Philippines Map 1899 - Ethnic Territories

[Nonoy Tan]

Hi, Dimasalang. Do you have the name of the person who made the map and the date it was made?

There are other similar ethnographic maps made before the colonization of the Philippines by the USA. Here are a couple of samples which I would like to add, thanks to the initiation of this thread by Dimasalang.

One is attributed to Fernando Blummentrit, dated 1890. He was a respected ethnographer who wrote on the Philippines. Unfortunately, he had never visited the country

Another is by the Manila Observatory (made by locals under the supervision of Jesuit priest, Jose Algue), dated 1899. The map was turned over the Americans after the Spanish-American War. Thus, the details in the map are in Spanish, while the attribution (printed on the top left corner of the page) is "United States Coast and Geodetic Survey."

An earlier map by Pedro Murillo y Velarde, dated 1734 is somewhat "ethnographic" as it contains images on both sides of the peoples and their customs - e.g. Bisayan, Aeta, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, Mongol, Spaniard, Armenian, etc.

It is always good to know the background of historical sources, in order to assess their value and limitations. The stories behind them are also interesting

[Nonoy Tan]

Re: the map, it seems to resonate with any/every anthro class (read: both) I took. In that one static image, you can almost envision the waves of migration of different peoples over millennia, with each successive "invader" more often than not pushing the previously settled people further from the coast.

At a glance, based on the map it would appear as if the (Austronesian?) Igorot were the original inhabitants, followed by Negrito migrations (from PNG or Melanesia?), followed by the comparably "recent" migrations from elsewhere in SE Asia. Is this even remotely accurate?

The "waves of migration" espoused by the eminent anthropologist Henry Otley Beyer, as it refers to the Philippines, has been rejected by later scholars based on new evidence.

The "out-of-Taiwan" theory of migration is popular and there are strong evidences supporting it. However, that is not the whole picture in my opinion. Surely there were migrations from elsewhere too, as proposed by other eminent scholars who have a differing opinion. In the study of weaponry, IMHO, the consideration of migrations while important has its severe limitations. Instead, the study of trading routes (instead of migratory routes) will provide more leads.

I also would like to think out of the box and consider the possibility that "original" inhabitants were living in elevated areas (e.g. mountains) instead of the coast in order to avoid malaria. Thus, the push into the mountans may have happened only later - i.e. after people had already started living along the coasts in order to take advantage of trade. Before the period of trade, the inhabitants settled the mountains, not lowland coastal areas. I could be wrong though.