items being illustrated. The
reference in the section called “On how they worshipped their false gods” to an all powerful
deity called Kabunian, otherwise known only among the pagan mountaineers of northern
Luzon, is so startling as to have occasioned a special “Note on Povedano‟s reference to
Kabunian” by Fred Eggan in the Philippine Studies Program publication of the document.
The handwriting of the document is most peculiar – large uneven scrawl of detached
letters characterized by novelties of such consistency and inventive nature they can hardly be
accounted for as the carelessness of an uncultured conquistador or imitative attempts by a
native Filipino. Loues Diaz-Trechuelo, formerly of the Escuela de Estudios
Hispanoamericanos in Seville, has commented of it, “I have consulted with various specialists
and archivists, and they all feel as I do that the letters present features strange and uncommon
in documents of the period,” and Jesuit historian Nicolas Cushner says it looks like noting in
the Millares Album de Pelografia hispanoamericana del Siglo XVI, and that, “in fact it looks
like a very poor attempt to copy a 16th century hand.” Certainly the use of a hyphen to
continue a word from one line to the next is strange and uncommon in sixteenth-century
documents.
The orthography of the document is rather more inconsistent than is typical of

documents between 1550 and 1600, though the period was one of considerable confusion in
Spanish spelling. Povedano‟s spelling in his description of the Philippine alphabeto, however,
suggests an unusual linguistic erudition – e.g. the use of k instead of c an q employed in other
early Spanish accounts and an admirable lack of Spanish ethnocentricity expressed in the
statement, “The letter h they write thus.. but pronounce it like the j of our letters.” The
sixteenth century was a time of intellectual ferment in Spain and perhaps the influence of
reforming grammarians who wished to introduce Greek spellings may account for Povedano‟s
spelling alphabet with a ph instead of an f, as well as his use of k instead of c – although he
himself calls this letter the “runic K” (i.e., a third-century German script) and seems to think
Runes are a kind of people (viz., “letra de los runos), but, strangely enough, employs it only
38
once himself transcribing native terms (viz., Kabunian), otherwise using q and c (e.g.,
elquilin, camaygon).
Povedano‟s statement about h and j is difficult to interpret from his own use of these
letters. At the time of his birth, Spaniards generally pronounced the letter j, often interchanged
with x or g, as a king of sh, and it was only in Povedano‟s own lifetime that the modern rough
breathing “aspirated” sound (i.e., English h) developed. Povedano‟s orthography makes a
surprisingly modern use of these two letters (e.g., jueves, jovenes, hadia and hechos, with
expected variants like mugeres/muxeres and abjo/abaxo) and includes enough slips like abla
and ijo for habla and hijo to show that he himself pronounced the h silent. One does not
understand, therefore, what sound he intends in such native terms as dagancahuy or
macahubug, or what he means by saying the Filipinos have an h but pronounce it like a j.
Povedano‟s description of the Philippine script and the examples he gives involved
precisely the same errors already pointed out by Norberto Romualdez in the three back
documents of Jose E. Marco presented to the Philippine Library the year before he presented
the Povedano documents. The University of Chicago has appended a special article as a “Note
on the Negros-Bisayan syllabary recorded by Povedano” to its publication of the document in
which Robert Fox says, “Povedano‟s transcriptions are improbable for they are alphabetic,
not syllabic.” Yet this improbability cannot be the mere error of an unfamiliar foreigner for it
occurs in the native calendar of which Povedano writes, “I copied it with great exactness and
it is thus.”
The calendar is difficult to read because of the crudeness of the characters and
because they are squeezed together and the words contracted – e.g. agynan for daganenan.
They show the same want of kudlits as the bark documents, and contain such hispanization as
the use of v (actually w) for u and b (e.g., ulalyn, cava) and y instead of e or i, and the placing
of a kind of accent-mark over the g (“to pronounce it with greater stress,” Povedano says) to
make a q of it (e.g., ylglyn for elquilin). Indeed, this same elquilin Povedano gives as an
example in his section on the alphabet but there he renders it ekyln, while in his list of months
he gives it as quilion. His list of week-days is also inconsistent with the calendar (where they
are given as sang aldaw with the abbreviation sng for sang) his seventh day Sablablahay, is
listed as pitu but his second and third, Ania and Cania, are listed as alya is and sany duha.
Moreover, his own brief vocabulary indicates that the calendar is written in mixed “Ygneine”
(e.g., isa, pito) and “Higuesina” (e.g., apat) although he says these are the names given by the
“serranos que eran jos higuenasinas.”
The calendar is in itself most peculiar. It is hard to believe the Filipinos had a seven-
day week before the coming of the Spaniards (Francisco Alcina in 1668 flatly says they
didn‟t), and, indeed, it is even unlikely they reckoned a twelve-month year: Loarca says,
“They divided the year into twelve months although only seven of these names,” and Alcina
says they observed the phases of the moon but did not connect the moons with the year,
which they considered to be the time between one harvest and the next. Stranger still is the
fact that in two cases where Povedano‟s list of months differ from those given in Philippine
script on his calendar, the ones on the calendar appear in the list of months presented in
Pavón‟s 1838 Las antiguas Leyendas.
The Pavón Manscripts of 1838-1839

