HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF LAND

OWNERSHIP IN THE PHILIPPINES

PRE-SPANISH PERIOD
No concept of land ownership.
 ANIMISM
• NATURE IS A SACRED CREATION OF GOD.
• GODS AND SPIRITS ARE NOT TO BE
DISTURBED.
• LAND WAS NOT CONSIDERED AS PROPERTY.
 ANIMISM

“The land was conceived of as a natural

resource, like a forest full of wild game and
fruit, or a river full of fish and gold dust”
(William Henry Scott,1994)
 SHIFTING CULTIVATION
• An agricultural system in which plots of land
are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned
and allowed to revert to their natural
vegetation while the cultivator moves on to
another plot.
• In this land pattern, the one who farms or
cultivates the soil is the owner of such land.
 SEDENTISM
• A term applied to the transition from a
nomadic lifestyle to a society which remains in
one place permanently; essentially, sedentism
means living in groups permanently in one
place.
• BARANGAY
 THE BARANGAY
• DATU
• MAHARLIKAS
• ALIPIN
-NAMAMAHAY
-SAGUIGUILID
COMMUNAL
OWNERSHIP
• “The lands where they lived, they divided among
the whole barangay, and thus each one knew his
own, especially what is irrigated, and nobody from
another barangay worked them unless he had
bought or inherited them. In the tingues [hills] they
were not distributed, but only by barangays; and so,
so long as one was from that barangay, even if he
came from another town when it was time to
harvest the rice, the one who first opened the land
planted it, and no one else could take it away from
him” (Plasencia, 1589).