The Earliest Settlers in the Philippines Came from Taiwan

Taiwan Aborigines, Bunun Tribe (Formosa) that had inhabited the island for approximately 8,000 years before outside influences finally arrived | Photo Ralph Repo, CC BY 2.0 via Creative Commons 2.0

Part IX of the “United States-Philippines Relations” Series

This journalist started writing about the earliest settlers of his native province of the Philippines, who were said to have come from Taiwan. Eventually, it led to an organized migration to the South-Pacific islands like Micronesia and beyond. The result is a Facebook Note called A Pre-Hispanic History of Sorsoganons. (Note: All the URLs of the articles cited in the study are found in the said Facebook Note.)

This writer deduced that the earliest settlers in what is now Sorsogon Province probably arrived in the Philippine Archipelago more than 100,000 years ago.

The Humanjourney.us described the “Archaic Homo Sapiens.” It said that “During a period of expanding glaciers that peaked around 100,000 years ago sea levels fell and land corridors opened up from the East Asian mainland to the areas that are now Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Indonesian islands, making it possible for early humans to spread into new territories.”

On November 24, 2007, this writer penned an article on a website that he was editing about the connection between the indigenous peoples of Taiwan and Batanes (AKA Ivatan) and the Cagayan Province (AKA Ibanag).

This journalist’s hypothesis — which can eventually be proven by DNA tests — is that the earliest settlers of Taiwan, Batanes, Cagayan, Sorsogon, and some other provinces in the Philippines all came from the same branch of Homo Sapiens that were documented to have been traced to a prehistoric mainland that is now called China.

The said hypothesis is based on an assumption much earlier than this report: QUOTE. As the result of an archeological excavation performed by Robert Fox at the Hacienda of Juan Escuetura (Escultura) in Bato (Bacon town), Sorsogon (Province) was assumed (to have been) inhabited by prehistoric settlers. The project revealed relics of stone tools, burial jars, and crowns. Some items indicated civilization from 91 B.C. to 79 A.D. Much of this evidence was found in Bulan and Juban. UNQUOTE.

It would be perfectly normal for the first settlers in what is now Cagayan Province to discover by banca (or rafts) what lies south of the northern tip of Luzon. If they traveled south close to the seashore (on the eastern side of the big island of Luzon), the first settlers could arrive in what is now Sorsogon, the southern end of Luzon.

It is more than coincidental that the people of Cagayan Province (the Ibanag) would have nearly the same term given to the pre-Hispanic name of Sorsogon Province, which was “Ibalon.” I found it also more interesting to note that the biggest river in “Ibanag” is called “Cagayan” while the biggest river in Sorsogon is called “Cawayan.”

This study further backed up this writer’s hypothesis (written in the Facebook Note): Researchers Trace the Pacific Migration Route Using Bacteria and Language. Eliza Strickland wrote it on January 23, 2009. QUOTE. It said that groups of researchers seem to have solved the mystery of how and when the first human settlers spread out through the Pacific Islands. One group studied the evolution of a stomach bacteria while the other examined the evolution of language, but both came up with remarkably congruous results. The evolutionary trajectory implied by words and bugs begins with an initial migration from Taiwan 5,000 years ago, with a first wave of people spreading to the Philippines and a second to western Polynesia [Wired News].

In the bacterial study, researchers took stomach samples from people native to Taiwan, Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and New Guinea. They measured genetic variation in Helicobacter pylori, a common gut microbe that traveled with humans when they first left Africa more than 60,000 years ago…. They found that the [bacteria] from people’s guts in Polynesia and Melanesia–islands stretching from New Caledonia to Samoa–were genetically similar to the samples from aboriginal people in Taiwan. Moreover, the Taiwanese bacteria had more genetic diversity than other populations [The Scientist]. Because genetic mutations accumulate over time, these results indicate that the early Taiwanese people were the ancestors of the other groups that split off over the centuries.

In the second of the two papers, both published in Science [subscription required], researchers examined the evolution of the languages used by Pacific people. Professor Russell Gray said that the Austronesian language family is one of the largest in the world, including 1,200 languages spread across the Pacific region. “By studying the basic vocabulary from these languages, such as words for animals, simple verbs, colors, and numbers, we can trace how these languages evolved,” Gray said [AFP].

The researchers found that Taiwan’s language group arose around 5,200 years ago. By tracing the subsequent evolution within the language family, they determined that the Austronesian people paused at least a thousand years before moving into the Philippines; they then paused there before moving into Polynesia. The last places to be settled were far-flung islands such as Hawaii and Easter Island, as well as New Zealand (researchers believe the Maori people got there only 700 or 800 years ago). Research fellow Simon Greenhill said the expansion could be linked to new technology, such as better canoes and social techniques. “Using these new technologies, the Austronesians and Polynesians were able to rapidly spread through the Pacific in one of the greatest human migrations ever,” he said [Sydney Morning Herald]. UNQUOTE.

The next episode of this series will tell how colonial authorities of a Spanish colony called “Filipinas” sent an expedition from the city of Manila to conquer the island of what is now called Taiwan. The expedition comprised Spaniards and the so-called “Indios” from Mexico and Filipinas.