Ancient Philippine Golden Society

Some weeks ago I happened to watch this video documentary by the Probe team.



This is just the first segment of the 8-part documentary. If you want to watch the whole video you could look for it in www.probetv.com . It's worth the time, I'm telling you.

This documentary was really an eye-opener for me. I knew from school that the Philippines had a lot of minerals and precious metals spread out in its 7,107 islands. But it completely blew my mind to know that ancient Filipinos had been mining and crafting gold way before Magellan even got to our shores.

What was more surprising was the amount of testimonies that proved this was the case. Pigafetta, one of Magellan's crew, observed that Filipinos during that time were wearing gold jewellery according to their status in the society. The datus and rajas, for example, had gold sashes, swords and even on their teeth. The common people on the other hand, had gold earrings or bracelets. What this showed was the abundance of this metal in the ancient Philippine society. It has even been said that all you had to do to find gold then was to go out into the river and sift through the waterbed.

The quality of the gold pieces shown on the documentary was another surprise for me. I was expecting very crudely made pieces, like slabs of hammered gold ores. But when they actually showed the stuff, I had to take a second look. They looked nothing like uncivilized chunks of metal. They were intricate works of art! One of the pieces there was called the sacred thread. And it was a mind-blowing 4 layers of woven golden thread, put together to form a 4-kg metal sash. I mean that is impressive if they made one today, which the documentary explicitly says they don't do it anymore. What drives me crazy is that they made it even before the Spanish settlers came.

One of the experts who spoke on that documentary explained that the detail and craftsmanship of the pieces on the exhibit were completely top-notch. He even goes to say that it would be very difficult if not impossible to recreate those pieces even with present-day technology. For the Filipinos then to come up such great craftsmanship must only mean that they have been practicing such techniques for hundreds of years before that.

This only strengthens the belief that ancient Filipinos had a vibrant and progressive culture. And that is something to be proud of as a Filipino.