The Tabon Cave is the Philippines' Cradle of Civilization.

The Tabon Cave complex has 200

caves where the archeological artifacts found in the caves contributes significantly to the history
and heritage of the Philippines.

An American from the National Museum, Dr. Robert B. Fox, discovered Tabon Cave in 1962
together with his team of archeologists. Lipuun Point, Quezon, Palawan, Philippines is the
location of the Tabon Cave complex.

Important archeological findings resulted in the discovery of Tabon Cave. Fossil human bones
were found dating back 22,000 to 24,000 years ago. Tabon Cave excavations were done from
the year 1962 to 1970. The Tabon Cave complex consists of 200 caves but only 29 caves were
fully explored. The Tabon Cave was analyzed to be the burial site or habitation of ancient people
in the Philippines.

The Tabon Cave has a great importance and contribution to the history and heritage of the
Philippines. In 1972, the Philippine Government declared the site of Tabon Cave as a Museum
Reservation Site. Of the 29 explored caves, only three caves are being opened to the public as a
tourist attraction. Visitors flock every day to explore the Tabon Cave. The National Museum is
in-charge of the maintenance and management of the Tabon Cave complex.

The Tabon Cave is facing the South China Sea. The name Tabon was derived after a large-footed
bird that lays its eggs on the cave floors. The Tabon Cave mouth is about 33 meters above sea
level.

The people who inhabited the Tabon Cave were alive earlier than the Tabon Man. The stone
tools that were found inside the cave proved this theory. The Tabon Cave's deepest soil deposit
age is about 50,000 years old. The cave's youngest soil deposit is about 10,000 years old. It and
they used the same kind of tools.

The archeological remains of Tabon Cave suggest that the early people living in the cave prefer
to catch small animals, birds, and bats that live within the cave because the stone tools found
were small enough to kill small animals.

One of the important caves in Tabon Cave complex is the Guri Cave, located in Lipuun Point,
Quezon, Palawan, Philippines. Guri Cave is also considered as the early people's habitation. The
cave has a certain layer of soil that contains garbage mainly composed of marine shells that the
early people left behind. The date is between 5000 and 2000 years B.C. This was the time when
the present sea level brought the coastline right in Lipuun Point.

The Tabon Cave complex is referred to as the "Cradle of Philippine Civilization". The
archeological artifacts found in these caves makes it an interesting destination not just for
tourists but for archeologists and anthropologists as well. The Tabon Cave shows the rich
heritage and history of the Philippines.
Description
The Tabon Cave Complex and all of Lipuun Point is located on the west coast of
Palawan. It is located on a limestone promontory which is visible from any direction
for many kilometers and honeycombed with at least 200 caves and
rockshelters. This point is called Lipuun by the local people but marked "Abion
Head" on charts made from British surveys in 1851. The point is about 104 hectares
in are and is formed by a number of rounded limestone domes separated by deep
chasms.
The some 200 caves located in the limestone formation are collectively known as
the Tabon Caves, after the main cave, called Tabon, so named after a megapode
bird that digs its nest into the ground. This was the site to first establish the presence
of humans in the Philippines during the Pleistocene. The different cave sites
document through a corpus of C-14 dates a virtually continuous occupation between
at least 50,000 years ago and ca. 9,000 BP, which have been widely cited (Bellwood
1997, Bulbeck 1981, Galipaud and Semah 1993) because the Tabon Cave is one of
the very few sites in Southeast Asia to have yielded Pleistocene fossil Homo
sapiens. The data provide new chronological data on the questions of Pleistocene
Homo sapiens settlement on the margins of Sundaland.
The Tabon Cave, itself, is the site where possibly the oldest Homo sapiens sapiens
fossil evidence in Southeast Asia in the form of a tibia fragment dating to 47,000+/-
11-10,000 years ago (IV-2000-T-97) has been found (Dizon et al, 2002, Annex 8).
There are also a right mandible dating to 31,000 +-8-7,000 years ago (PXIII-T-436)
and a frontal bone dating to 16,500 +- 2,000 years ago (previously dated to 22,000-
24,000 BP). The dates are based on isotopic 230 Th/U 234 ratio. Another fossil
mandibular fragment raises the issue of a possible colonization of Palawan by
Pongidae during the Upper Pleistocene (16,500 +- 2,000 BP).
These caves contained an astonishing wealth and an extensive time-range of
cultural materials: a flake tool tradition which dates from the Late Pleistocene and
early post-Pleistocene periods including a highly developed jar burial complex which
appeared during the Late Neolithic and continued on to the developed Metal Age;
and finally, porcelains and stoneware indicating local trade with China during the
Song and Yuan Dynasties. The excavations have revealed more than 50,000 years
of Philippine prehistory and; south and East Asian relationships.

