The Pre - Spanish Influences

2. Ages before the coming of the white
men to the Asian world, our Filipino
ancestors had their own culture and life-
style, which included their customs,
society, government and laws, writing
and language, literature, music, religion,
superstitious beliefs, economy and arts
and sciences.

3. All these things, in the course of
time, became the Asian heritage of
the Filipino people.

4. The Barangays

5. The first Spaniards
arrived in the 16th
century.

6. They were surprised to see the early
Filipinos having a civilization of their
own and living in well-organized
independent villages called
barangays.

7. The name barangay originated from
balangay, a Malay word meaning
“sailboat”. Evidently, our seafaring
ancestors named their villages after
their sailboats.

8. The barangay was a self-sustaining
community, ruled by a datu.

9. It is consisted of from 30 to 100
families. Some barangays were quite
large, each having a population of more
than 2,000.

10. Among them were Sugbu (Cebu),
Maynilad (Manila), Bigan (Vigan) and
Maktan (Mactan).

11. Houses and
Dwellings

13. The ancient Filipino lived in houses in
the barangay.
These houses were made of wood and
bamboo, roofed by nipa palm leaves
and were called bahay kubo(nipa hut).

14. Each house had a bamboo ladder that
could be drawn up at night or when the
family was out.

15. It also had a gallery, called batalan,
where big water jars were kept for
bathing and washing purposes.

17. Some of our ancestors lived in
tree-houses which were built
on the top of trees for better
protection against the enemy.
The Bagobos and Kalingas
still live in such houses.

20. Food and Drinks

21. The staple food of the early
Filipinos was rice.
Aside from rice, their food
consisted of carabao meat,
pork, chickens, sea turtles,
fish, bananas and other fruits
and vegetables.

22. They cooked their food in
earthen pots or in bamboo
tubes.
They ate with their fingers, using
the banana plants as plates and
the coconut shells as drinking
cups.

24. They made fire to cook their food
by rubbing two pieces of dry wood
which, when heated, produced a tiny
flame. They stored their drinking
water in big earthen jars or in huge
bamboo tubes.

25. Their most popular wine was the tuba
which was taken from coconut sports.
According to Dr. Antonio de Morga,
one of the early Spanish historians of
the country, it was “a wine of the
clarity of water, but strong and dry”.

26. Other wines:
basi - an Ilocano wine brewed from
sugarcane
pangasi - a Visayan wine made from
rice
Lambanog - a Tagalog wine taken
from the coconut palm
Tapuy - an Igorot wine made from
rice.

27. Mode of Dressing

28. Long before the coming
of the Spaniards the
early Filipinos were
already wearing clothes.

29. They were not naked
savages like the Old
Stone Age people in
Europe or America.

30. The men wore a collarless,
short-sleeved jacket called
kangan and a strip of cloth,
called bahag, wrapped
around the waist and in
between the legs.

33. It was dyed (tinina) either
in blue or black, except
that of the chief which
was red.

34. Instead of a hat, the
men used the putong, a
piece of cloth wound
around the head.