The two leather-bound volumes of Jose Maria Pavón y Araguro‟s Las antiguas
Leyuendas de la Isla de Negros and the one volume Los Cuentos de los Indios de esta Isla all
perished in the destruction of the Philippine Library in 1945, but typescript copies of the text
of the former survive the libraries of the University of the Philippines and the University of
Florida, and in private collections in Manila. Photographic reproductions of three pages of
39
Las antiguas Leyendas were published in The Philippine History Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1
(1919), and more may exist in the Beyer Collection, while its illustrated calendar appeared in
the third-anniversary issue of Renacimiento Filipino and in Enrique d‟Almonte y Muriel‟s
1917 Formacion y Evolucion de las Subrazas de Indonesia y Malaya.. No copy of the text of
Los Cuentos de los Indios is known to have survived the Battle of Manila. An annotated
English translation of both works has been published in the Robertson translations of the
Pavón Manuscripts of 1838-1839, Philippine Studies Program Transcripts Nos. 5-A, 5-B, 5-
C, and 5-D (Chicago 1957) with an introduction by Fred Eggan and E.D. Hester, and a
glossary of Spanish and Philippine terms by Charles P. Warren.
Provenance – Nothing was recorded about the provenance of the Pavón manuscripts
until Jose E. Marcos‟ 1954 announcement that he got them all from the old convent cook who
had stolen them in the Himamaylan looting of 1899. This contradicts an oral tradition
transmitted by H. Otley Beyer to Mauro Garcia in the early 1950‟s that it was Marco‟s own
father who had been among the looters who carried away a chest thought to contain valuables
but which, when accidentally dropped in the river, so increased in weight they realized it
contained papers rather than coins or jewelry. At any event, no reference to these documents,
or information contained in them, appears in that 1912 Resena historica de la Isla de Negros
in which Marco states that the earliest mention of the island is Loarca‟s in 1580 [sic].
Jose Maria Pavón himself is first mentioned in the Guia de Forasteros for 1839 as
Catedratico de Sintasis y Retorica in the conciliar seminary in Cebu; he is not mentioned in a
list of priests and parishes sent by the Bishop of Cebu to the King 1831, nor in a list of Negros
cures sent in 1830 for aid after the “catastrophe de Orihuela.” In the Libro de Cosas notables
de Himamalayan, he is listed as taking charge of that parish on 7 September 1842, succeeding
Don Vicente Guillermo who had been incumbent since 1811 and who died exactly two years
later at the age of 77 in the outstation visita of Ginigaran which he had built himself. Upon
Ginigaran‟s elevation to parish status in 1848, Father Pavón was transferred there, and his
signature appears in an entry of 1849 in the Libro de Cosas notables de Ginigaran. (Thus the
Guias for 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, and 1848 list his as parish priest of Himamalayan, as does
R. Echauz‟s Apuntes de la Isla de Negros (Manila 1894) for 1849, while 1850 Guia shows
him in Ginigaran.) The Recollect fathers having taken over Negros in 1848 – 1849, Pavón
presumably returned to Cebu; at least his name does not appear in a list of pueblos and
parishes of 1851 made by the Governor of Negros, and he is known to have been parish priest
of Cebu in 1865-1866. His name is missing from the clerical register of the Diocese of Cebu
in 1883 so he presumably had left the diocese by that time through death or transfer.
Contents – The three reproductions of Pavón pages show at least the chapter title
pages were written in a childish imitation of printing (e.g., the serifs are drawn in but the
upper-case I is dotted, and a variety of type styles are mixed together), with inexplicable
spellings for the middle of the nineteenth century like Ivan for Juan. The orthography is
peculiar in extreme – the first book of Las antiguas Leyendas employs a spelling more nearly
like that of the sixteenth century than any other period, while the second book is written in an
exemplary lat nineteenth- century style. This change is referred to in a note in the text dated 1
August 1839, stating that the author will henceforth employ the “muchos cambios en la
ortografia y en las frases” contained in the “nuevo diccionario de la Real Academia
Española.” This would presumably be the eighth edition of 1837 which, however, makes no
such sweeping reforms, merely increasing the number of words to be spelled with j instead of
g, and condemning such practices as writing esperto for experto – which, as a matter of fact,
is exactly what Pavón amanuensis continued to do. Nor could it explain how the Brujerias y
los Cuentos de Fantasmas written 1837 could have employed the “corrected” orthography
unknown to the Libro primero of Las antiguas Leyendas which was begun in June 1838.
40
The contents of the Leyendas and Cuentos taken together show them to be
inappropriately titled, for in addition to 25 chapters of legends and myths, there are eleven
superstitions current in Pavón‟s day, and 26 of straightforward ethnographic nature such as
lists of weapons or musical instruments, an illustrated Philippine alphabet, a native calendar,
and translations of then documents dated between 137 [1137?] and 1661. They are written in
a personalized style of considerable charm, moralizing digressions, and profuse
acknowledgement of oral and written sources – 25 different informants on 22 different dates
between 1839 and 1840. Among the documents translated are six with prehispanic dates, and
it is these six which have occasioned the present examination of Jose E. Marco‟s
contributions to Philippine historiography – namely, the 1137 account of old forts, 1239
