PHILIPPINE PREHISTORY Purpose: to determine the amount of 14C

left in an organism by counting the beta

SOURCES
radiations emitted per minute, per gram
• Artifacts: anything made or modified by
• Potassium-Argon: Potassium-40(40K)
humans
Radioactive form of potassium decays
Lithics: (most common artifacts) stone tools and forms Argon-40 (40Ar).

Ceramics: pots and other items from baked May be used to date samples from 5,000
clay years up to 3 billion years old.

Wood and bone tools Used to date potassium-rich minerals in

rock
Shell tools
• Uranium Series Dating: decays of two
Glass tools kinds of uraniums (235U) and (238U) into
• Ecofacts: natural objects that have been other isotopes such as 230TH (thorium)
used or affected by humans TERMS
Animal bones that people have eaten • Before Present (BP): years is a time
Pollen found in archaeological sites scale in archaeology, geology etc.

Remains of insects/pests PRESENT=1950

• Fossil: impression of an insect/leaf etc • Before the Common Era, sometimes

on a muddy surface that is now a stone Current Era (BCE): dates before the year
or an actual hardened remains of an 1 CE
animal skeletal structure • Before Christ (BC):before 1 AD
Contribution of volcanic ash, limestone, Folklore
mineralized ground water.
• Folk: any of people who share at least
• Features: a different kind of artifact one common factor
that cannot be easily removed from
archaeological sites • Lore: common denominator = ‘product
of human invention’
Hearth: intrinsic feature of a site
• Myths
Pits: holes dug by humans
• Legends
Living floors: where humans live and work
• Folktales
Midden: deep area of debris
• Jokes Proverbs
DATING METHOD
• Riddles
• Radiocarbon/ Carbon-14/ 14C Dating:
• Chants
Based on the principle that all living
matter possesses a certain amount of • Charms
a radioactive form of carbon (14C)
 • Blessings • Fossils

• Curses • (?) Homo erectus philippinensis

• Oaths Philippine Paleolithic

• Insults • ca. 70,000-10,000 BCE

• Taunts • use of flaked stone tools

• Tongue-twisters • Evidence come from the remains of

three individuals at Tabon Caves,
• Greetings/leave-taking formulas
Lipuun Point, Quezon, Palawan,
• Costume excavated by Dr. Robert Fox, chief
archaeologist of the National Museum.
• Folk drama
• Bone fragments included Tabon
• Folk art Woman (43,000 years BP)
• Folk belief TURNING POINTS
• Folk music • metatarsus or metatarsal bones are a
• Folk metaphors group of five long bones in the foot
located between the tarsal bones of the
• Folk poetry (epics) hind- and mid-foot and the phalanges
• Games of the toes.

• Gestures • metatarsal or foot bone, 67,000 years

old (Homo sapiens)
• Prayers
• native brown deer (Cervus Mariannus),
• Folk etymologies
• the Philippine warty pig (Sus
• Food recipes Philippensis)
• Traditional ornaments Philippine Neolithic
• Other art forms • ca. 5,000 – 1,000 BCE
• Survivals of past custom and belief may • marked by the use of polished stone
be embedded in the various genres of and shell adzes
lore
• beginnings of permanent settlements
EARLY LIFE FORMS owing to the domestication of plant and
animal species
Awidan Mesa Formation, Solana, Cagayan
(750,000-500,000 years ago) • Riziculture/rice
Callao Cave • pottery
• 250, 000 BCE • stone adze, hinges of the giant clam,
Tridacna gigas (Taklobo), Conus shells
• Stone flake tools
 • betel nut chewing 5. Language

TURNING POINTS ALTERNATIVE THEORY

Wilhelm G. Solheim II

• ‘Nusantao’ (from ‘nusa’ for ‘island’ and

‘tau’ for ‘man’ or ‘people’)

• ‘Nusantao’ trading network would have

originated from the edges of the
Celebes Sea including northeastern
Borneo, the northern Celebes and
southwestern Mindanao

AUSTRONESIA(N) • territory expansion: TRADING

ACTIVITIES of the maritime-oriented
• Latin auster “south wind” Nusantao.
• Greek nêsos “island” 5,000 BC
• ancestors of the Philippine • earliest communities of Nusantao
Austronesian speakers, Pacific and would have sailed northward to trade
other insular Southeast Asian people in/at Taiwan
BASIS OF AUSTRONESIAN MOVEMENT • Other seafarers would have
• inherent transportability and simultaneously spread toward the
reproducibility of the agricultural Wallacea, the Pacific islands and
economy Indochina.

• “frontier zone” available for Bolobok Rock Shelter, Sanga-Sanga, Tawi-

colonization Tawi (5,745-5,300BC)

• tradition of sailing-canoe construction • Polished shell tools

and navigation • Red slipped pottery
• culturally-sanctioned desire to found • Tridacna (Taklobo) shell tools
new settlements in order to become a
revered or even deified founder Duyong Cave, Palawan
ancestor in the genealogies of future (3,675-3,015 BC)
generations
• Flake tools
CONTRIBUTIONS
• Shell disks
1. Horticulture (rootcrops)

2. Agriculture (rice)

3. Domestication of animals (chicken, pig)

4. Navigation/boat-building