What are the similarities of ethnic groups in the Philippines brainly

Filipinos are Orientals, but for centuries they have been in contact with Western civilization. President Sergio Osmeña, probably indulging in oratorical emphasis, has said that they are “equally at home in the traditions and civilizations of both East and West.” He describes his people as “the most occidental of Orientals and the most oriental of Occidentals.” In them East and West meet.

Filipinos belong to the brown race, and they are proud of it. They cherish a story that accounts for the difference in the races. According to Malay folklore, long ages ago the gods who dwelt upon the earth shaped clay after their own image and baked it. In the first trial they baked it too long and it came out burned—the Negro. They tried again. This time they removed the clay too soon—the white man. The third time they were successful; they produced just the right product—the brown man.

What are now the Philippine Islands were probably once a part of the land mass of Asia. The original settlers may have come from interior Asia by land; one strain may even have come from Africa. They were pigmies. Some had marked Negroid characteristics—black skin and kinky hair. Descendants of these little peoples, now called Negritos, may be found in small numbers to this day in the deep forests and mountains of the interior, living in almost the same primitive way as did their prehistoric ancestors.

Tall Indonesians from the south, coming by boat, drove these firstcomers back from the shores into the interior. Succeeding waves of immigrants of shorter stature—Mongoloid Malayans—came from neighboring islands and from the mainland.

After the thirteenth century, Chinese who had been trading with the Malays since the first years of the Christian era began to settle in the islands and intermarry with Malay women. Late Spaniards and then Anglo-Saxons introduced their blood into the strain. These intermarriages have produced a small “mestizo” (mixed) class which has contributed much to the social and political life and development of the country. The first president of the Philippine Commonwealth, Manuel Quezon, was a Spanish mestizo; the present president, Sergio Osmeña, has Chinese blood in his veins.

Filipino women have always enjoyed a position of respect and esteem. They are good managers of their homes and are entering the professions in increasing numbers. They won the vote in 1937 and many hold public office. Family ties are strong—a Filipino household not infrequently includes three or four generations, uncles, cousins, and relatives more distantly removed.

Although the majority of Filipinos are still more or less unskilled agricultural workers, there are many men and women who have distinguished themselves, often in spite of early poverty. Able statesmen and jurists are found in all parts of the islands, teachers and doctors, engineers and businessmen, musicians, artists, and writers.

This success has been partly the result of their own efforts and talents. It is due also to the opportunities which the United States has helped to open up to them. These opportunities a grateful people have already repaid by their loyalty in two World Wars.

Where does he live?

The present war has taught us a vast amount of geography. Few people nowadays confuse Manila with Havana or the Philippines with the Hawaiian Islands. Five years ago such mistakes were not uncommon. Only too well do we realize now that the Philippine Islands lie on the other side of the Pacific, over 6,200 miles from San Francisco, nearly 5,000 miles from Pearl Harbor.

There are over 7,000 islands in the Philippines, but only 462 of them are more than one square mile in area. The total land area is over 115,000 square miles, larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware together. The islands extend for 1,150 miles from 4° to 22° north latitude, entirely in the tropics.

The main island is the northernmost, Luzon, which contains twenty of the country’s forty-eight provinces. Manila, the capital and commercial center of the country, is located on the west shore of central Luzon inside Manila Bay, one of the finest harbors in the entire Far East. Bataan is the province and peninsula separating the bay from the China Sea. Corregidor is the little island fortress a few miles south of Bataan which guards the entrance to the bay.

Mindanao, second largest island, lies at the southern end of the group. Off its western tip is strung the Sulu Archipelago. Mindanao is the least densely populated part of the country, Sulu one of the densest. It was in Davao, a province in southeastern Mindanao, that the Japanese had entrenched themselves in agricultural and commercial enterprises before the war. Mindanao and Sulu are the stronghold of the Filipino Moslems, called Moros.

The central islands, known as the Visayas, include Leyte and Samar, where the first landings of the liberation forces were made in October 1944; Cebu, the most densely populated island; Negros, great sugar-producing area; Panay and Bohol. In these islands a strong guerrilla organization held out against the Japanese all during the enemy occupation. Palawan is the long island off to the southwest which points toward Borneo and the Netherlands East Indies.