narrative of King Maranhig, the 1372 description of burial customs, the 1372 list of extinct
animals, the 1433 Code of Calantiao, and the 1489 formulary for making talismans and
charms.
At the outset, the question of the calendar by which prehispanic Filipino documents
could have been dated must be raised:
For dating the old documents, either in Romanized Bisayan or in old Bisayan
syllabary, and ranging from 1239 A.D. to the Spanish period, he [Pavón]
gives no clue as to his procedures. Since he states that the Bisayans did not
keep track of the years for any extended period, it is possible that the dates
are estimated in terms of genealogical tables, though none is included in the
text. Internal evidence suggests that several of the dates will have to be
modified (pp. x-xi of Transcript 5-A).
To this rather fond understatement must be assessed the comment that the dates
themselves, like 15 others in the document, are highly suspicious. They range from the
doubtful, unclear, or meaningless, to the anachronistic or absurd. The date of the invention of
coconut wine is given as 1379, and the invention of a certain kind of weapon as 1332. An
official inscription dated “July 21, 17” appears 9in a document bearing the rubric, “March 31,
14.” A “translation and exact version of Visayan Higuecina document of the year 1489” refers
to the “first Friday of the year,” years “three numbers alike, as for instance, 1777,” and coins
of Charles V. References is made to a map of the island of Negros by Encomendero Madrigal
in 509, and two talismans of reyezuelo Aroy of Cebu are dated 1006 an 1737 respectively.
The Calantiao code is stated to have been in use in 150 since 1433, and Calantiao himself is
referred to in an 1137 source as having built a fort in 1433.
The Bisayan alphabet given by Pavón (but dated 1543 and credited to seventeenth-
century Francisco Deza, SJ) contains the same errors as the other two alphabets in Marco
manuscripts, and adds an even more blatant hispanization – “The modulated „N‟ they
supplied by their combined letter „NG‟ and the guttural sign,‟ the guttural being nothing
other than a large tilde. Like Povedano, he says there is no c, o or r, but fills Visayan
transcriptions with them, says they use k instated of c but only uses it once himself (viz.,
Ilocano), and thinks the characters representing e or i is ei and o or u is ou. The form of the
characters themselves are more nearly like those given by Povedano than any other Philippine
script (including a form of the letter l which is unique to them), and both seem to be derived
from the Lopez typefont of 1621.
There are so many other similarities between the Pavón and Povedano manuscripts
that James Robertson concluded that the former author must have had access to the work of
the latter – e.g., the expression, „con thiara y mitre‟ in “They did not marry as we do with tiara
and miter in the church and house of God.” One of the most startling of these similarities is
the matter of the Visayan calendars in both documents. The Pavón description of the
Pangibalonan” calendar fits the Povedano calendar rather than his own – e.g., the Pavon
41
calendar has no writing on it, and, as already pointed out, Pavon‟s list reproduces the months
of the Povedano calendar better than Povedano does.
These perplexing similarities and confused dates are typical of many peculiarities in
Las Antiguas Leyendas and Los Cuentos de los Indios. Their supposed author, for instance,
was a secular priest – “The entry „D‟ (for „Don‟) rather than „Fr‟ (for „Fraile‟) preceding
Pavon‟s name in the Guias is evidence of his status as a secular cleric,” Eggan and Hester
point out – yet he more than a dozen times signs himself, “Fray Jose Maria Pavon” and
speaks of making a trip to Borneo “together with some companions of the habit.” He also
dates his residence in the “convent de mi parroquia” in Himamaylan as early as 17 July 1830,
and the completion of these two books on 1 August 1839, although official records indicae
that he did not become parish priest in Himamaylan until 1842. Moreover, he claims to have
come to the Philippines in 1810 and been a Seville schoolboy together with Fray Jorge
Guzman de Setien in 1788, which would have made him at least 86 when he was parish priest
of Cebu – to say nothing of the fact that Fr. Jorge Guzman de Setien was identified in Jose E.
Marco‟s Reseña historica as the author of a 1779 travel book about the Philippines.
Anachronisms – To the peculiarities already mentioned, the historian must add the
following outright anachronism in the test of the Pavon manuscripts:
1) The author prays for the preservation of the King of Spain on 24 June 1838, and
dedicates a book to him on 1 August 1839, although Spain had no king between
1833 and 1874.
2) The author expresses his gratitude on 14 January 1838 to Don M. V. Morquecho
– the same gentleman named as attesting to the discovery of the Povedano 1572
map on 23 March 1833 – although Manuel Valdivieso Morquecho was not
appointed Alcalde Mayor of Negros until 8 January 1847, did not take office until
11 May 1849, and on 16 October 1847 was still in Cadiz petitioning the Queen
not to be sent to the Philippines at all.
3) The author presents a document signed by Francisco Deza, SJ on “March 31 of
the year 14” which bears a stamp, “Parish of Ilog of Occidental Negros,” with the
superscription, “R.S. in the province and town above named on the twenty-first of
the month of July in the year 17 …” Deza was born in 1620 so if the year “14” is
a standard contraction for 1714, he would have been 96 at time of executing this
document; moreover, there was no province of Negros Occidental either then or
in Pavon‟s day, the province of Negros not having been divided until 1908.
4) The author refers to an ancient fortress “located on the seashore next to the barrio
