Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Origin of Filipino People

I am curious what our current elementary text books tell about the history or origin of Filipino people.

I learned in Grade 4-5 that original Filipinos are the Aetas. Then came the Malays from the malay peninsula down south through the land bridges connecting Borneo and Palawan or Mindanao. My teacher told me malays are the tagalogs, bicolanos, kapampangans and other low land groups. Then came the Indones through the same path and who are now the mountain people of Luzon and Mindanao. In short, Filipinos are from Malaysia and Indonesia.

But Wikipedia tells a different story.

"The term Malay is also considered misleading because it gives the impression that the route for the populating of the Philippines was via Malaysia, when actually, the current Malays of the rest of the Malay Archipelago and of mainland Malaysia are the descendants of Austronesian-speaking immigrants who first went to the Philippines before further venturing south into what is now Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, as well as to the other Pacific islands."

So, we are the ancestors of Malaysians and Indonesians and not the other way around. And if this is true, it means most of my generation have false knowledge of our origin. Tsk tsk.

6 comments:

deuts said...

Ba't si Cory eh dugong intsik yan....

Bill Bilig said...

confusing nga talaga ang ating history. at mukhang gawa gawa nga ni otley beyer yung migration wave na iyan.

parang mas prefer ko yung later theory na nanggaling tayo sa china tapos may bumaba sa indonesia, malaysia, etc. :-)

edwin said...

deuts, i would say cory looks a perfect malay. =)

hi bill, i agree. mas kapanipaniwala yung theory ngaun. anyway a friend from ifugao told me otley beyers descendants in ifugao are good looking fellas hehe..

deuts said...

e nakita mo ngang cojuangco eh...:)

Bill Bilig said...

ganun ba? meron pala siyang mga anak doon?

Anonymous said...

Austronesian migration would have meant that the ancient Filipinos brought Austronesian language to Malaysia and Indonesia. Note that Austronesian language originated in Taiwan, reached Philippines and finally was dispersed throughout the Pacific.