Philippines
The Philippines is a country full of love, light, laughter, and food. With a slight influence from America and some parts of Asia, the culture of the Philippines is mainly a blend of Filipino and Spanish Catholic traditions. They have a good eye for fashion and art, and their festivals are to die for. Historians believe the Philippines dates back to the Paleolithic age. Based on the archeological artifacts recovered, the Filipino society and culture were fairly developed prior to contacts with other countries. Filipinos had commercial relations early on with China, Indo-China, Malaysia, India, and Arab countries.
Scholars generally believe that these ethnic and social groups eventually developed into various settlements or polities with varying degrees of economic specialization, social stratification, and political organization.[7] Some of these settlements (mostly those located on major river deltas) achieved such a scale of social complexity that some scholars believe they should be considered early states.[8] This includes the predecessors of modern-day population centers such as Manila, Tondo, Pangasinan, Cebu, Panay, Bohol, Butuan, Cotabato, Lanao, Zamboanga and Sulu[9] as well as some polities, such as Ma-i, whose possible location is either Mindoro or Laguna.[10]
These polities were influenced by Islamic, Indian, and Chinese cultures. Islam arrived from Arabia, while Indian Hindu-Buddhist[11] religion, language, culture, literature and philosophy arrived through expeditions such as the South-East Asia campaign of Rajendra Chola I.[12] Some polities were Sinified tributary states allied to China. These small maritime states flourished from the 1st millennium.[13][14] These kingdoms traded with what are now called China, India, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The remainder of the settlements were independent barangays allied with one of the larger states. These small states alternated from being part of or being influenced by larger Asian empires like the Ming Dynasty, Majapahit and Brunei or rebelling and waging war against them.[15]
The first recorded visit by Europeans is Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition who landed in Homonhon Island, now part of Guiuan, Eastern Samar on March 17, 1521. They lost a battle against the army of Lapulapu, chief of Mactan, where Magellan was killed.[16][17][18] Spanish colonialism began with the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi’s expedition on February 13, 1565, from Mexico. He established the first permanent settlement in Cebu.[19] Much of the archipelago came under Spanish rule, creating the first unified political structure known as the Philippines. Spanish colonial rule saw the introduction of Christianity, the code of law, and the oldest modern university in Asia. The Philippines was ruled under the Mexico-based Viceroyalty of New Spain. After this, the colony was directly governed by Spain.
Spanish rule ended in 1898 with Spain’s defeat in the Spanish–American War. The Philippines then became a territory of the United States. U.S. forces suppressed a revolution led by Emilio Aguinaldo. The United States established the Insular Government to rule the Philippines. In 1907, the elected Philippine Assembly was set up with popular elections. The U.S. promised independence in the Jones Act.[20] The Philippine Commonwealth was established in 1935, as a 10-year interim step prior to full independence. However, in 1942 during World War II, Japan occupied the Philippines. The U.S. military overpowered the Japanese in 1945. The Treaty of Manila in 1946 established the independent Philippine Republic.