occupied by the Monteses mara and Y-io – about twenty leguas north of this
town.” This was presumably written in Himamaylan about Pontevedra (formerly
Marayo), which the two towns are approximately 20 kms. apart. The legua has
varied during different periods of Spanish history, but at no time was it shorter
than 3.9 kms., and in Pavon‟s day it was taken as one-twentieth of one degree of
latitude, of 5.5 kms.
5) The author refers to “the great and extinct Lemurian continent” (which Robertson
misread as “continent of Muriano”). Lemuria was an imaginary land mass
hypothesized by English naturalist Philip Lutely Sclater to explain the
distribution of lemuroid animals from Madagascar and Ceylon to Sumatra, and
was first presented in a paper read before the Royal Zoological Society in 1979.
The theory was soon rendered unnecessary by the discovery of lemur fossils in
Europe and North America, but the romantic idea of a lost continent was later
revived by theosophists and anthrophosophists, and was mentioned in one of
Artigas y Cuerva‟s footnotes to Marco‟s Reseña historica.
6) In the Pavon description of the calendar, the author makes the following
statement about the month of November – “They called it a bad month for it
42
brought air laden with putrified microbes of evil fevers,” The theory that
infectious germs could be transmitted through open air was first seriously argued
by Louis Pasteur in the 1850‟s, and the word “microbe” itself was invented by
Dr. Charles Emmanuel Sedillot and proposed publicly for the first time in a
lecture in Pasteur‟s honor before the Academy of Sciences entitled, “De
l‟influence des traveaux de M. Pasteur sur les progress de la chirugie,” in 1878…
Assessment
The full display of Jose E. Marco‟s contributions to Philippine historiography would
present an almost ludicrous appearance but for their sobering implications for many aspects of
prehispanic Philippine history. The paleographer may be relieved at not having to reconcile
two different systems of ancient Philippine writing, the ethnologist will shrug off the loss of
evidence for a common Kabunian-worship in sixteenth-century Negros and twentieth-century
Mountain Province, and few will note or regret the question raised about the date of the
invention of coconut-palm wine. But the doubt cast on the ninth chapter of Part I of Jose
Maria Pavón‟s Ancient legends of the Island of Negros will occasion some distress on the part
of many who learned at their teacher‟s knee to cherish the memory of Datu Bendahara
Kalantiaw, founder of the ancient capital of the Province of Aklan, or law students who have
pored over learned justices‟ studies of that penal code promulgated in Panay before the first
Spanish conquistador set his imperialist foot on Philippine shores. For this reason if no other,
the responsible historian will wish to reconsider carefully any claim to authenticity on behalf
of even part of the Marco corpus.
One eminent historian who recognized the obvious fact that the Povedano map and
manuscript of 1578 simply “do not look like sixteenth-century documents” suggests that they
may be based on some authentic Povedano manuscript which was too dull or illegible to make
an interesting contribution to Philippine historiography without extensive reworking. Other
scholars hold the view that the prewar Marco manuscripts are genuine but later ones
fraudulent, invoking one of two theories to account for the difference – a sort of Jekyll-and-
Hyde theory that Jose E. Marco himself underwent a personality change during the interim, or
a two-Jose-E.-Marco theory which proposes a similar disparity between a Jose E. Marco, Sr.,
and a Jose E. Marco, Jr. The historian willing to indulge such psychoanalytic speculation may
also hypothesize circumstances to explain the series of apparent discrepancies in the earlier
Povedano and Pavón documents.
Perhaps, for example, Diego Lope Povedano was self-made man on the outer fringe
of the Spanish renaissance with an erratic education and a flair for the artistic and novel,
whose Philippine alphabet was produced by a polite native overpowered by demands for a
letter-by-letter equivalent of the Spanish alphabet and perhaps this alphabet was accepted as a
welcome reform by Filipinos who continued to use it in the Negros hinterlands like the
Mangyans of Mindoro without attracting outside attention. Perhaps Jose Maria Pavron was a
kind of antiquarian Don Quizote given to romantic quirks like signing himself “Fray” and
muddleheaded vagueness about dates who was scion of a family with a good collection of
original manuscripts from the Philippines, whose first 32 years in the mission field cannot
now be documented due to scanty records, and who went to school with one Fray Jorge G.
Setien who was the son of another friar of the same name who only assumed the habit in
widowed old age. Perhaps all of the documents were dated by an ancient Javanese calendar
of the Madjapahit period unknown to Father Pavón but known to his informants, or perhaps
they had Chinese dates whose source went unacknowledged due to popular racial prejudice.
Perhaps D. Juan A. Collado was a careless amanuensis who wrote “Rey” when Father Pavón
really said “Reina,” and perhaps Father Pavón himself happened to coin the same term Dr.
Sedillot was to use 40 years later by the same logic of taking the two Greek roots micro
(small) and bios (life). Perhaps the similarity of Father Pavón‟s Lemurian continent and
43
Sclater‟s Lemuria is a simple coincidence and the equivalence of Poverano‟s leueas with the
French government‟s kilometers a more startling coincidence but one which future research
will explain.
No historian, however, is likely to undertake so Herculean a feat of credulity as to

