The Formation of the Philippine ArchipelagoOrigin Of The PhilippinesThe history of Philippines dates back to some 50,000 years ago. It may be surprising but there is sufficient archaeological evidence to back the claim, though we may not conclude that it is the 'history' of 'the Philippines' that dates back that far behind. However, there is little dispute about the statement that Homosapiens did exist in Palawan some 50,000 years back. Later, Austronesian-speaking people settled in the Philippines and established maritime trading with other parts of the South East Asia. It was done as early as 5,000 B.C.For a very long time, the archipelago remained untouched by the outsiders, lying peacefully in its own little part of the world. The west, however, did flow in with Ferdinand Magellan being the first in 1521, followed by Miguel Lpez de Legazpi in 1565. They formed the first Spanish settlements, which eventually turned the Philippines into their colony. Then came Roman Catholic missionaries, who converted most of the inhabitants to Christianity. The following 300 years of Philippines' history saw several turmoils with the Spanish military fighting off various local revolts and several external colonial challenges from as diverse quarters as the British, the Chinese, the Dutch, the French, the Japanese, and the Portuguese. The Spanish military was largely successful in defending their occupation. However, they could not avoid the occupation of the capital by the British during the Seven Years' War. Though that was a temporary occupation, it was still one of the most serious damages done to the Spanish rule in the archipelago.The Philippines opened up for world trade on September 6, 1834. In the Spanish mainland a propaganda protest began. The propagandists led by Rizal demanded, amongst other things, a greater representation in Spain, but the movement did not yield expected gains. So, Rizal returned to the Philippines and pushed for the reforms locally, which resulted in his arrest, trial, and execution for sedition on December 30, 1896.However, the spirit of revolution did not die down. Another revolution sprang up. It was led by Andrs Bonifacio and was continued by Emilio Aguinaldo, who managed to establish a revolutionary government though, the Spanish governor general Fernando Primo de Rivera announced the death of the revolution on May 17, 1897.The Spanish-American War broke out in 1898 and gradually proceeded up to the Philippines when Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish squadron at the Manila Bay. Spain ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Cuba to the United States. It was the Americans who brought democracy to the Philippines. It was made a commonwealth country in 1935. The Philippines was to attain independence in the next decade, but it did not come as World War II broke out and Japan invaded. Independence, however, came Philippines' way on July 4, 1946.Ever since its independence, the Philippines has faced a number of challenges but has managed to sail through, unscathed so far.

Theories on the Origin of the Philippines

The Ice Age Theory

During the Ice Age, glaciers stored portions of the water on the earth in the form of ice. This ice formation caused a drop in the worlds ocean levels. During this period, the Philippine archipelago was part of the continental landmass of Asia. Scholars believed that land bridges connected the Philippines to Asia.

When the Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, the ice formation melted and the ocean levels rose. The land connections to Southeast Asia became flooded. The flooding submerged the land bridges and created the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos. Since then, these islands had been populated by migrating people who traveled by boats. The migrants came mainly from Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula. However, there were also migrants from the costs of Indochina and, to a lesser extent, from China and Taiwan.

The Bottom-of-the-Sea Theory

In 1976, Dr. Fritjof Voss, a German scientist, challenged the Ice Age theory. According to him, the Philippines was never a part of mainland Asia. Dr. Voss claimed that the Philippine islands were located directly above a fault in the earths crust. Powerful earthquakes pushed up the landmass from the ocean floor and the Philippine islands rose from the bottom of the ocean.

The Volcanic Eruption Theory

Another version on the origin of the Philippines is the volcanic eruption theory. Dr. Bailey Willis, a geologist, concluded that the Philippines was a result of the eruptions of submarine volcanoes along the western side of the Pacific basin. These eruptions caused magma and lava to pile up, forming the Philippine isles.

The Lost-Continent Theory

A group of geographers believed that the Philippines constitute the remains of a lost continent during prehistoric times. This continent had sunk below the ocean waters. However, a few portions of land which now make up the Philippines were left above water.

The Early People of Philippine Archipelago

The primary peoples of the Philippine archipelago were the Negrito, proto-Malay, and Malay peoples. The Negritos are believed to have journeyed to the Philippines by land bridges some 30,000 years ago from Borneo, Sumatra, and Malaya, during the last ice age. Later migrations were by water and took place over several thousand years. The Malayans followed in successive waves. These people belonged to a prehistoric age of Malayan culture, which has in fact survived to this day among certain groups such as the Igorots. The Malayan tribes that came later had more highly developed material cultures. The social and political organization of the population in the widely scattered islands evolved into a generally common pattern. Only the permanent-field rice farmers of northern Luzon had any notion of territoriality. The basic unit of settlement was the barangay, formerly a kinship group headed by a datu (chief). Within the barangay (Malay term for boat; also came to be used for the communal settlements established by migrants who came from the Indonesian archipelago and elsewhere. The term replaces the word barrio, formerly used to identify the lowest political subdivision in the Philippines), the broad social divisions consisted of nobles, including the datu; freemen; and a group described before the Spanish period as dependents. Dependents included several categories with differing status: landless agricultural workers; those who had lost freeman status because of indebtedness or punishment for crime; and slaves, most of whom appear to have been war captives.

In the 14th century Arab traders from Malay and Borneo introduced Islam into the southern islands and extended their influence as far north as Luzon. Islam was brought to the Philippines by traders and proselytizers from the Indonesian islands. By the 16th century, Islam was recognized in the Sulu Archipelago and spread from there to Mindanao; it had reached the Manila area by 1565.

