The Philippines in Ancient Times

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Philippines may have beeninhabited many thousands of years before then, but that can't be stated with certainty.The oldest human fossil found so far is 22,000 years old.) Little is known of the earlyhuman settlement of the Philippines. Scientific evidence remains inconclusive. There ismuch written on the Austronesian peoples of the Southeast Asia area and their descendants. These peoples were the seafaring people who traveled to distant parts of the world during this period of history. The Pleistocene Epoch It is generally accepted that the first significant human settlement occurredsometime during the most recent ice age. At that time, 300 000 yrs. ago ,sea levelswere lower, creating land bridges that connected the Southeast Asian mainland to someof the present-day islands of the Malay Archipelago, south of the Philippine Islands. Paleolithic hunters from the mainland are said to have followed herds of wildanimals across these land bridges, later finding their way to the Philippine Islands. Aeta and Agta tribes These people, ancestors, continue to be primarily hunters and food gatherers, much as their ancestors were thousands of years ago. They are one of the world‘s few remaining populations of Pygmies, who are characterized by shorter-than-averageheight. The Spanish colonizers of the 16th century called them Negritos, a term that isstill widely used today. About 3000 B.C. People of Malay and Indonesian descent, who now make up the majority of thepopulation, are believed to have settled in the Philippines in several waves of migrationafter the 3rd century BC. Their languages developed independently because theysettled in widely scattered villages, or balangay. Each balangay included from 30 to 100families and was ruled by a datu, or chieftain. The economy was one of subsistence,with each village producing most of what it needed, and land was held in common. Thevillagers engaged in both shifting (slash-and-burn) and