The early Filipinos belonged to a ethnolinguistic grouping known as Malayo-Polynesian. These peoples descended from the earlier Austronesian people of Southeast Asia. The Austronesians were a seafaring people who spread to distant parts of the globe at an ancient period.
At some early point, the Austronesians grew crops of taro, yams and possibly sweet potatoes (kumara). Rice appears to have made it out only as far as Western Micronesia, possibly because it was too difficult to transfer this crop further out into the Pacific. They sailed in ships that were related to each other, many of them sporting outriggers. Here are some names of these ships:parao - Tagalog
folau - Polynesia
barau - Efate
farau - Tahiti
volau - Fiji
poruku - Futuna
palahu - Indonesia
prau - Indonesia
broa - Formosa
palwa - Tagalog
bangka - Philippines
wangka - Malay, Indonesia
waka - Maori, Tonga, etc.
vaka - Vaturana, Savo, etc.
vaga - Alite
va'a - Tahiti
wa - Mate, Lamenu, Nul, etc.
waha - Ceram
wak - Numer
paki - Fila
wakten - Port Vato
They built their ships with adzes and other tools of similar genetic affiliation, they used similar types of riggings, rudders, etc. and also the same method of sewing or fitting together the planks of their ships. These early Austronesians seemed to have all carried a few important domestic animals to almost everywhere they went: the dog, pig and chicken.
Where the Proto-Austronesian people developed is a sticky problem. Some think the region of the Southern Philippines and Eastern Indonesia was the likely area, while others favor either Formosa or South China. Around 5,000 B.C. blade stone tool technology reached the northern and central Philippines from the south. Wilhelm Solheim of the University of Hawai'i postulates that active maritime trade and migration was already going on in Insular and Mainland Southeast Asia by between 4,500 and 5,000 B.C. Eusebio Dizon of the National Museum of the Philippines believes this date can be moved to between 6,000 and 7,000 B.C. based on the most recent radiocarbon dating.
Sometime between 1,500 B.C. and 2,000 B.C., the Lapita culture of Fiji and Tonga developed. Therefore, we can safely assume that the Proto- or Pre-Austronesians had already reached many areas of either Micronesia or Melanesia to the West. It is noteworthy that the closest earlier cultural tradition to the Lapita culture was that found in the Philippines.
Later, a pottery and cultural tradition known as Sa-Huynh-Kalanay arose. Sa-huynh refers to Vietnam and Kalanay to the Philippines, but according to Solheim elements of this culture can be found as far as Madagascar off the East African coast! Indeed the language of the people of Madagascar is most closely related to a family of languages which includes Bisayan and certain languages of Borneo.
One of the most interesting finds regarding the early Filipinos was that of the Ayub Cave potteries excavated in South Cotabato by Eusebio Dizon. These anthropomorphic burial jars are quite unlike any finds anywhere in Southeast Asia for so early a period. They are dated from between 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.
References
DIZON, Eusebio, "Maguidanao prehistory: Focus on the archaeology of the anthropomorphic potteries at Pinol, Maitum, South Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines," National Museum Papers, vol. 4, No. 1, 1993, Manila.
The Austronesians may have been part of larger grouping known as Austric. The Austric family would include the Austronesians and also the Austro-Asiatics, a language family that extends from the Munda family in India to the languages of Indochina. The present author has found quite a bit of evidence showing a distinct Austric and Austronesian presence in India going back to ancient times.
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