I Am posting this pre-colonial history of Maharlika for

your comments. I got this from the internet. I want

some comments particularly from the Filipinos. The
article seems to say the 10 Datus and the Code of
Kalantiaw is a myth? Here is the article.. quite long
but interesting.

Pre Colonial Period

THE DIM CENTURIES prior to Magellan's arrival in 1521
were formerly unknown to historians. It is only in
recent years that history's frontiers have been
explored by both historians and archaeologists. By
means of intensive researchers in ancient Asian
records and by new archaeological discoveries at
various sites in the Philippine prehistory.

First Man in the Philippines. According to recent

archaeological findings, man is ancient in the
Philippines. He first came about 2500,000 B.C. during
the Ice Age or Middle Pleistocene Period, by way of
the land bridges which linked the archipelago with
Asia. He was a cousin of the "Java Man," "Peking Man,"
and other earliest men in Asia. Professor H. Otley
Beyer, eminent American authority on Philippine
archaeology and anthropology, called him the "Dawn
Man", for he appeared in the Philippines at the dawn
of time.. Brawny and thickly-haired, the "Dawn Man",
had no knowledge of agriculture. He lived by means of
gathering wild edible plants, by fishing, and hunting.
It is probable that he reached the Philippines while
hunting. At that time the boars, deer, giant and pygmy
elephants, rhinoceros, and other Pleistocene animals
roamed in the country. Fossil relics of these ancient
animals have been found in Pangasinan and Cagayan
Valley.

In the course of unrecorded time the "Dawn Man"

vanished, without leaving a trace. Until the present
time his skeletal remains or artifacts have not yet
been discovered by archaeologists. So far the oldest
human fossil found in the Philippines is the skull cap
of a "Stone-Age Filipino", about 22,000 years old.
This human skull cap was discovered by Dr. Robert B.
Fox, American anthropologist of the National Museum,
inside Tabon Cave Palawan, on May 28, 1962. This human
relic was called the "Tabon Man".

The Coming of the Negritos. Ages after the

disappearance of the "Dawn Man", the Negritos from the
Asian mainland peopled the Philippines. They came
about 25,000 years ago walking dry-shod through Malay
Peninsula. Borneo, and the land bridges. Centuries
after their arrival, the huge glaciers of ice melted
and the increased volume of water raised the level of
the seas and submerged the land bridges. The
Philippines was thus cut off from the Asian mainland.
The Negritos lived permanently in the archipelago and
became the first inhabitants.

The Negritos are among the smallest peoples on earth.

They are below five feet in height, with black skin,
dark kinky hair round black eyes, and flat noses.
Because of their black color and short stature, they
were called Negritos (little black people) by the
Spanish colonizers. In the Philippines they are known
as Aeta, Ati, or Ita.

The Negritos were a primitive people with a culture

belonging to the Old Stone Age (Paleolithic). They
wandered in the forests and lived by hunting, fishing,
and gathering wild fruits and roots. Their homes were
temporary sheds made of jungle leaves and branches of
trees. They wore little clothing. They had no
community in life, hence they developed no government,
writing, literature, arts, and sciences. They
possessed the crudest kind of religion which was a
belief in fetishes. They made fire by rubbing two dry
sticks together to give them warmth. They had no
pottery and never cooked their food. However, they
were among they were among the world's best archers,
being skilled in the use of the bow and arrow.

The Indonesians, First Sea-Immigrants. After the

submergence of the land bridges, another Asian people
migrated to the Philippines. They were the maritime
Indonesians, who belonged to the Mongoloid race with
Caucasian affinities. They came in boats, being the
first immigrants to reach the Philippines by sea.
Unlike the Negritos, they were a tall people, with
height ranging from 5 feet 6 inches to 6 feet 2
inches.

It is said that two waves of Indonesia migration

reached the Philippines. The first wave came about
3000 B.C.; the second wave about 1000 B.C. The
Indonesians who came in the first migratory wave were
tall in stature, slender in physique, and light in
complexion. Those in the second migratory wave were
shorter in height, bulkier in body, and darker in
color.