accept this tenuous catenary of coincidences. Rather, he will resort to an alternate explanation
which recommends itself on the virtue of directness and simplicity – namely, that each and all
of the Jose E. Marco manuscripts, in their present form, are deliberate and definite frauds.
A careful consideration of the details of the prewar documents, moreover, even

suggests that they were all produced in the year 1913 just prior to being donated to the
Philippine Library and Museum. Marco‟s possession of an unpublished Pavón manuscript
was first announced in July of that year by Manuel Artigas y Cuerva in his article,
“Civilizacion prehispana,” together with an illustration of the calendar obtained from a certain
Pangibalonan with tiny drawings but no writing, and mention of a code of 16 laws
promulgated in 1433 by a ruler named Kalantiaw (nothing is said about the island of Panay,
Marco always communicating from Negros) who, presumably, also built a fort in Gagalangin,
Negros, which was destroyed by and earthquake in [1] 435. But the full Pavón text turned
over to Dr. Robertson in 1914 c alls the owner of the calendar an 81-year-old by the name
Kalantiaw and gives Pangibalonan as his birthplace, identified in the Brujerias as a mountain
in Cebu; comments of the tiny drawings, “Each of these figures has engravings and
hieroglyphics which, according to their traditions, are equivalent to letters in our language”;
describes the Kalantiaw fortress as being in Calingling (which appears on the Povedano map)
not Gagalangin; makes no mention of the date of its destruction; and gives the 16 Kalantiaw
laws as 18 but calls them 17.
Then again, Domingo Rigay and Canunhing are named as two of Pavón‟s informants,
and the existence of a map “drawn up by the learned encomendero Madrigal is the year 1509”
is mentioned, while the Povedano map published in November 1913 shows the signature of
one Juan Camunhing Rigay. This is the map connected with the story of the little lead box,
but there is no `reason to connect the story with the second map - that is, the “original” given
to Robertson in 1914: Roibertson‟s clear description says nothing about any notarized acta
being executed on the back of it, nor do his photographs show it. These discrepancies might
be explained as careless lapses on the art of a busy author who had not yet completed either
the map or the manuscript in July of 1913 and who was still undecided which of the little
known encomenderos name in the Riquel list to give credit for his work.
The “Code of Kalantiaw.” – The Marco-Pavón Antiguas Leyendas is the source, and
the only source, of the famous Kalantiaw Code which is quoted in full in the Standard history
texts. It is entitled “The 17 theses, or laws of the Regulos in use in 150 since 1433,” and was
supposedly discovered in the possession of a Panay ruler in 1614, its original being still in the
possession of one Don Marcelio Orfila of Zaragoza in 1839. “The figure “150” must mean
1150 in accordance with the usual custom of abbreviating dates and the example in the second
chapter of Part II where the year of the Kalantiaw-built fortress is given as 433 instead of
1433. This makes the title statement, “in use in 1150 since 1433,” ridiculous, of course, but no
more ridiculous than the fact that the fort-building date of 1433 appears in a source itself
dated 1137. Despite these peculiarities, however, Robertson published an
English translation of the Code in apparent good faith in 1917, the same year Soncuya
published the Spanish version.
Soncuya also concluded that Rajah Kalantiaw – as he called him – had written the
code for Aklan because of the presence of two Aklanon rather than Higaynon words in the
text, and by the time Zaide included the Code in his 1949 history, the words “Aklan, Panay”
had been added to a translation of the original rubric, viz., “Echo en el año 1433 – Calantiao –
44
3o regulo.” This process of naturalization was completed in 1956 when the late Digno Alba, in
connection with the inauguration of the new province of Aklan, announced that Kalantiaw
had organized his government in Batan as the ancient capital of the sakup of Aklan. A request
by the Philippine Government of the Spanish Government ten years later for the return of the
original codex by the descendants of Mercelio Orfila elicited the hardly surprising
information that the Police Commissioner could find no record of any such family in
Zaragoza.
By this time, Kalantiaw was well on his way to becoming a National Hero. In 1966,
Sol H. Gwekoh‟s “Hall of Fame” in the old Sunday Times magazine (21 August) gave new
biographic details – e.g., Datu Bendahara Kalantiaw was born in 1410; his father was Rajah
Behendra Gulah, and he became the third Muslim ruler of Panay at the age of 16. Then in
1970, Gregorio Zaide‟s Great Filipinos in history argued that his real name was Lakan Tiaw
and gave a direct quote (“The law is above all men”), and the next year, the Manila Bulletin
reported the celebration of the 538th anniversary of the promulgation of the Code on 8
December with the coronation of the “Lakambini ni Kalantiyaw.” Artist Carlos Valino, Jr.,
depicted the event itself in oil on canvas with the law-giver reading from a node of bamboo
held vertically; the President of the Republic bestowed the Order of Kalantiaw on deserving
justices; and a 30-centavo postage stamp was issued to commemorate his name. Finally, lest
some future generation forget a Filipino who “possessed the wisdom of Solomon, the fighting
prowess of Genghis Khan, and the sagacious statesmanship of Asoka,” his code was fittingly
inscribed on brass in the Kalantiyaw Shrine in Batan, Aklan.
The contents of the Code itself are no less peculiar. They were presumably
promulgated by a central authority of sufficient power to put local chieftains to death for
failure to enforce them, and prescribe 36 different offenses irrationally grouped in 18 theses,
punishable by 15 kinds of corporal and capital punishment bearing no relation to the nature or
severity of the crimes. None of these theses can be duplicated in other historic codices, many
are hard to understand or apply, some contradict others, and all are utterly unfilipino in their
harshness. Genuine Philippine custom law as described in early Spanish accounts permits
even the most serious offenses to settle by the payment of fines or debt servitude, and this is
still true of Filipino cultures that never submitted to Spanish sovereignty. Only Jose E. Marco
thought Filipino chieftains ruled with “a strong arm and the severity and harness fit and
natural to the ancient governments of the world” (Reseña historica, p. 18).
Legalist commentators have not been wanting to cite the codes of Leviticus or
Hammurabi for comparisons of severity, but what is incredible about the Kalantiaw Code is
not its severity but its capricious viciousness” its catalogue of punishments alone sounds like
the mad maunderings of some unfettered sadist – plunging the hand into boiling water three
times, cutting off the fingers, laceration with thorns, exposure to ants, swimming for three
hours, drowning weighted with stones, beating to death, or being burned, boiled, stoned,
crushed with weights, cut to pieces, or thrown in crocodiles.
One wonders what pedagogical mischief has been done to three generations of
Filipino youths by the belief that their ancestors suffered a society submissive to such a legal
system – especially since it seems to have been promulgated by a Filipino who had no more
tangible existence than the venerable Reverend Father Operiano Rodriguez, OSA, late of
Cebu.
Conclusion
The Jose E. Marco contributions to Philippine historiography examined in this study
– viz., the Povedano 1572 map, and the Povedano 1572, 1577, 1578, and 1579, Morquecho
1830, and Pavón 1838-1839 manuscripts – appear to be deliberate fabrications with no
45
historic validity. There is therefore no present evidence that any Filipino ruler by the name of
Kalantiaw ever existed or that the Kalantiaw penal code is any older than 1914.
******
Reading 2.3
Chapter 3
Fossil Evidence of Early Men3

