most of what we know about the Philippines before colonization come from these pages this is one of four chronicles of Antonio Pigafetta written in the sixteenth century for some 500 years ago Pigafetta an Italian was among the first Westerners to set foot on the Philippine Islands we view these antique pages not in a European library but in the National Historical Commission of the Philippines office in Manila for the first time ever the Philippines has its own digital copies of the four Pigafetta manuscripts Francis Navarro is a historian helping the government look into these chronicles well Antonio Pigafetta was in the crew or expedition of Ferdinand Magellan when when he was looking for a way to go to the spice aisle to the Spice Islands he and by fighting look for a dip by going to a different route which eventually led to the so called his arrival or his discovery of the Philippines in 21st of March of 1521 now Pigafetta was more or less what to call that the geographer of the crew so he mapped out in basically on a daily basis their locations even when they were already in the Philippines so in a way bigger feathers accounts and some of his so-called drawings of the islands they are very important because those will be the first glimpses of a westerner of of the ITIL ago in the manuscript you'll find ancient Bisaya words descriptions of food in a tire of pre-colonial filipinos this portion describes the first Easter day Mass celebrated in the Philippines here is where man chillin is killed by lapu-lapu smen in Mactan national historian Rene Escalante describes what it took to bring home Pigafetta secounds so he got in touch with the fourth libraries claiming to have the original I start copy or pick up at as a found so we I personally went to the US aid university because there we can find one of the versions and then I was able to negotiate they will provide us with a high-resolution digital copy of their of the manuscript Pigafetta then we wrote also the Ambrosiano library in milan with the same request and the last library that we got into we got the contacted would be the new protect Nationale de Paris is the National Library of France to request also they could provide us with a digital copy of this and we are happy and fortunate because exchange for a certain amount they gave us and this point we have already copy of days it cost the government some 125 thousand pesos through achieve these historical documents this expense means budding Filipino historians can now view the Pigafetta manuscripts themselves in NHC peace library free of charge it's a chance to enrich what we know about pre-colonial Philippines in his they still dispassion for primary sources if you really want to be a credible historian you should not be contented with translations and secondary routes now this is still part of our mandate to promote the study of history and one way of promoting study of history is by making available sources of information about historical event so this part of my duties chairman the National ecological Commission to bring home some of these materials that might be very expensive for serious historians to access a lot bigger fattest adventure may be long over but Filipinos still have a long journey ahead to rediscover their ancient roots be Ranade Rattler Manila