A brass needle, found in the northern part of the Philippines, perhaps from around 2000 B.C. provide the earliest evidence of metal work in the Philippines. In Palawan, bronze tools and gold beads were found from around 500 to 200 B.C..
There is no evidence that metal was mined in the Philippines until the modern age, and thus the metal is assumed to have come from trade with the mai...
A brass needle, found in the northern part of the Philippines, perhaps from around 2000 B.C. provide the earliest evidence of metal work in the Philippines. In Palawan, bronze tools and gold beads were found from around 500 to 200 B.C..
There is no evidence that metal was mined in the Philippines until the modern age, and thus the metal is assumed to have come from trade with the mainland. Evidence of trade with people outside the Philippines also comes from the excavation of boats. A boat dating from 320 A.D. was excavated in Butuan, in the northern part of Mindanao that is consistent in construction with other water vessel from other regions of Southeast Asia. This boat was strong enough and large enough to sail in the open seas.
Metal implements allowed for greater agricultural development. People living the plains and other low-lying areas now begin monocrop planting, that is, planting only one crop in a given area of land. Rice, particularly, was began to be planted throughout the country. People in the mountains, however still used the kaingin, or slash and burn technique, and used intercrop planting.
Iron made possible many changes in the culture of peoples of the islands and made the rate of change even faster. That tools made of iron could retain a sharp cutting age longer made these more effective and efficient than tools made of stone. Stone tools lose the sharpness of working edges even after a single use and need to be reground to be of use again. Metal tools, specially iron, on the other hand can be used over and over before being rehoned. Another advantage is that iron can be shaped to whatever useful form is needed so that it can be adapted for a very wide range of tool needs. Within a few hundred years, iron tools begun to be more and more common in archeological sites all over the country. With its spread far-reaching changes took place in the lifeways of people. One of the most effective use of the iron blade is in the clearing of forests for the cultivation of food plants. Whereas stone tools are not very efficient in cutting down trees, metal tools do not have this limitation. On top of this metal tools can reduce the time required for clearing and in making wider areas available for cultivation.
This enhances larger cropping and a subsequently larger harvest. The increase in food supply makes it easier to support a large population. Thus there rose during this period a drastic change in the ratio between man and land area. There were more men now per unit area than the earlier period. This pressure on the capacity of land required new methods of food production that would yield more in the same area of land. It is probable that with the introduction of iron, intensive agriculture also begun to grow in the country, gradually replacing slash-and-burn cultivation or kaingin as the basic method for plant cultivation, specially in the lowland areas where there were large populations centers. This method is one that is productive in the case of mono-cropping, that is, the planting of a single kind of plant like rice.
Rice has peculiar characteristics as a kind of grass. At a certain stage in its life it requires flooding waters, and during the ripening of the grain, it needs a dry environment with plenty of sunshine. Thus the early forms of the plant grows in floodplains which dry up after the initial annual rains. The planting of rice thus created a yearly cycle of planting activities that begin with the seeding of the plants at the start of the rainy season, ending in a harvest season some months after the floodings have receded after the monsoonal rains. The floodplain areas were thus occupied by intensive cultivators with the slash-and-burn cultivation left in the higher slopes where the annual floodings do not reach, planting crops that are dependent only on rainfall as tubers like yams and taro.
Two groupings then evolved from this difference in crop cultivation: the intensive wet agriculture which is characterized by mono-cropping: and the earlier slash-and-burn cultivation which is based on multi-cropping and inter-cropping. The first is associated with more densely populated communities in the lowlands near the coast or mouths of rivers or floodplains; and the latter in smaller or scattered settlements in the highlands. The first is more in touch with trade networks that included contacts with communities as far as the mainland of Asia; while the latter remained relatively conservative due to less contact with the outside. The exception to this cultivation method and geographic location are the highland peoples of the Philippines like the Ifugao of the Cordillera ranges who practice intensive wet rice cultivation high in the mountains who were already in that area at about the beginning of the Christian era. Those in the lowland and coastal areas were subjected to continual contacts with the outside and their cultures were marked by rapid and continual changes; while the highland communities were conservative resulting in a very slow pace of culture change.
The increase in contact and trade with areas outside of the Philippine islands is shown not only by the artifacts dating to this period that could only have come from other place, but is also suggested by the ability of local peoples in reaching outlying areas through the use of sea-going crafts. In 1979, a boat was excavated in northeastern Mindanao near the city of Butuan at a depth of about two meters. The remains were composed of five planks. The original boat measured about fifteen meters long and three meters wide. The planks were joined together edge-to-edge with the use of wooden pegs, and the hull is further made strong by bindings of fibre cords through holes in raised lugs on the inside surfaces of the planks - an ancient Southeast Asian method of boat-building. The wood of the boat has been dated to A.D. 320. This boat was the fore-runner of the water craft later to be referred to as "balanghai". Others of this kind of boat were excavated or found in the same area indicating a widespread use of this boat type even as late as A.D. 1250. boat is large and stable enough to sail over wide open seas not merely to travel up and down rivers, but to go from island to island as part of a large overlapping networks of marine trade. Proof of this is the discovery of a similar boat excavated in Pontian, Malaysia which has been dated to A.D. 295. Boats of this type in fact are still being made not only in southern Philippines but also in Sulawesi, Indonesia, showing that this type of boat is used widely over Southeast Asia and along the coasts of mainland Asia even before the beginning of the Christian era. It is on board boats like these that merchandise like iron, jade, carnelian, glass, bronze and others later to be recovered in archeological sites, were able to reach the islands of Southeast Asia.
Boats like these show that certain parts of the population now spend their time in trading in addition to or completely apart from plant cultivation and animal domestication. While this shows that the population now produced more than enough food to allow part of the society to engage in trade alone, the more important thing is that there is now also the start of division of labor within the society. Boat-building, for example, is possible only if a certain group of craftsmen were to specialize in this type of work for this requires special skills and knowledge of ship structure and other lore. Other areas ofhuman activity would reflect this developing division of work.
This period of prehistory is known not only for the appearance of metals, but also as the Golden Age of Philippine pottery. The pottery of the foregoing period were beautifully unique and the pieces were rarely repeated. During the Metal Age, all over the country appeared beautiful pottery in large numbers and in many different types.
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