By F.Landa Jocano
Prehistoric population
To achieve a better perspective of the beginnings of Philippine society and culture, it
is important that we look at it in the context of early human population in the entire region of
Island Southeast Asia. This is necessary because recent reconstructions of prehistoric events
in the region have not emphasized the presence and widespread distribution of early men in
the area prior to their popular identification as Malays, Indonesians and Filipinos. The ethnic
labels are historically recent, given by European explorers and scholars. But as these terms
became accepted and used in the literature, many theories about the origins and racial
affinities of the people were formulated.
In this chapter, I shall review briefly the distribution of fossil human in the region of
Island Southeast Asia, including those recently recovered in the Philippines. Also included in
this review are fossil finds in the neighboring areas of the Asia mainland, New Guinea and
Australia. The purpose of this inclusion is to view in wider context Philippine materials
thereby giving us a perspective broader than what we have at present.
It needs to be kept in mind, in this connection, that while these fossil finds are
remains of individual persons, they are used in this study to represent a population.
Prehistoric population was certainly not as big as contemporary ones. But size is not
important in prehistoric studies because it is quite unrealistic to expect to discover fossil
remains of entire population. What is extremely important is this regard, however, is how
each fossil find differs anatomically from each other. In this case of materials from Island
Southeast Asia, there is discernible trend of development from less to more advanced human
forms. Also interesting to note is that each morphological change in the fossil record
corresponds to changes in geological time, as well as to cultural materials associated with
them…
3
Lifted from his book by F. Landa Jocano, Philippine Prehistory, Quezon City: Philippine Center for
Advance Studies, University of the Philippines, 1978, pp. 60-70. (Source notes and footnotes were
intentionally deleted from this reading.)
46
Borneo-Palawan relations
In 1958, while digging inside the huge Niah cave in Sarawak, Borneo, Tom Harrison
and his associates recovered a skull of a young individual probably 15 to 17 years old. The
date by carbon-14 for the stratigraphic layer from where it was excavated is 40,000 BP. The
sex of the specimen is unknown. It has a receding forehead, shallow palate, rounded skull
side- bones, and fairly deep nasal root. It shows certain morphological resemblances with
earlier specimens of Java and also with the modern population of Southeast Asia, suggesting
some continuity in the evolution of men in the region.
D.R. Brothwell, who made the laboratory analysis of the specimen, is of the opinion
that Niah men did not belong to the same population as other prehistoric men in Southeast
Asia. Differences in physical characteristics could possibly be nutritional, climatic,
geographical isolation and genetic drift. But whatever reason one takes to explain the
phenomenon, it is significant to note that the Niah specimen documents the event in time
during which men crossed the threshold of Homo erectus and came Homo sapiens.
Palawan inhabitants. – The discovery of fragments of hominid skull in Tabon cave

