Good evening! Welcome to another edition of Basagan ng Trip. Ako po si Leloy Claudio.
I teach history at De La Salle University. As always, kung may komento kayo, gusto nyo akong itroll, you can always tweet me at Leloy Claudio. Ang tanong ko ngayon is, what is the biggest misconception about the origins of Filipinas?
And to help me answer that question, I have with me the former dean of the School of Social Sciences at Ateneo de Manila University. He is a professor. at the Department of History at Ateneo de Manila University, and he's also the editor of, I think, ito yung pinaka-importanting journal about Philippine history and anthropology in the Philippines.
It's called Philippine Studies, Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints. I have on my show today, Professor Filomeno Aguilar. Sir June, how are you doing today? How are you doing this evening, rather?
I'm fine, Lelo. How are you? I'm very good. I'm very honored to have you here.
So, um... Let's dig right into it. What is the biggest misconception of people about the origin of the Filipinos?
Leloy, you probably remember when you were a student. And like our audience, a lot of us went through the school system and we learned the migration wave theory. And first came supposedly the Negritos, followed by the Indones or Indonesian, and then followed by the Malays. And the Malays are supposed to be...
the real conquerors of these islands and they are the source of the Filipino people today. So it's known as a migration wave theory because they came, these populations came in three discrete waves of migration and you can really separate them. They boarded the boat and then they went straight into the Philippines.
And there are different attributes, different characteristics because the Negritos are The hair is curly, the nose is sharp, and the Indonesia is round, and the malay is taller. It's actually a very racist theory. It's a very racist theory. And of course, more than the physical attributes, the most important thing in that theory is the level of civilization.
Because Negrito was assumed to be the lowest civilization, followed by Indonesia, because the Indonesians were supposed to have brought some tools and toolmaking. But the Malays are supposed to have brought the Iron Age to the Philippines. They brought metal tools.
And that's how we began to actually began the civilization on these islands. So you're telling me something that I learned when I was a prep, is wrong? This is actually based on the work of H. Otley Bayer, an American anthropologist. And he's a revered figure in anthropology.
He went all over the country. He did research and he got a lot of evidence of tools. And he collected all of them, brought them to his department in UP. And Otley Bayer was just developing an idea that was already prevalent during the late 19th century.
From people like Rizal, Pardo de Tavera. Yes, and not only that, all over Southeast Asia, there were various kinds of theories that were related to the migration wave theory. So, at that time, in the late 19th century, The real theory, if you like to put it, was developed by the BFF of Rizal, Ferdinand Blumentritt. He said there are also three waves of migration. The first one was the Negrito, the second was the Malay, less civilized, followed by the third Malay wave, which was more civilized, so it didn't have any Indonesian.
And what Blumentritt said is that the Negritos were the first to come, low level of civilization, they were easily pushed into the hinterland, followed by the less civilized Malays. Who are the less civilized Malays? The origins of cultural minorities like the Igorot, that sort of ethnic group. That's why Blumentritt said they were wrong. They didn't think that when they intermarried with the Negritos, they would be contaminated.
So, their civilization would fall more. But then, the heroes come. The third wave.
This is the Malay. Who are the Malays that are highly civilized? They are the Tagalogs. Pampangan, Bisaya, Bicolano, Ilocano.
Lowland, coastal population. And this is the origin of the Philippines. That's what Rizal thinks. Why can we say that the empirical basis of this theory is flawed?
Actually, for a theory, it's an interesting theory. Because people want to know, you know, where did these people come from? So, you can't say that...
He did as much as he could. He did archaeological diggings. He saw those tools and skulls.
And in his mind, he framed a migration wave theory. Blumentritt, based on what he read, he put together an idea. Again, based on what was already prevalent in Europe at that time.
Because at that time, in Europe, and also in the United States, there was what they called racial science. They thought it was science. ito at naniniwala tilagtaan.
talaga sila sa discrete waves of migration. So where is the empirical gap? Okay, siguro bago doon, maari ba nating discuss yung criticism ng migration wave theory? Okay, okay.
Kasi napanggit mo racist kanina. Oo. At marami dito nag-o-object dahil sa yung parang pinaka-nationalist sentiment ng Pilipino.
Sabi niya, bakit ang kultura natin nanggagaling sa Indonesian at sa Malay? What about the Filipinos? So, there's no original Filipino. And then, like, F. Landa Hockano quite rightly argued, when they migrated 10,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, there was no Malay and no Indonesian.
So, what can you say? In such a way that you think, we don't have an original Filipino culture. So, that was one of the criticisms. terms.
They said, why discrete waves of migration? That's your question. There's no evidence about that.
There's no clear evidence. And then, Hokano himself came up with an alternative theory saying, all the people in what we call Southeast Asia now, they're almost the same. However, they went to different environmental niches, coastal, inland, mountainous, and they already had their own culture. And that's when diversification started. It became an itsura.
It became an itsura. There was a diversification. It is now more exciting because these are the geneticists and they've been looking at the DNA all over Southeast Asia, Asia. And then there are also groups that look at the DNA in the Philippines. Actually, what's coming out of the studies of geneticists is that The Philippines shares the same genes, the same mitochondrial DNAs that you inherit supposedly through the mother, and it is prevalent all over Asia, Southeast Asia, even Northeast Asia.