Statements of authenticity and/or integrity

Palawan, on the southwestern side of the archipelago is a northeast, southwest
trending long island that serves a natural bridge between Borneo, and thence to the
mainland of Asia. Geologically it is part of the island of Borneo. In fact the flora and
fauna are more related to Borneo rather than the rest of the Philippines. During the
glacial periods, Palawan was a land bridge to Borneo allowing early man, fauna and
flora to enter the archipelago. Due to its position, it is crucial to the movement of
peoples and biota into Central and Northern Philippines.
Archaeological sites in Palawan have been reported even as early as 1922 when Dr.
Carl Guthe visited the El Nido (Bacuit) area during the expedition of the University of
Michigan (1922-1925). Four caves were excavated by this University. The finds
were discussed by Dr. Solheim (1964a:81) in his study of the "Iron Age" in central
Philippines. One of the caves was re-excavated by Robert Fox in 1965, which
upgraded the site from an "Iron Age" to a Neolithic site. Mr. E.D. Hester, in 1932
and again in 1935 visited the Uring-uring area south of Brookes' Point on the eastern
side of Palawan and recovered a sizable collection of trade ceramics dating between
the 14th to the 16th centuries, coming from China, Thailand and Vietnam. IN 1962,
Fox again re-visited the place a recovered similar materials. Even a superb gold
ornament was found identified as a garuda image dating from the Indonesian
Madjapahit period (13th-14th AD), although the associated materials are trade
ceramics from China from the late 14th-16th centuries AD. In 1951, Fox recovered an
early Neolithic oval adze from a Tagbanua community in the municipality of Aborlan.
The above finds comprised the matrix of data about Palawan until the systematic
excavations conducted at Lipuun Point in 1962 by the National Museum, that
verified the importance of these sites to Philippine and Southeast Asian Prehistory.
The integrity and authenticity of these sites are such that it is the National Museum
of the Philippines that conducted the excavations which were partially funded by the
Asia Foundation, National Geographic Society, the National Museum, the Research
Foundation in Philippine Anthropology and Archaeology, Inc., and supported by
many individuals from the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the
National Science Development Board (NSDB), the National Institute of Science and
Technology, The Social Science and Humanities Branch of the NSDB, local officials,
even personnel of the United States Coast Guard LORAN station at Tarumpitao.
The Institute of Geophysics, University of California at Los Angeles made possible
the C-14 determinations for the Tabon Cave sites.

Comparison with other similar properties

Niah Cave in northern Sarawak contains the oldest remains of Homo sapiens found
in Borneo, excavated from layers dated to about 40,000 years. The 10-hectare cave
also contained sequences of human occupation from the period around 40,000
years to 2,000 years ago. The cave was excavated by Tom Harrison from 1954 to
1962. The excavations, however, were never published in a comprehensive form.
There are many doubts about the reliability of his stratigraphic interpretations and
the age of the radiocarbon dated layers. Further excavations were done in 1976 to
clarify the issues, but these remained unresolved. Succeedingly, a long term Niah
Caves Project, a four year program of an interdisciplinary research, was started in
2000. Participating are universities from UK, Philippines, United States, Australia
and Sarawak. The project is now on its third year headed by Professor Graeme
Barker of the University of Leicester. This new project is an inter-disciplinary thrust
which will include not only archaeology but also, settlement history of Southeast
Asia, rainforest reconstruction, strategies for living, development of farming,
sediment analysis, studies in ceramics, lithics, organic remains, archeozoology,
archeobotany, isotope studies, etc.
There is no information as to whether attempts are being made toward the
conservation of the Niah Cave sites since the initial excavations in 1954. Although,
certainly artifacts, if not the site will be preserved. Protection is certainly a concern of
the government and local peoples since this cave is also the site for resources like
birds nests, where extraction is continuous.
On the other hand, the Tabon Caves of the Philippines at Lipuun Point, located in
the island of Palawan which is geologically linked to north Borneo have been
systematically excavated by the National Museum of the Philippines led by the late
Dr. Rober B. Fox. The data has been published in many forms and cited by pre-
historians involved in Southeast Asian archaeology. The radio-metric dates for the
Tabon Caves sites, including that for the Homo sapiens sapiens tibia have also been
published, with the latter with a positive date of 47,000 +- 10-11,000 years ago,
which antedates the yet unverified 40,000 years for the "Deep Skull" of Niah Cave.
The caves were researched by Dr. Robert B. Fox and a team from the National
Museum of the Philippines between 1962 and 1966.[2] The greatest find of was the skull
cap of the Tabon Man. It is believed to be approximately 22,000-24,000 years
old.[3][4] The team found over 1,500 burial jars. One jar in particular, the Manunggul Jar,
is considered to be a National Cultural Treasure. Other finds included earthenware, jade
ornaments and jewelry, many stone tools, animal bones, and human fossils dating back
to 47,000 years ago, the earliest human remains found in the Philippines. [6] The
archaeological finds indicate habitation from 50,000 to 700 years ago. The limestone
formations in the reservation date back 25 million years to the Lower Middle Miocene
Period.
The Lipuun Point Reservation, covering a 138 ha (340 acres) island connected to the
Palawan mainland by a mangrove forest, was declared a Site Museum Reservation in
April 1972 and was made a priority site for tourism development in 1991 for its natural
and cultural heritage.
In recent years, verification of facts in addition to further analysis of previously collected
samples has allowed for a greater understanding of the site as a whole. Radioisotope
dating techniques have been able to show a period of near continuous habitation from
30,000-9,000 years ago. Human remains as well as rock flakes, hammers, and other
stone tools indicate the cave may have been used as a workshop.[7]The bone fragments
found in the caves have been suggested to have been from the late Pleistocene to early
Holocene periods.[7]Previous excavations of the site have also revealed evidence of a
diet including pig and deer, which are extinct in the Philippines today.
While little new data is available because of the cave's location and safety concerns,
they are slowly being excavated and the old data is being reexamined. [citation
needed]Approximately 25% of archaeological sites in the caves have been excavated. [2]
A gold Ornamental Pendant, from the Tabon caves in the island of Palawan, is an image of Garuda,
the eagle bird who is the mount of Hindu deity Vishnu.[9] The discovery of sophisticated Hindu
imagery and gold artifacts in Tabon caves has been linked to those found from Óc Eoarchaeological
site in Thoại Sơn District in southern An Giang Province of Vietnam in the Mekong River
Delta.[10] These archaeological evidence suggests an active trade of many specialized goods and
gold between India and Philippines and coastal regions of Vietnam and China.