in Palawan, Philippines in 1963 [or 1962?- Authors] by Robert B. Fox and his associates
working for the National Museum of the Philippines, documents further the existence of man
in the region during the Pleistocene period. It also provides us with additional fossil evidence
of prehistoric population distribution in Island Southeast Asia. The assemblage of datable
materials associated with Tabon specimens have been placed, by carbon-14 determination at
about 2,000 years BP [Before Present]. The skull cap was recovered in a disturbed section of
the site where the Tabon bird built its nest. It could be older, the last level in the excavated
site being 30,500 BP by c-14 determination, Until detailed laboratory analysis of the human
fossil specimen in completed, no definite morphological description can be made. It is certain,
however, that the Tabon skull cap belongs to Homo sapiens.
At least three individuals are represented in this set of fossil finds which include a
large frontal bone with prominent browridges and part of the nasal bone.
New perspective in prehistoric population distribution in Island

Southeast Asia
From the data presented above, it is clear that men were present in Island Southeast
Asia as early as one and a half to two million years. How they spread out over the entire
region is not yet known. Perhaps the mystery can be unraveled in the future when more
researches are carried out and more refined research methods are applied…
At present two choices are open to students of prehistory in Island Southeast Asia,
particularly in the Philippines. The first one is to view the peopling of the regions as a result
of a continuous process of human evolution which started, as evidences show, from Homo
erectus and developed through time, into a dominant core-population of Homo sapiens. The
second approach is to look at Island Southeast Asia – (i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia, and the
Philippines), - as peopled in later years by groups of immigrants from the Asia mainland.
The first view is challenging but fraught with difficulties. More intensive researches
are needed in order to clarify many problems attendant to prehistoric adjustments of early
men to the ecology of the island worlds of the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. What
factors, for example, were responsible for the rapid shift of Homo erectus (especially the
47
descendants of Solo men) to Homo sapien? Is the latter a descendant of the former or were
they entirely “intruders” in the region?
The second proposal is too simplistic in nature, even if we take the Niah cavemen and
the Palawn inhabitants as markers for modern populations which began to spread all over the
region as early as 40,000 years ago. Island Southeast Asia was not demographically a clean
slate even during prehistoric times. As the evidence show, there were human beings in the
regions as early as 1.9 million years ago.
Hence, there are no adequate reasons, at this time, why the two approaches cannot be
combined in order to arrive at a meaningful reconstruction of prehistoric society in Island
Southeast Asia. It can be argued that prehistoric men, whose fossil remains have been
recovered from a hundred of places in the region, represent the core-population in the area
around which genetic accretions were superimposed as later groups of people trickled into the
region from other places, thus giving rise to new populations we now recognize as
contemporary ethnic groups.
This new orientation requires emphasis, if only for the reason that early scholars,
particularly in the Philippines, were quite generous with their generalizations concerning the
peopling of Island Southeast Asia. For example, it has been argued that the people in the
region were originally Malays. Unless one takes the word Malay as taxonomic label it is quite
difficult to accept this assertion in the light of fossil evidence. None of the fossil finds have so
far been labeled as such by the authorities who are themselves responsible for what we know
today about prehistoric men.
On the basis of current usage, the term Malay is an ethnic (hence cultural) term
applied to a group of people who speak Malay or the Melayu language. However, it has been
used popularly (and erroneously) to encompass such biological entity as race. Is difficult to
relate the ethnic label to strictly paleo-biological evidences and still be accurate in stating that
the region of Island Southeast Asia had been peopled by the Malays. The misuse of labels
which is current in many text books today gives undue credit of cultural dominance to an
ethnic group of people in the area – a credit unsupported by facts.
Thus, to say that Filipinos are Malays or that Filipino culture is derived from the
Malays is to create a myth of origin which has no basis in fact. It is doubtful whether one can
safely recognize Malay characteristics in the Java, Solo, Wadjak, Niah and Tabon fossil men
– a population so widespread in the area prior to any prehistoric or proto-historic movements
of people. In addition, influences of external cultures and local responses to them show
recognizable differences during historic times, even if there was a common prehistoric culture
which linked these ethnic groups.
On the other hand, fossil evidence suggests that the people in Island Southeast Asia –
Indonesians, Malays, and Filipinos – are the products of both the long process of human
evolution and the latter events of movements of people. They stand co-equal as ethnic groups,
without any one being the dominant group, racially or culturally. To reason otherwise is to
disregard the fossil evidence – from Djetis to Tabon – which antedate all modern movements
of men in the region.
Moreover it needs to be stressed that the ethnic labels, as known today and applied to
contemporary populations, were given by the European colonizers when they came during the
15th and 16th centuries A.D. The term “Indonesian” was introduced to the body of literature in
1881 to refer to the people inhabiting the archipelago of the Dutch East Indies. This was
accepted and given academic status by the German geographer Adolph Bastian in 1884. It
was accepted as a legal political term in 1947, when the country won its independence.
48
Similarly, the term “Malay” was made popular by the British when they colonized the
Melayu-speaking people in 1795.
The earlier we recognize these facts the sooner we will be able to attain better
perspective of the prehistory of Southeast Asia in general and of the Philippines in particular.
========================================
Reinforcement Activity
 Appreciating our prehistoric past
Answer the following questions
a) Summarize the Core Population theory of Jocano regarding the peopling of the
islands in Southeast Asia.
b) In formulating Jocano‟s theory, Jocano used the fossil finds of Fox in Tabon Cave.
On the point of view of Jocano‟s work published in his book Philippine History
where the theory was conceived, what kind of historical source (primary or
secondary) was Fox‟s fossil finds? What kind of historical source, however, was the
fossil finds for Fox when he presented it in his work? How would you differentiate
the two kinds of historical sources then?
c) We previously knew that we descended from the Malayan race, with the core
population theory, how would you assess our descent?
d) How would you feel or what would be the effect of this theory to you as we look at
ourselves as one race and one group of people in Southeast Asia?
e) With this theory, how would you regard our other Asian neighbors with which we
were descended? How would you regard all other races and peoples around the world
as well?
 Identifying the elements of examining historical sources through internal and

external criticism
Complete the matrix below. An example of how it will be answered is given below. Fill out
other details including the Maragtas.
Historical Sources
Historical Criticism
Monteclaro‟s Maragtas Contribution of Marco
Background of the person or Monteclaro:

persons where the material - Born in Miag-ao, Iloilo
originated
External criticism technique -Provenance
used
-copy taken from a bamboo tube