And the people... Even parts of Australia. And then some of these people, and they say they picture it as moving from South Asia all the way to Southeast Asia and moving up to the Philippine Islands.
and then some of them went all the way to, let's say, Port Sianya, Papua New Guinea, and all the way to the Melanesia, Polynesia, and then to Australia. And they say, we share genetic features with people all around us. So it is very difficult to say, Wait a minute, is there a ship that has been able to carry these migration waves and its destination is the Philippines?
People actually were moving. The reality is, we don't know. as far as the geneticists are concerned, they really cannot identify any discrete waves. And we know this not just from genetics, we also know this from language, right? From similarities in language.
According to their theory, these regional movements, several of them, of people, and this happened about like 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. The migration from Taiwan, what is today Taiwan, they were speaking Austronesian. That happens around 5,000 to 9,000 years ago.
And the Austronesian language from Taiwan, they came down to Southeast Asia, spread across islands in Southeast Asia, all the way to Madagascar. The original inhabitants in the Austronesian. But the Austronesian language seemed to be so powerful that all the people in the Philippine Islands, all the way to the Indonesian Islands, all the way to the islands in...
across the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, they all speak Austronesian languages. What do Austronesian languages are? Can you just define that? Austronesian languages, it's a technical term but it really, in the past, we would call it the Malayo-Polynesian language. It's the mother tongue of the languages.
It's a general family of languages. And so, if you say, the languages in the Philippines, Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, Ibanag, Um, Kinaray-a, language ng Bontok, language ng Maguindanao, lahat sila pare-pareho. They're all really part of the same language. The Austronesian language, and the languages in Indonesia, in Javanese, Minangkabau, all of these are the same. They have a basic structure.
And the good thing about the genetics theory here, you don't have a basis for racism. Because, you know, you cannot say, oh, the Filipino race. What is the Filipino race? What is the Indonesian race? Because we share the same genetic DNAs.
The DNAs are shared all over Asia. And it really is the strongest argument against racism. Yung sabi nating first wave ko noon, yung negrito.
When you look at the negrito, the aita in Zambales, the aita in Bicol or the Agta, the aita in the Visayas, in the Luilo, those in Mindanao, they don't share the same genetic structure. So tayo, dahil para sa atin, pare-pareho lang itsura nila. we call them all negrito.
Like Bayer did. Called them all negrito. Pero now the genes, the DNA data show they're very different peoples. And not only that, the geneticists plotted this on a graph and it's not just that they're very near each other.
Hindi. If you have a plot of graph, they're all spread out. So they cannot be one people riding on the same boat, you know, paddling happily until they reach their destination, the Philippine Islands. So what you're saying is, In one country, the genetic code is the same as that of most of the Philippines, but in the other country, the diversity is also higher.
Isn't that a bit confusing? The way the geneticists explain this is that the diversity within a race is actually bigger than the diversity between races. But in any case... What's important to understand here is that because of the niching, some groups did not intermarry, did not interact.
They kept to themselves. So their genetic structure became intact and separated. But they also studied the DNAs of people in 13 provincial or 13 regional capitals in the Philippines.
That's what's good. Because when they looked at the genetic structure, from the lowlands, the regional capitals, almost in a graph, they were all clustering around the same point. In other words, there was a process of homogenizing of the gene pool in the Philippines. So, some sameness, some difference.
That is what humanity is all about. That's not just what the Philippines is about. Actually, lately, there's almost no migration waves written in the latest textbooks. If you look at it, it's positive that it's gone. But the problem is, there's no alternative theory.
So people begin to wonder, where did this all, where did we all come from? And not only that, it's important for Rizal, for example, because that's where he got the concept that Filipino pala tulad niya ay nagmula dito sa third wave of migration. So, nagkaroon siya ng basis for identity.
Pero, scientifically, mali. So, in a sense, okay na rin yun. The downside, of course, is that it was really, as we said, very racist and they did not even think of, in the Filipino nation that they were thinking of, they did not include the first wave and the second wave.
Wala na yung negrito kasi nakakaya. Uncivilized. They should not have any role in the nation because their concern is that Spain must accept us as civilized and the world must accept us as civilized people.
Even the Igorot, because they are second wave. low civilization. That's a difficult question now. So what is the basis, if not race, and I don't think it really should be race.
And Rizal said it himself, some of us are Chinese, some of us are Indians, some of us are Creole, but we all call ourselves Filipinos. So if the basis is not race, what did our country gain? I think it is possible to simplify the genetic theory. Philippine history is not only very narrowly focused on the Philippines and to have a more cosmopolitan view of the nation and to see that, look, we've had our own history but we share a lot of cultural, genetic affinities with all of our neighbors in the region and even beyond the region. I think my personal take on this is that there's a lot of tension because on the one hand, it's like being eliminated.
On the other hand, There was niching and diversification. And on the other hand, sometimes you may ask, is it important to think about race at all? If we're going to be in harmony, if we're oriented around the same values, maybe we can build a nation not around notions of culture but on notions of values.
Think about that. But it's hard to answer these questions. The point is to talk to people, your teachers, talk to fellow Filipinos and ask the question together, Who are we together?
Thank you very much, Professor Jun Aguilar, for attending. My pleasure. For coming.
Good evening to everyone. Maraming salamat po.