Palawan’s first inhabitant was Tabon Man, not Chinaman
That explorer Zheng He “discovered” Palawan isn’t the only historical lie Communist Chinese is peddling.
They also agitate to “retake ancient territories” Siberia from Russia and Okinawa from Japan. They call Tibet an “original province” when it was a millennia-old independent kingdom before Mao Zedong annexed it in 1949.
Same with previously free central Asian Xinjiang, southeast Asian Yunnan, inner Mongolia and Taiwan.
Eunuch Zheng He supposedly voyaged to India and Africa in 1405-1431. He hugged mainland Asia coasts and never crossed what the British Admiralty named a century later, the South China Sea.
Tabon Man preceded Chinamen in Palawan by tens of thousands of years. Excerpts from three of countless scholarly accounts:
• International websitehistorylearning.com
“Tabon Man is the oldest confirmed modern human to have been found in the Philippines. His bones, evidence of existence of Homo sapiens between 37,000 and 47,000 years ago, were discovered in Tabon Caves, Quezon, Palawan in 1962.
“While later discoveries – including Callao Man and animal remains in Rizal – hint at early man finding their way onto the archipelago up to 70,000 years ago, Tabon Man is the only confirmed example of modern man found on the island dating back to the Stone Age.
“Anthropologist Dr. Robert Fox unearthed the skull, jaw and mandible and teeth of three individuals in Tabon Caves. These remains were surrounded by evidence of stone tools and charcoal left from three assemblages of manmade fire, dated back to 7,000, 20,000 and 22,000 years ago.
“These early men were hunters and gatherers, not farmers, searching for food rather than cultivating it.
“Other discoveries in the cave system reveal that Tabon people were relatively advanced in knowledge and thinking. Evidence includes human remains in earthenware jars, pointing to burial practice.
“Skeletal remains show that Tabon Man was not Negrito. As Negritos were among the first settlers in the Philippines, arriving 30,000 years ago, this poses the question: how did Tabon Man come to live in the island?
“Analysts say Tabon remains are those of a pre-Mongoloid race. Mongoloid describes people who entered Southeast Asia and absorbed different types of early man to produce the modern Malay, Indonesian, Filipino and Pacific people.
“Other experts say the mandible is of Australian type, with skullcap measurements matching those of the Ainu or Tasmanian who inhabited the island tens of thousands of years ago.
“Archaeologists and anthropologists continue to dig in the caves, dubbed the Philippine Cradle of Civilization due to the huge number of discoveries there. Only 29 of the 215 caves have been explored.”
• National Commission on Culture and the Arts website
“The earliest evidence of man in the Philippines, also the earliest appearance of modern man – Homo sapiens – in these islands, is Tabon Man of Palawan.
“Discovery of human fossils was by a National Museum expedition headed by the late Dr. Robert B. Fox. The fossils consist of the skull cap, or frontal skull bone, two fragments of jaw bones and some teeth of three individuals. The skull cap is that of a young female.
“Those were found in a cave in Lipuun Point, Quezon, Palawan. The cave on the western face of the limestone cliff faces the South China Sea. It was named Tabon after the large bird that lays eggs in huge holes it digs into cave floors.
“The cave mouth is 33 meters above sea level. No signs of seashells on cave floor deposits. At the time of Tabon Man, the coast was 30 kilometers away. It reached its present sealevel 11,000 to 7,000 years ago.
“The cave layer and human fossils found there were dated 22,000-23,000 years old.
“Tabon Caves were populated by people older than Tabon Man, as stone tools prove. Deepest cave soil deposits were dated 50,000 years old, the latest about 10,000 years.
“Guri Cave was inhabited, as shown by a layer of soil containing flake tools, animal bones and marine shell garbage, dated 5000 and 2000 B.C.E. Stone tools were made from rock cores previously prepared before flaking off an intended tool.”
• upd.edu.ph - “Earliest fiber technology found in Tabon Cave,” July 2023
“Earliest pieces of evidence of basket and tie manufacturing on stone tools were recently found in Tabon Cave, Palawan by researchers from UP Diliman and National Museum.
“These date back to 39,000 to 33,000 years ago, determined through cutting-edge microscopic analyses.
“In correspondences with UPDate Online, Hermine Xhauflair, PhD, said the finding shows ‘that people in Tabon Cave were already processing plant fibers to make baskets and ties 39,000 to 33,000 years ago.’ Xhauflair is an associate professor at the UPD School of Archaeology and head of the school’s Lithics Lab. She is also the lead author of the research ‘The Invisible Plant Technology of Prehistoric Southeast Asia.’
“‘This study pushes back in time the antiquity of an important national handicraft in the Philippines,’ she said. ‘Fiber technology is extremely important. It allows making not only baskets and traps but also ropes that can be used to build houses, sail boats, hunt with bows and make composite objects.’”
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Dr. Fox led the Anthropology Division of the National Museum, headed in 1962 by Galo Bondoc Ocampo, my dad’s cousin.
Tito Galo is noted for 56 stained glassworks in Sto. Domingo Church, Quezon City and the painting “The Brown Madonna.”
From sketches and photographs of Tabon Caves, he depicted the discoveries on canvas, including a primordial Tabon Man and Woman.
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Note: While “Chinaman” means “a native or inhabitant of China,” it can also be offensive. For the record, however, I am a Chinaman because my maternal grandfather was pure Chinese, born in Cavite of poor migrants from Fujian.
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