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Jerry Joshua G. Diaz BSA 1-1GROUP I 3 rd report

Culture and Technology in Prehistorical Period

Underneath the Philippines 300,000 sq. meter land, lies pricelesstreasures made by ancient Filipinos hundreds of year ago. These treasurereflects how reach our culture is. We may have not known it, but there areresearchers that will prove this statement.

One of the many people who did studies and researches about theprehistory of the Philippines is Mr. Wilhelm Solheim. According to him, Before theSecond World War, the study of Philippine History is monopolized by one man,

H. Otley Beyer. He doesnt believe on depending his work on factual reports butrather on adjuncts to occasional summary papers. Our people have our ancestryin the mainland of Southeast Asia. Small Groups took place from several generalareas, set foot on our area of responsibility and subsequently evolved locally withthe contacts of the people within the Philippines and the people from the outside.We are basically Southeast Asian, meaning our ancestors may have come fromdifferent parts of the Southeast Asia, but we are still able to develop traits thatare uniquely Filipino.

Major Field work is done since 1950 for the study of the Prehistory of thePhilippines. It is executed through the Philippine National Museum by Chief

Anthropologist Robert B. Fox, Alfredo Evangelista and several others of the

museum staff. They have excavated caves from different parts of the Philippines,first; the caves in Sorsogon Province where they had found a jar-burial stone-toolassemblage with no metal remains which is against Beyers Reports that there isno Neolithic pottery in the Philippines. They had explored and excavated smallislands off the east coasts of Southern Luzon where they found a jar-burial stone-tool assemblage similar to what they had found with the jars and it was similar tothe decorated Kalanay complex pottery of Masbate.

The major work undertaken by the National Museum has been in anumber of caves in Palawan. It is discovered by Fox and Santiago. Many other discoveries were uncovered. Some of these were Tabon Caves four-flake toolindustries that is found which yielded radiocarbon dates between about 30,000BC and 7,000 BC; burial jars, agate bracelets, and jade and stone beads whichhave radiocarbon dates of around 800 BC. There are also assemblage found butnow, it contains rare bronze objects, jade ornaments, glass and gold. This phaseis probably about 600 and 200 BC. Iron was added to this assemblage probablyaround 200 BC.

Solheim claims that there are 2 factors present in the study of Philippine prehistory that are not found to any extent in the other Southeast AsianCountries. They are private collector and antiquity shops. For the last ten to 15

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years, many wealthy Filipinos have been collecting cultural elements to thePhilippines.

Another person who did reports on Prehistory and Culture of thePhilippines is Mr. Felipe Landa Jocano. According to him, it is the geographicalOrientation that matters when it comes to the study of our cultural heritage, not in

spatial origins. He admits that our culture is influenced by others because there isno cultural isolates in this world.We are blinded by our beliefs that Filipino Culture is ambiguous in

character that we just imitate other cultures, specifically those cultures of thecountries that invade us. Many Filipino People didnt appreciate how rich our culture is.

Man has been here since the middle of the Pleistocene or Ice Ageaccording to Anthropologists and Prehistorians Scientific dating technique hasbeen a great help for knowing how long ago a given plant or animal or eventhings and remains lived. Carbon 14 technique has been used to date the recentarchaeological findings in Palawan. Here they found fossilized human bones with

stone tools.For thousand of years, diverse influences such as Chinese, Indo-Chinese,Indo-Malayan and Hindi-Indonesia contributed to shape and reshape the lifeways of early Filipinos. Filipinos did not borrow trait-complexes entirely from thepeople they came in contact with; rather, they selected culture-traits from the flowof traditions and modified these traits to suit local needs and ways of doingthings. Sadly, Filipino culture is a priceless treasure where only few peopleappreciate. We dont know how rich our cultural heritage is because we areblinded by western influences and false beliefs. Just like what F. Landa Jocanosaid, even if the structure of the identity is a mixture of elements from differentand often incongorus sources; it is still the Filipino image because it is reflective

of Filipino way of life, world view, temperament, behavior pattern and socialstructure. If its not for these cultures, how can we call ourselves Filipinos? Wemust be proud of our race, not ashamed of it. Every culture has its own values.We must try to open up our mind on things that we really should know for us notto be lead in wrong direction and beliefs. We should also keep in mind whatJocano said Technology is a manifestation of the culture itself. If its notbecause of the past, we can never have our future.