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However, evidence indicates trade was an important part of life and ocean travel between islands and to mainland Asia appeared to have been a component of life and the economy of the islands from at least the fourth century ad. Most of the people lived in small groups under local political leaders whose rule was based on personal loyalty as opposed to living in what would be considered a state or kingdom. There does appear to be linguistic links between languages of the Philippines such as Tagalog and Visayan with languages of the peoples who were living in what is now southern China of 4,000 years ago, which provides evidence of the probable ancestral mainland home of the people of the Philippines ( Abinales and Amoroso, 2005: 20).Įarly civilizations in the regions of island Southeast Asia that today are the Philippines apparently had few large centers of population and lacked central political control. Later there was an influx of ‘Malays’ who are considered to be the ancestors of the modern Filipinos ( Guillermo and Win, 2005: 2). It would seem there were few large settlements and the population in what was to become the Philippines was quite small ( Bellwood, 1992).Īrcheological evidence suggests the first humans to arrive in the area that is now the Philippines were from Asia and were Aetas or pygmies, yet these are not considered to be the ancestors of modern Filipinos.
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The Philippines is an archipelago which consists of over 7,100 islands and islets with Luzon and Mindanao being the largest ( Guillermo and Win, 2005).īecause of the climate and the apparent life-styles of individuals who lived in island Southeast Asia, there is little archeological evidence to give clues about what life was like in prehistoric times. Yet, today the Philippines is a sovereign nation with its own culture. ‘A central paradox in discussing the Philippine past is that the Philippines did not exist as such in the tenth century, or even in the sixteenth century when the archipelago received this name from colonizing Spaniards’ ( Abinales and Amoroso, 2005: 19). Hipsher, in The Private Sector's Role in Poverty Reduction in Asia, 2013 The Philippines