The Indonesian culture was more advanced than that of

the Negritos it belonged to the New Stone Age
(Neolithic). The Indonesians lived in grass-covered
homes with wooden frames, built above the ground or on
top of trees. They practised dry agriculture and
raised upland rice, taro (gabi), and other food crops.
Their clothing was made from beaten bark and decorated
with fine designs. They cooked their food in bamboo
tubes, for they knew nothing of pottery. Their other
occupations were hunting and fishing. Their implements
consisted of polished stone axes, adzes, and chisels.
For weapons, they had bows and arrows, spears,
shields, and blowguns (sumpit). They had one
domesticated animal - the dog.
Exodus of the Malays to the Pacific World. The
seafaring Malays also navigated the vast stretches of
the uncharted Pacific, discovering and colonizing new
islands, as far south as Africa and Madagascar. Their
unchronicled and unsung maritime exploits impressed
the British Orientalist A.R. Cowen, who wrote: "The
Malays indeed were the Phoenicians of the East, and
apparently made even longer hauls than the Semitic
mariners, their oceanic elbowroom giving them more
scope than the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red
Sea."

The prehistoric Malays were the first discoveries and

colonizers of the Pacific world. Long before the time
of Columbus and Magellan, they were already expert
navigators. Although they had no compass and other
nautical devices, they made long voyages, steering
their sailboats by the position of the stars at night
and by the direction of the sea winds by day.

Malayan Immigration to the Philippines. In the course

of their exodus to the Pacific world, the ancient
Malays reached the Philippines. They came in three
main migratory waves. The first wave came from 200
B.C. to 100A.D. The Malays who came in this wave were
the headhunting Malays, the ancestors of the Bontoks,
Ilongots, Kalingas, and other headhunting tribes in
northern Luzon. The second wave arrived from 100 A.D.
to 13th century. Those who came in this migratory wave
were the alphabet-using Malays, the ancestors of the
Visayans, Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Bicolanos, Kapampangans,
and other Christian Filipinos. The third and last wave
came from the 14th to 16th century A.D. The Muslim
Malays were in this migratory wave and they introduced
Islam into the Philippines.

The Malays. Daring and liberty-loving, the Malays

belonged to the brown race. They were medium in height
and slender in physique, bur were hardy and supple.
They had brown complexion, with straight black hair,
dark brown eyes, and flat noses.

Culturally, the Malays were more advanced than the

Negritos and the Indonesians, for they possessed the
Iron Age culture. They introduced into the Philippines
both lowland and highland methods of rice cultivation,
including the system of irrigation; the domestication
of animals (dogs, fowls, and carabaos); the
manufacture of metal tools and weapons; pottery and
weaving; and the Malayan heritage (government, law,
religion, writing, arts, sciences, and customs). They
tattooed their bodies and chewed betelnuts. They wore
dresses of woven fabrics and ornamented themselves
with jewels of gold, pearls, beads, glass, and colored
stones. Their weapons consisted of bows and arrows,
spears, bolos, daggers, krises (swords), sumpits
(blowguns), shields and armors made of animal hide and
hardwood, and lantakas (bronze cannons).

Legends and Hoaxes about the Malay Settlers. The

legends surrounding the settling of the Philippines by
Malay migrants are notably celebrated in the
ati-atihan festival and perpetrated by hoaxers in the
fraudulent documents containing the Maragtas chronicle
and the Code of Kalantiaw.

According to one legend, at around 1250 A.D., ten

datus and their families left the kingdom of Borneo
and the cruel reign of sultan Makatunaw to seek their
freedom and new homes across the seas. In Sinugbahan,
Panay, they negotiated the sale of Panay's lowlands
from the Negrito dwellers, led by their Ati king
Marikudo and his wife Maniwantiwan. The purchase price
consisted of one gold saduk (native hat) for Marikudo
and a long gold necklace for Maniwantiwan. The sale
was sealed by a pact of friendship between the Atis
and the Bornean Malays and a merry party when the Atis
performed their native songs and dances. After the
party, Marikudo and the Atis went to the hills where
their descendants still remain, and the Malay datus
settled the lowlands. One of Aklan, Panay's
fascinating festivals to this day is the ati-atihan, a
colorful mardi gras celebrating the legendary purchase
of Panay's lowlands. It is held in Kalibo annually
during the feast day of Santo Niño in January. The
riotous participants, with bodies painted in black and
wearing bizarre masks, sing and dance in the streets,
re-enacting the ancient legend of the welcome held by
the Atis for the Malay colonizers.

The Maragtas goes on to describe the formation of a

confederation of barangays ("Madya-as") led by one
Datu Sumakwel, who passed on a code of laws for the
community. The fictitious story also alleges the
expansion of the Malay datus to other parts of the
Visayas and Luzon. Although previously accepted by
some historians, including the present authors, it has
become obvious that the Maragtas is only the imaginary
creation of Pedro A. Monteclaro, a Visayan public
official and poet, in Iloilo in 1907. He based it on
folk customs and legends, largely transmitted by oral
tradition.