Stone tools and fossils of butchered animal remains discovered in Rizal, Kalinga are evidences of early hominins in the country to as early as 709,000 years.[1] Researchers found 57 stone tools near rhinoceros bones bearing cut marks and some bones smashed open, suggesting that the early humans were after the nutrient-rich marrow.[21] Oldest human fossil is from the third metatarsal of the Callao Man of Cagayan at about 67,000 years.[2][22] This and the Angono Petroglyphs in Rizal suggest the presence of human settlement before the arrival of the Negritos and Austronesian speaking people.[23][24] The Callao Man remains and 12 bones of three hominin individuals found by subsequent excavations in Callao Cave were later identified to belong in a new species named Homo luzonensis.[3] For modern humans, the Tabon Man remains are the still oldest known at about 47,000 years.[4]
The Negritos were early settlers,[5] but their appearance in the Philippines has not been reliably dated.[25] They were followed by speakers of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, a branch of the Austronesian language family. The first Austronesians reached the Philippines at 3000–2200 BC, settling the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon. From there, they rapidly spread downwards to the rest of the islands of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, as well as voyaging further east to reach the Northern Mariana Islands by around 1500 BC.[6][26][27][28] They assimilated the earlier Australo-Melanesian Negritos, resulting in the modern Filipino ethnic groups that all display various ratios of genetic admixture between Austronesian and Negrito groups.[29][30] Before the expansion out of Taiwan, archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence had linked Austronesian speakers in Insular Southeast Asia to cultures such as the Hemudu, its successor the Liangzhu[28][31] and Dapenkeng in Neolithic China.[32][33][34][35][36]
The most widely accepted theory of the population of the islands is the “Out-of-Taiwan” model that follows the Austronesian expansion during the Neolithic in a series of maritime migrations originating from Taiwan that spread to the islands of the Indo-Pacific; ultimately reaching as far as New Zealand, Easter Island, and Madagascar.[26][37] Austronesians themselves originated from the Neolithic rice-cultivating pre-Austronesian civilizations of the Yangtze River delta in coastal southeastern China pre-dating the conquest of those regions by the Han Chinese. This includes civilizations like the Liangzhu culture, Hemudu culture, and the Majiabang culture.[38] It connects speakers of the Austronesian languages in a common linguistic and genetic lineage, including the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, Islander Southeast Asians, Chams, Islander Melanesians, Micronesians, Polynesians, and the Malagasy people. Aside from language and genetics, they also share common cultural markers like multihull and outrigger boats, tattooing, rice cultivation, wetland agriculture, teeth blackening, jade carving, betel nut chewing, ancestor worship, and the same domesticated plants and animals (including dogs, pigs, chickens, yams, bananas, sugarcane, and coconuts).[26][37][39]
A 2021 genetic study, which examined representatives of 115 indigenous communities, found evidence of at least five independent waves of early human migration. Negrito groups, divided between those in Luzon and those in Mindanao, may come from a single wave and diverged subsequently, or through two separate waves. This likely occurred sometime after 46,000 years ago. Another Negrito migration entered Mindanao sometime after 25,000 years ago. Two early East Asian waves were detected, one most strongly evidenced among the Manobo people who live in inland Mindanao, and the other in the Sama-Bajau and related people of the Sulu archipelago, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Palawan. The admixture found in the Sama people indicates a relationship with the Htin and Mlabri people of mainland Southeast Asia, both peoples being speakers of an Austroasiatic language and reflects a similar genetic signal found in western Indonesia. These happened sometime after 15,000 years ago and 12,000 years ago respectively, around the time the last glacial period was coming to an end. Austronesians, either from Southern China or Taiwan, were found to have come in at least two distinct waves. The first, occurring perhaps between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, brought the ancestors of indigenous groups that today live around the Cordillera Central mountain range. Later migrations brought other Austronesian groups, along with agriculture, and the languages of these recent Austronesian migrants effectively replaced those existing populations. In all cases, new immigrants appear to have mixed to some degree with existing populations. The integration of Southeast Asia into Indian Ocean trading networks around 2,000 years ago also shows some impact, with South Asian genetic signals present within some Sama-Bajau communities. There is also some Papuan migration to Southeast Mindanao as Papuan genetic signatures were detected in the Sangil and Blaan ethnic groups.[40]
By 1000 BC, the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had developed into four distinct kinds of peoples: tribal groups, such as the Aetas, Hanunoo, Ilongots and the Mangyan who depended on hunter-gathering and were concentrated in forests; warrior societies, such as the Isneg and Kalinga who practiced social ranking and ritualized warfare and roamed the plains; the petty plutocracy of the Ifugao Cordillera Highlanders, who occupied the mountain ranges of Luzon; and the harbor principalities of the estuarine civilizations that grew along rivers and seashores while participating in trans-island maritime trade.[41] It was also during the first millennium BC that early metallurgy was said to have reached the archipelagos of maritime Southeast Asia via trade with India[42][43]
Around 300–700 AD, the seafaring peoples of the islands traveling in balangays began to trade with the Indianized kingdoms in the Malay Archipelago and the nearby East Asian principalities, adopting influences from both Buddhism and Hinduism.