The Philippine Story - The Tabon Caves

Section 1. Philippine archaeology relative to world archaeology

The Philippine Story establishes the Tabon caves of Palawan as its site of interest. Its a sole site that could
only describe one group of people. These cave dwellers were likened to the present-day Tagbanuas at the
present, which lived among small groups.
However, its not only the Tagbanuan ancestors which have inhabited the caves. Australian aboriginals,
among others, might have crossed the land bridges all the way from other coasts such as Borneo. In fact,
the cave revealed different areas of different layers representing human occupation at that time.
The artifacts might have been properly dated through the charcoal left by cooking, though it shows little
insight to the culture of the Philippine people at that time. Only thing that might have been revealed is their
religious beliefs, especially upon the discovery of the Manunggul jar. While other archaeological sites have
preserved cave paintings and sculptures, it was not as easy to reveal how exactly people lived in the Tabon
cave. Did the people visit the cave as a specialized area, or did they habituate there? Which animals did
they hunt for the living?
The cause of such ambiguity is not clear either: the preservation might not be possible due to climate
change, or there was intentional disturbance involved (one example cited is the Tabon bird which dug
through the soil to bury its eggs).
Radiocarbon dating revealed that the same type of stone tools was used for around 50,000 years. It was an
unusual theory especially for a cave that was inhabited by different groups of people for long, different
periods of time. There was even the adjacent Guri cave (dated only several years later) revealing different
set of artifacts.
If there has to be a justification to this, it could be that the early people did not mingle that much to
communities outside their own, much like the Tagbanuas. If that were the case, the discovery on the Tabon
cave is only yet to tell the whole story of how early Filipinos lived.
Section 2. State of technology
The Philippine Story revealed that archaeological research has already advanced in terms of technology.
However, environmental disturbances made it more difficult for the researchers to create hypothesis
especially about the dating results.

Ancient tools might have already been destroyed for various reasons, so stilting requires paying attention to
any piece on the soil. Mapping is also highly necessary as each soil layer does necessarily correspond to
one period of time.
Learning about the culture would have been highly helpful, though its not as easy to accomplish especially
brought by the climate condition not properly preserving a lot of possible archaeological sites on the
Philippines. Hence, the Tagbanuan community can be said to provide a significant contribution to research
as they welcomed the researchers and even introduced to them their lifestyle. Their current tools - even
their cooking preparations reveal that the possibility of Tagbanuan culture being not too different from the
Filipino Stone Age lifestyle is likely.
Submitted by:
Chua, Maria Allyssa D.
Archaeo 2 THW1
October 2, 2014