1. H. Otley Beyer proposed the widely known "wave migration theory" that early Filipinos came in successive waves, including "Dawn Man" 250,000 years ago, Negrito pygmies 25,000-30,000 years ago, tool-using Indonesians 5,000-6,000 years ago, and civilized Malays who brought the Iron Age culture. 2. However, this theory is now doubted as Beyer relied on outdated scientific methods and empirical data was limited. Later findings also contradicted parts of the theory. 3. The core population theory suggests early inhabitants of Southeast Asia were the same ethnic group who differentiated over time due to environmental factors, rather than distinct

4. Beyer's Wave Migration Theory[edit]
The most widely known theory of the prehistoric peopling of the Philippines is that of H. Otley Beyer,
founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines. Heading that
department for 40 years, Professor Beyer became the unquestioned expert on Philippine prehistory,
exerting early leadership in the field and influencing the first generation of Filipino historians and
anthropologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists, and students the world
over.[1] According to Dr. Beyer, the ancestors of the Filipinos came in different "waves of migration",
as follows:[2]
1. "Dawn Man", a cave-man type who was similar to Java man, Peking Man, and other
Asian Homo erectus of 250,000 years ago.
2. The aboriginal pygmy group, the Negritos, who arrived between 25,000 and 30,000
years ago via land bridges.
3. The seafaring tool-using Indonesian group who arrived about 5,000 to 6,000 years
ago and were the first immigrants to reach the Philippines by sea.
4. The seafaring, more civilized Malays who brought the Iron age culture and were the
real colonizers and dominant cultural group in the pre-Hispanic Philippines.
Unfortunately, there is no definite evidence, archaeological or historical, to support this
"migration theory". On the contrary, there are sufficient reasons for doubting it, including the
following:[3]
1. Beyer used the 19th century scientific methods of progressive evolution and
migratory diffusion as the basis for his hypothesis. These methods have now been
proven to be too simple and unreliable to explain the prehistoric peopling of the
Philippines.
2. The empirical archaeological data for the theory was based on surface finds and
mere conjecture, with much imagination and unproven data included.
3. Later findings contradicted the migration theory and the existence of the "Dawn
Man" postulated by Beyer.
4. Undue credit is given to Malays as the original settlers of the lowland regions and
the dominant cultural transmitter.
Objections to the Land Bridge Theory[edit]
In February 1976, Fritjof Voss, a German scientist who studied the geology of the
Philippines, questioned the validity of the theory of land bridges. He maintained that the
Philippines was never part of mainland Asia. He claimed that it arose from the bottom of the
sea and, as the thin Pacific crust moved below it, continued to rise. It continues to rise today.
The country lies along great Earth faults that extend to deep submarine trenches. The
resulting violent earthquakes caused what is now the land masses forming the Philippines to
rise to the surface of the sea. Dr. Voss also pointed out that when scientific studies were
done on the Earth's crust from 1964 to 1967, it was discovered that the 35-kilometer- thick

