some 5 000 years ago the ancestors of today's southeast asians began a journey that would become one of the greatest series of human migrations of the world they came from what is now southern china traveled south toward taiwan and then entered the philippines through its northernmost edge patanes they populated the archipelago for more than a thousand years and then from here travel west toward madagascar in africa and east toward easter island near south america linguists call them the austronesian-speaking peoples speakers of a family of languages heard in the philippines indonesia malaysia and many other islands of southeast asia and the pacific the first austronesian-speaking filipinos who arrived here about four thousand years ago from taiwan through the bhutanese and northern luzon almost certainly came here by boat the philippines represented the entry of these populations into the tropical part of the world and when they arrived here they also had to develop their methods of crossing sea building canoes the austronesian speaking peoples are also expert seafarers and boat builders the austronesians developed the technology to navigate and cross the open seas to distant islands they invented the outrigger canoe as well as the precursor of today's catamaran the double hulled sailing canoe it is very likely that in the philippines the early austronesians began to use outriggers and also sales for sailing their canoes over very large distances because of course once you go through the philippines into the western pacific the distances between the islands become larger and larger and the technology has to improve particularly for getting to places such as polynesia where islands can very often be many thousands of kilometers apart textbooks used to say that the ancestors of today's filipinos crossed land bridges to reach the philippines but evidence shows that they actually came by boat from southern china through taiwan linguists say the sophisticated seafaring culture was instrumental in the spread of austronesian languages during the neolithic era austronesians colonize the islands of southeast asia and the pacific and impose the language on their subjects today there are about 1 200 languages considered part of the austronesian family spoken by 350 million people and the sea play the central role in the beliefs of austronesian-speaking people a burial jar from the neolithic era found in the manual cave in pallava has for a cover the figure of a boatman transporting the dead to the afterlife it shows how the sea dominated life and death [Music] austronesian-speaking peoples had their own belief system long before they learned about hindu buddhist islamic or western thought this common belief system showed even in their architecture traditional homes of austronesian-speaking peoples reflect south east asian concepts of the upper world underworld and the earthly realm filipino indonesian and malaysian houses had spaces below for animals rooms in the middle for humans and shrines for ancestral worship in lofts speakers and we have been researching the ancestry of these people uh partly through the linguistic evidence also through the archaeological evidence in the form of many of these objects here stone axes bark cloth beaters shell ornaments also of course genetic evidence about the ancestry of the people themselves so this is like a gigantic river running through time and space and the philippine population is a part of it filipinos belong with their neighbours as part of this austronesian-speaking population with a shared pre-history during the last five thousand years because they had boats and could travel of course they also carried out trade they carried their ornaments and objects from one island to another and we know that the early austronesian-speaking filipinos were bringing nephrite jade artifacts from taiwan and they were spreading them through the islands these are things like nephrite bracelets and earrings peter bellwood led a team of archaeologists who found in batales what is believed to be a jade workshop that existed at least 3 000 years ago the team unearthed fragments of what were believed to be parts of tools and materials used in making change on a limestone mesa called anaro in ibayat island there was a major expansion of trade in the period when indian and chinese contact was beginning to be made with the islands of southeast asia and at this time people were making the little jade earrings with the pointed projections that archaeologists call ling lingos [Music] are circular ornaments common among various peoples in south east asia such as the igarots of the cordillera region a type of lingling ore that protrudes on three sides was found in palawan and is similar to those found on sarawak in malaysia as well as vietnam and even taiwan the ling ling oh is concrete proof of the common culture of austronesian-speaking peoples that flourished in southeast asia some 5 000 years ago austronesian languages were believed to be the most widespread family of languages during the 1500s when ferdinand magellan came to the philippines today hundreds of millions across the vast part of the globe speak a variation of an austronesian language historians and archaeologists say that the philippines played an important role in the spread of austronesian languages it also showed that culture and commerce prospered between the philippines and its neighbors at least five millennia ago i think the most important thing for filipinos to understand is that they are part of a shared cultural heritage which is not just the philippines but the peoples of indonesia of central vietnam madagascar which is off the east coast of africa uh the native peoples of taiwan to the north and virtually all of the pacific islands this heritage is very important because it means that many of the peoples of southeast asia share a common cultural and linguistic ancestry and i hope that that knowledge will enable them all to understand each other much better in the years to come [Music] you