The first Europeans to visit (1521) the Philippines were those in the Spanish expedition around the world headed by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Other Spanish expeditions followed, including one from New Spain (Mexico) under Lpez de Villalobos, who in 1542 named the islands for the infante Philip, later Philip II. Muslim immigrants introduced a political concept of territorial states ruled by rajas or sultans who exercised suzerainty over the datu. Neither the political state concept of the Muslim rulers nor the limited territorial concept of the inactive rice farmers of Luzon, however, spread beyond the areas where they originated. The majority of the estimated 500,000 people in the islands lived in barangay settlements when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.

Social Structure of the People

Before the coming of Spanish colonizers, the people of the Philippine archipelago had already attained a semicommunal and semislave social system in many parts and also a feudal system in certain parts, especially in Mindanao and Sulu, where such a feudal faith as Islam had already taken roots. The Aetas had the lowest form of social organization, which was primitive communal.The SocietyThe barangay was the typical community in the whole archipelago. It was the basic political and economic unit independent of similar others. Each embraced a few hundreds of people and a small territory. Each was headed by a chieftain called the rajah or datu.Social StructureThe social structure comprised a petty nobility, the ruling class which had started to accumulate land that it owned privately or administered in the name of the clan or community. Maharlika (Datu in Visayas): an intermediate class of freemen called the Maharlika who had enough land for their livelihood or who rendered special service to the rulers and who did not have to work in the fields. Timawa: the ruled classes that included the timawa, the serfs who shared the crops with the petty nobility. Alipin (Oripun in Visayas): and also the slaves and semislaves who worked without having any definite share in the harvest. There were two kinds of slaves then: those who had their own quarters, the aliping namamahay (aliping mamahay in Visayas), and those who lived in their master's house, the aliping sagigilid (aliping hayohay in Visayas). One acquired the status of a serf or a slave by inheritance, failure to pay debts and tribute, commission of crimes and captivity in wars between barangays.Islamic MonarchyThe Islamic sultanates of Sulu and mainland Mindanao represented a higher stage of political and economic development than the barangay. These had a feudal form of social organization. Each of them encompassed more people and wider territory than the barangay. The sultan reigned supreme over several datus and was conscious of his privilege to rule as a matter of hereditary "divine right."Though they presented themselves mainly as administrators of communal lands, apart from being direct owners of certain lands, the sultans, datus and the nobility exacted land rent in the form of religious tribute and lived off the toiling masses. They constituted a landlord class attended by a retinue of religious teachers, scribes and leading warriors.The sultanates emerged in the two centuries precedent to the coming of Spanish colonialists. They were built up among the so-called third wave of Malay migrants whose rulers either tried to convert to Islam, bought out, enslaved or drove away the original non-Muslim inhabitants of the areas that they chose to settle in. Serfs and slaves alike were used to till the fields and to make more clearings from the forest.Throughout the archipelago, the scope of barangays could be enlarged either through the expansion of agriculture by the toil of the slaves or serfs, through conquests in war and through interbarangay marriages of the nobility. The confederations of barangays was usually the result of a peace pact, a barter agreement or an alliance to fight common internal and external enemies.As evident from the forms of social organization already attained, the precolonial inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had an internal basis for further social development. In either barangay or sultanate, there was a certain mode of production which was bound to develop further until it would wear out and be replaced with a new one. There were definite classes whose struggle was bound to bring about social development. As a matter of fact, the class struggle within the barangay was already getting extended into interbarangay wars. The barangay was akin to the Greek city-state in many respects and the sultanate to the feudal commonwealth of other countries.The people had developed extensive agricultural fields. In the plains or in the mountains, the people had developed irrigation systems. The Ifugao rice terraces were the product of the engineering genius of the people; a marvel of 12,000 miles if strung end-to-end. There were livestock-raising, fishing and brewing of beverages. Also there were mining, the manufacture of metal implements, weapons and ornaments, lumbering, shipbuilding and weaving. The handicrafts were developing fast. Gunpowder had also come into use in warfare. As far north as Manila, when the Spaniards came, there was already a Muslim community which had cannons in its weaponry.The ruling classes made use of arms to maintain the social system, to assert their independence from other barangays or to repel foreign invaders. Their jurisprudence would still be borne out today by the so-called Code of Kalantiyaw and the Muslim laws. These were touchstones of their culture. There was a written literature which included epics, ballads, riddles and verse-sayings; various forms and instruments of music and dances; and art works that included well-designed bells, drums, gongs, shields, weapons, tools, utensils, boats, combs, smoking pipes, lime tubes and baskets. The people sculpted images from wood, bone, ivory, horn or metals. In areas where anito worship and polytheism prevailed, the images of flora and fauna were imitated, and in the areas where the Muslim faith prevailed, geometric and arabesque designs were made. Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, a record of what the Spanish conquistadores came upon, would later be used by Dr. Jose Rizal as testimony to the achievement of the indios in precolonial times.There was interisland commerce ranging from Luzon to Mindanao and vice-versa. There were extensive trade relations with neighboring countries like China, Indochina, North Borneo, Indonesia, Malaya, Japan and Thailand. Traders from as far as India and the Middle East vied for commerce with the precolonial inhabitants of the archipelago. As early as the 9th century, Sulu was an important trading emporium where trading ships from Cambodia, China and Indonesia converged. Arab traders brought goods from Sulu to the Chinese mainland through the port of Canton. In the 14th century, a large fleet of 60 vessels from China anchored at Manila Bay, Mindoro and Sulu. Previous to this, Chinese trading junks had been intermittently sailing into various points of the Philippine shoreline. The barter system was employed or gold and metal gongs were used as medium of exchange.