The good earth

Agriculture is an important industry in the fertile river valleys and coastal plains. The chief products are: rice, the principal food of the people; tobacco, smoked by the Filipinos and exported to foreign markets; sugar, the most valuable prewar export crop; coconuts, whose trees provide some of the loveliest scenery in the world and whose products furnish food, drink, and housing for the local population as well as important exports; Manila hemp, or abaca, which makes the best rope in the world; and numerous vegetables and fruits, such as the Philippine mango, which is one of the most delicious of fruits.

Moreover, there is an abundance of excellent standing timber, containing a wide variety of commercial woods. The good earth contains many valuable minerals—gold, silver, copper, chromite, manganese, coal, iron, and others. It is possible that further explorations will disclose still more. The waters around the islands abound in a wide variety of fish. If the fishing industry were better organized, it could provide a sure and varied source of food for the local population and an important export.

The Philippines is one country in the Far East which, as a whole, does not have a population problem. The islands could easily support several times the present population of nearly 18,000,000 people. But while there is much good agricultural land still untouched, certain areas are already crowded. Among these are parts of Luzon—the northwest coast, the Cagayan Valley in the north, and the central plains—Cebu, and the narrow coastal plains of some of the other islands.

In small part, the reason for this poorly balanced agricultural development is the existence of large estates owned by either wealthy landlords, whose families have held the lands since pre-Spanish days, or by church orders, which amassed great wealth during Spanish rule. Most of these are located near urban centers like Manila, or along fertile coasts or river valleys where the land and natural transportation facilities favored early agricultural development.

More important among the difficulties of attracting tenants to other good farming areas has been the natives’ attachment to the lands their forefathers worked. Moreover, many of them inherited the debts of those forefathers and are therefore almost slaves to the land. The lack of good roads, sanitary facilities, and other improvements has also prevented the development of many other good agricultural areas.

However, the Philippines have never known famine. They had never known widespread hunger until the Japanese came. But this little land of sunshine and plenty has had an unhappy history. Peace-loving peoples of the world face a tremendous job today in trying to ensure that that history shall not be repeated in the Philippines or anywhere else.

From EM 24: What Lies Ahead for the Philippines? (1945)

The islands of the Philippines are inhabited by a number of different ethnic groups. The majority of the population is composed of ethnolinguistic groups whose languages are Austronesian also known as Malayo-Polynesian in origin. Many of these groups converted to Christianity, particularly the lowland-coastal groups, and adopted many foreign elements of culture. Ethnic groups include the Cebuano, Ilocano, Pangasinense, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bicolano, Waray, Surigaonon, Zamboangueño and Hiligaynon who are also called Ilonggo.

In western Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, there are indigenous groups who practice Islam. The Spanish called them Moros after the Moors (despite no resemblance or cultural ties to them apart from their religion). In the Agusan Marsh and the highlands of Mindanao, there are native ethnic groups collectively known as the Lumad. Unlike the Moros, these people do not practice Islam, and maintain their animistic beliefs and traditions though some of them have converted to Christianity as well.

The Negrito are a pre-Austronesian people who migrated from mainland Asia and were one of the earliest human beings to settle the Philippines, around 90,000 years ago.[citation needed] The first known were the people of the Callao Man remains. The Negrito population was estimated in 2004 at around 31,000.[1] Their tribal groups include the Ati, and the Aeta. Their ways of life remain mostly free from Western and Islamic influences. Scholars study them to try to understand pre-Hispanic culture.

Most Filipinos are Malayo-Polynesian, a major group within the Austronesian language family. Other ethnic groups form a minority in the Philippine population. These include those of Japanese, Han Chinese, Indians, Americans, Spanish, Europeans, and other ethnic groups from other countries. Mixed-race individuals are known as Filipino mestizo.