The Code of Kalantiaw, a code of laws said to have

been promulgated by Datu Kalantiaw of Aklan in 1433,
was also previously accepted by historians and
lawyers. But it has been proven to be a fraud. The
Code of Kalantiaw was contained in a set of documents
sold by Jose E. Marco, a collector and author from
Negros Occidental, to Dr. James E. Robertson, Director
of the Philippine Library and Museum, in 1914.
Robertson then published an English translation of the
penal code, and Filipino scholars came to accept the
code as a deliberate hoax.
Challenge to the Migration Theory. The migration
theory offered by H. Otley Beyer to explain the early
settlement of the Philippines has been challenged by
such scholars as Robert B. Fox and F. Landa Jocano.
According to these scholars, Philippines prehistory is
far too complex to be explained by "waves" of
migration. It seems doubtful that early immigrants
came in a fixed period of time and with a definite
destination. Nor can archaeological and ethnographic
data, show that each "wave" of immigrants was really a
distinct racial and cultural group.

According to the other viewpoint, the early Filipinos

were not passive recipients of cultures but also
active transmitters and synthethizers of them. For
example, comparative studies of Pacific cultures show
that some of the inhabitants of Micronesia, Polynesia
and other Pacific islands came from the Philippines.
Moreover, by the time the Spaniards came to the
Philippines, the early Filipinos had developed a
distinctly Filipino, as opposed to Malayan
civilization.

Birth of the Filipino People. Whether one accepts the

migration theory or not, it appears that out of the
interracial mixture of the early settlers - indigenous
tribes or Asian latecomers - was born the Filipino
people. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the
Filipinos had already established a propensity for
intermarriage with the assimilation of multiple races
and cultures.

Early Relations with India. The early relations

between the Philippines and the Indian empires of
Sri-Vijaya and Majapahit were commercial and cultural,
not political. As a free and independent people, the
early Filipinos carried on trade with Borneo, Celebes,
Java, Sumatra, and other countries of Southeast Asia.
And through Sri-Vijaya and Majapahit, they received
India's cultural influences. The early contact between
India and the Philippines was decidedly indirect via
Malaysia.

India's Cultural Influences. The impact of Indian

civilization on the Philippines profoundly affected
the culture of the Filipinos. The Brahmanistic
elements in ancient Filipino religion and the names of
their gods and mythological heroes were of Indian
origin. The term Bathala (supreme god of the ancient
Tagalog) originated from the Sanskrit Bhattara Guru,
meaning "the highest of the gods".

The sarong ( skirt ) and potong (turban) of the

pre-Spanish Filipinos and the embroidered shawls of
the present-day Muslim Filipino women reveal Indian
influences. The ancient Filipino alphabet originated
from India. About 25% of the words in the Tagalog
language are Sanskrit terms. Among such words are dala
(fishnet), asawa (spouse), diwa (thought), puri
(honor), lakambini (princess), and wika (language).

Filipino literature and folklore show the impress of

India. The Maranao epic Darangan is Indian in plot and
characterization. The Agusan legend of a man named
Manubo Ango, who was turned into stone, resembles the
story of Ahalya in the Hindu epic Ramayana. The tale
of the Ifugao legendary hero, Balituk, who obtained
water from the rock with his arrow, is similar to
Arjuna's adventure in Mahabharata, another Hindu epic.

Many Filipino customs are of Indian origin. Among them

are the following: (1) placing a sampaguita flower
garland around the neck of a visitor upon his arrival
and departure as a symbol of hospitality and
friendship; (2) before marriage, a groom gives a dowry
to the bride's parents and renders domestic services
to his future in-laws; (3) when the guests throw rice
on the bride and groom after the wedding; and (4) when
a childless couple goes on a pilgrimage to a holy
shrine, believing that the god of shrine will grant
their prayer for fertility. Another Indian influence
is seen in the decorative art and metal work of the
early Filipinos, and in their use of brass, bronze,
copper, and tin. The boat-lute, a musical instrument
in southern Philippines, is of Indian origin. Finally,
about 5% of the blood in Filipino veins in Indian.
Because of their lineage, the Filipinos possess
dignity of bearing, indifference to pain, and a
fatalistic outlook on life.

Greatman
"Do all the good you can,
To all people you can,
In everyway you can."