5. crust underneath China does not reach the Philippines. Thus, the latter could not have been
a land bridge to the Asian mainland. The matter of who the first settlers were has not been
really resolved.
Philippine historian William Henry Scott has pointed out that Palawan and the Calamian
Islands are separated from Borneoby water nowhere deeper than 100 meters, that south of
a line drawn between Saigon and Brunei does the depth of theSouth China Sea nowhere
exceeds 100 meters, and that the Strait of Malacca reaches 50 meters only at one
point.[4] Scott also asserts that the Sulu Archipelago is not the peak of a submerged
mountain range connecting Mindanao and Borneo, but the exposed edge of three small
ridges produced by tectonic tilting of the sea bottom in recent geologic times. According to
Scott, it is clear that Palawan and the Calamianes do not stand on a submerged land bridge,
but were once a hornlike protuberance on the shoulder of a continent whose southern
shoreline used to be the present islands of Java and Borneo.Mindoro and the Calamianes
are separated by a channel more than 500 meters deep.[5] Writing later in 1994, Scott would
conclude that "It is probably safe to say that no anthropologist accepts the Beyer Wave
Migration Theory today." [6]
Core Population Theory[edit]
A less rigid version of the earlier wave migration theory is the Core Population Theory first
proposed by anthropologistFelipe Landa Jocano of the University of the Philippines.[7] This
theory holds that there weren't clear discrete waves of migration. Instead it suggests early
inhabitants of Southeast Asia were of the same ethnic group with similar culture, but through
a gradual process over time driven by environmental factors, differentiated themselves from
one another.[8][9][10]
Jocano contends that what fossil evidence of ancient men show is that they not only
migrated to the Philippines, but also toNew Guinea, Borneo, and Australia. He says that
there is no way of determining if they were Negritos at all. However, what is sure is that
there is evidence the Philippines was inhabited as early as 21,000 or 22,000 years ago. In
1962, a skull cap and a portion of a jaw, presumed to be those of a human being, were
found in a Tabon Cave in Palawan. The discovery may show that humans reached the
Philippines earlier than the Malay Peninsula.[11][12] If this is true, the first inhabitants of the
Philippines did not come from the Malay Peninsula. Jocano further believes that the present
Filipinos are products of the long process of cultural evolution and movement of people. This
not only holds true for Filipinos, but for the Indonesians and the Malays of Malaysia, as well.
No group among the three is culturally or genetically dominant. Hence, Jocano says that it is
not correct to attribute the Filipino culture as being Malayan in orientation. According to
Jocano's findings, the people of the prehistoric islands of Southeast Asia were of the same

6. population as the combination of human evolution that occurred in the islands of Southeast
Asia about 1.9 million years ago. The claimed evidence for this is fossil material found in
different parts of the region and the movements of other people from the Asian mainland
during historic times. He states that these ancient men cannot be categorized under any of
the historically identified ethnic groups (Malays, Indonesians, and Filipinos) of today.[7]
Other prominent anthropologists like Robert Bradford Fox, Alfredo E. Evangelista, Jesus
Peralta, Zeus A. Salazar, andPonciano L. Bennagen agreed with Jocano.[10][13] However
some still preferred Beyer's theory as the more acceptable model, including
anthropologist E. Arsenio Manuel.[10]
Diffusion of Austronesian languages[edit]
Another, more contemporary theory based on the study of the evolution of languages
suggests that starting 4000–2000 BC,Austronesian groups descended from Yunnan
Plateau in China and settled in what is now the Philippines by sailing usingbalangays or by
traversing land bridges coming from Taiwan. Many of these Austronesians settled on the
Philippine islands and became the ancestors of the present-day Filipinos and later
colonizing most of the Pacific islands and Indonesia to the south. The Cagayan valley of
northern Luzon contains large stone tools as evidence for the hunters of the big game of the
time: the elephant-like stegodon, rhinoceros, crocodile, tortoise, pig and deer. The
Austronesians pushed the Negritos to the mountains, while they occupied the fertile coastal
plains.
Solheim's hypothesis[edit]
Anthropologist Wilhelm Solheim II posited an alternative model based on maritime
movement of people over different directions and routes. It suggests that people with distant
origins from 50,000 years ago in the area of present day coastal eastern Vietnam and
Southern China had moved to the area of the Bismarck Islands south and east
of Mindanao and developed Pre-Austronesian. Proto-Austranesian then later developed and
spread among seafarers from the area to the rest of Island Southeast Asia and areas along
the South China Sea. In support of this idea Solheim notes there is little or no indication that
Pre- or Proto Malayo-Polynesian was present in Taiwan. According to Solheim, "The one
thing I feel confident in saying is that all native Southeast Asians are closely related
culturally, genetically and to a lesser degree linguistically."[14]
New developments[edit]
The "out of Taiwan" model based on Austronesian linguistic evidence that had become the
mainstream explanation is in turn being challenged by newer findings. Studies based on

7. mitochondrial DNA show greater genetic diversity in southern regions than in northern ones
suggesting that a significant migration wave was in a south-to-north direction. Older
populations entered Southeast Asia first following the coastal regions from Africa then slowly
spread north to populate East Asia.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21]