Findings
-the paper was too brittle
Internal criticism technique -verisimilitude
49
employed
-very similar with folktales from

Findings Panay
Conclusion -forgery, hoax?
a) What techniques did Scott employ in examining the historical sources in question?
b) What did he find out?
 Acquiring skills of critical examination of information
Assess yourself with the following cases. What would you think or do if presented with
the following?
a) A person selling a bar of gold approached you. The person says it is pure gold and
showed you a shining, gold-colored metal bar. He gave you a price and will turn over
you the gold bar if you would give him the money.
b) A person tells you that a member of your family met an accident and asks you to meet
him with a certain amount of money as down payment for the hospital bill.
c) Somebody came out in the media accusing another person to be a crook.
Challenge
Information is powerful tool. It can be meaningfully used or indiscriminately
misused. When you encounter a piece of information, how would you react then? Believe at
once? Give the benefit of the doubt? Try to verify? Find out the credibility of the information
including the sources? Why? How would you practice this in other aspects of your everyday
life?
References
Agoncillo, Teodoro and Guerrero, Milagros (1977) History of the Filipino People. Quezon
City: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co.
Fox, Robert (1970) The Tabon Caves: Archeologidal Explorations and Excavations on
Palawan Island. Manila: National Museum.
Gottschalk, Louis (1969) Understanding History: a primer of historical method. New York:
A.A. Knopf.
Jocano, F. L. (1978) Philippine Prehistory. Quezon City: Philippine Center for Advanced
Studies. University of the Philippines.
50
__________ (1998) Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage. Quezon City:

Punlad Research House.
Scott, William Henry (1984) Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine
Prehistory. Quezon City: New Day Publishers
51

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Gabriel & Espiritu Salaysay at Saysay Manuscript (Unedited)

Figure 2.1 Skull cap found in Tabon Cave

Figure 2.2 Stone implements found in Tabon Cave

Historical Context of the Documents

Figure 2.3 Dr. Henry Otley Beyer holding a ancient earthenware

doctoral studies in anthropology at Harvard University. He lectured at the University of the

Figure 2.5 Dr. Felipe Landa Jocano

It might be argued, on the basis of fossil evidence that premodern human

Figure 2.6 Photograph of Dr. William Henry Scott

The Problem of Authenticity or External Criticism1

Forged or Misleading Documents

Sometimes fabrication is due to less mercenary considerations. Political propaganda

Sometimes quite genuine documents are intended to mislead certain contemporaries

It would be rather jolly, I think,

Occasionally misrepresentations of the nature of printed works result from editors‟

To distinguish a hoax or a misrepresentation from a genuine document, the historian

Science Auxiliary to History

Identification of Author and of Date

The Problem of Credibility or Internal Criticism

What is Historical Fact?

A historical “fact” thus may be defined as a particular derived directly or indirectly

The Interrogative Hypothesis

Putting the hypothesis in interrogative form is more judicious than putting it in

The Quest for Particular Details of Testimony

The historian, however, is frequently obliged to use documents written by persons

Determination of Approximate Date

The Personal Equation

Hearsay and Secondary Evidence

Thus hearsay evidence would not be discarded by the historian as it would be by a

The importance of the independence of the witnesses is obvious. Independence is not,

Pedro Alcantara Monteclaro‟s Maragtas or History of Panay from the first

I wrote this Maragtas, a history of the first inhabitants of the island

In order that the readers of this Maragtas should not accuse me of

I should like my readers to know that my purpose in writing this

The following account of history called Maragtas written by Mr.

The Maragtas consists of a publishers introduction by Salvador Laguda, the author‟s

On their way home, Sumakwel‟s brother-in-law, Bangkaya, saves a woman from a

The “Maragtas Code.” – The other exceptional passage of historic significance

This prewar indifference to Philippine history was replaced after national

Summary. – The Maragtas is an original work by Pedro A. Monteclaro published in

The Contributions of Jose E. Marco to Philippine

1. Historia de la Isla de Negros by the Encomendero Diego Lope Povedano, 1572,

The Povedano Manuscript of 1572

Provenance – The provenance of the document is almost unknown. Jose E. Marco

Contents – La Isla de Negros is straight ethnography – 17 pages of legends about the

The orthography of the document is rather more inconsistent than is typical of

The Pavón Manscripts of 1838-1839

No historian, however, is likely to undertake so Herculean a feat of credulity as to

A careful consideration of the details of the prewar documents, moreover, even

Fossil Evidence of Early Men3

Palawan inhabitants. – The discovery of fragments of hominid skull in Tabon cave

New perspective in prehistoric population distribution in Island

 Appreciating our prehistoric past

Answer the following questions

 Identifying the elements of examining historical sources through internal and

Background of the person or Monteclaro:

-copy taken from a bamboo tube

Internal criticism technique -verisimilitude

-very similar with folktales from

Conclusion -forgery, hoax?

 Acquiring skills of critical examination of information

__________ (1998) Filipino Prehistory: Rediscovering Precolonial Heritage. Quezon City:

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