Ethnic Identity, Language and Genetic Studies

A 2008 genetic study showed no evidence of a large-scale Taiwanese migration into the Philippines. The Leeds University study, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, showed that mitochondrial DNA lineages have been evolving within Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) since modern humans arrived approximately 50,000 years ago.[2]

There is no genetic evidence for large-scale population replacement, displacement, or absorption to suggest replacement of preexisting hunting and gathering populations by farming-voyaging immigrants from Taiwan.[3] Population dispersals occurred at the same time as sea levels rose, which resulted in migrations from the Philippines to as far north as Taiwan within the last 10,000 years.[2]

Examination of mitochondrial DNA lineages showed that the neolithic culture (Austronesian) had been evolving within Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) for a longer period than previously believed. Population dispersals occurred at the same time as sea levels rose, which may have resulted in migrations from the Philippines to as far north as Taiwan within the last 10,000 years. Per co-author Dr Oppenheimer, from the Oxford University School of Anthropology, population migrations were most likely to have been driven by climate change — the effects of the drowning of a huge ancient peninsula called ‘Sundaland’ (that extended the Asian landmass as far as Borneo and Java). This happened during the period 15,000 to 7,000 years ago following the last Ice Age. Rising sea levels in three massive pulses caused flooding and the submergence of the Sunda Peninsula, creating the Java and South China Seas and the thousands of islands that make up Indonesia and the Philippines today.[2]

According to a recent study by Mark Donohue of the Australian National University and Tim Denham of Monash University, there is no linguistic evidence for an orderly north-to-south dispersal of the Austronesian languages from Taiwan through the Philippines and into Island Southeast Asia (ISEA).[4]

The Philippine Statistics Department does not account for the racial background or ancestry of an individual. The official population of all types of mestizos (Asian, American, Hispanic, etc.) that reside inside and outside of the Philippines remains unknown. Although a study provided by Stanford University[5] found that 3.6% European introgression into the Philippines was evident due to the period of colonization, it only genotyped 28 individuals from the Philippines. Results from such a small sample cannot be used with high confidence to characterize a population of 92 million persons.[a]

Population history

Prehistoric Tabon Man, found in Palawan in 1962 was, until 2007, the oldest human remains discovered by anthropologists in the Philippines. Archaeological evidence indicates similarities with two early human fossils found in Indonesia and China, called the Java Man and Peking Man. In 2007, a single metatarsal from an earlier fossil was discovered in Callao Cave, Peñablanca, Cagayan. That earlier fossil was named as Callao Man.

The Negritos, several ethnic groups of the Australoid race,[7] arrived about 30,000 years ago and occupied several scattered areas throughout the islands. Recent archaeological evidence described by Peter Bellwood claimed that the ancestors of Filipinos, Malaysians, and Indonesians first crossed the Taiwan Strait during the Prehistoric period. These early mariners are thought to be the Austronesian people (Malayo-Polynesian). They used boats to cross the oceans, and settled into many regions of Southeast Asia, the Polynesian Islands, and Madagascar.

By the 14th century, the Malayo-Polynesian ethnic group had dominated and displaced the Negrito population in most areas. Traders from southern China, Japan, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia, also contributed to the ethnic, and cultural development of the islands.[8]

By the 16th century, Spanish colonization brought new groups of people to the Philippines. Many settled in the Philippines, and some intermarried with the indigenous population, although intermarriage was slight. This gave rise to the Filipino mestizo or individuals of mixed Austronesian and Spanish descent.

Far more numerous were Chinese immigrant workers, known as sangley, as many Chinese historically had been traders. They intermarried with Filipinos, and their children and descendants were called mestizo de sangley. The mestizo de sangleys were far more numerous than mestizos of Spanish descent. By the 19th century, the more successful among them had risen to become wealthy major landowners. They could afford to have their children educated in elite institutions in the Philippines and Europe.

By the opening of the Suez Canal in the 1800s, the Spanish opened the Philippines for foreign trade. Europeans such as the British, Germans, and French settled in the islands to do business. By the end of the Spanish colonial period, the native ethnic groups of the Philippines began calling themselves Filipinos, a term that had begun as self-identification for persons of Spanish descent born in the Philippines.

Following its victory in the Spanish-American War, the United States created a colonial authority in the Philippines in 1898. Military troops and businessmen made their way to the country, bringing in new ethnic groups, culture and language. In the late 19th century, some Americans proposed resettling African Americans in the Philippines, because of discrimination against them in the South, particularly. Post-American Civil War violence against the freedmen had gone on as southern whites struggled for political and economic dominance. The resettlement idea did not get implemented.[9]

The Philippines has over 180 indigenous ethnic groups, over half of which represent unique linguistic groups.