Philippine Pre-Colonial Period

Pre-Colonial Period

• The Philippines was named after Ruy López de Villalobos, a Spanish explorer.
• The name "Ma-i" was used by Chinese to refer to the Philippines, specifically Luzon.
• Siam was the former name of Thailand.

Early Migrants

• Negritos, including Aeta, Agta, and Ayta, were the first settlers in the Philippines, arriving through land bridges.
• They were skilled hunters and food gatherers, and were considered nomads.
• Proto-Malays, a Mongol-Asiatic race, arrived around 2500 BC, using oceanic vessels called balangays.
• They brought seafaring, farming, and other skills, including building houses from trees and creating fire for cooking.

Deuterio-Malays

• Deuterio-Malays, an India-Asiatic race, arrived later, with a more advanced culture.
• They possessed their own systems of writing, knowledge, and skills in agriculture, metallurgy, jewelry-making, and boat-building.

Early Philippine Society

• The Tabon Man, discovered in 1962, lived in the Stone Age and knew how to make and use tools.
• Negritos were early settlers, but their arrival in the Philippines has not been reliably dated.
• The Callao Man, discovered in 2007, is believed to be 20,000 years older than the Tabon Man.

Peopling of the Pre-Colonial Philippines

• By 3000 BC, the inhabitants of the Philippine Archipelago had developed into four distinct kinds of peoples, including tribal groups.
• These groups, such as the Aetas, Hanunoo, and Mangyan, depended on hunter-gathering and were concentrated in forests.

Pre-Colonial Culture

• Early Filipinos formed their own communities, systems of education, and religious beliefs.
• They grouped into different communities, with 50 to 2000 individuals, and built shelters in different areas according to their lifestyle and source of living.
• They had a strong connection to nature, with water areas providing fish, shells, and pearls, and land areas used for cultivating rice, bananas, and crops.

Animistic Beliefs

• Early Filipinos practiced animistic spiritual traditions, believing in good and bad spirits.
• Anito or Diwata were believed to be good and bad spirits, with the good spirits considered as relatives and the bad as enemies.
• Different regions had their own supreme gods, including Bathala (Tagalog), Laon or Abba (Visayan), Ikasi (Zambal), Gugurang (Bicol), Kabunian (Ilocano and Ifugao), and Idialao (others).