The Kingdom of Butuan

• Indication of this

  • Rhinoceros ivory seal with a design carved in ancient Javanese or early Kawi script
• Butuan


  A place that has been around for a very long time in the northeast part of Mindanao
• Butuan rose to become an international trading centre
• Butuan had cosmopolitan tastes for fine clothing and jewelry, chinaware, cosmetics, gold ornamentation and silver-smithing technology
• The belief adds credence to claims of evidence of the existence for the Kingdom of Butuan
• Butuan was a flourishing and highly-civilized community

  5th to the 14th century AD
• The name Butuan is believed to have existed before the Spanish conquistadores arrival in the Philippines
• There is a favourite saying among the Butuanons that, “… in the Beginning, there was no Philippines, but there was Butuan”
• Another account suggests the name derives from

  • The word ‘batuan’, a mangosteen-like fruit tree thriving in Mindanao
• Butuan was a flourishing and highly-civilized community
• Butuan possessed a developed political structure
• Sources of the name Butuan

  • Rhinoceros ivory seal with a design carved in ancient Javanese or early Kawi script
  • The word ‘batuan’, a mangosteen-like fruit tree thriving in Mindanao
• The seal was deciphered as ‘But-wan’
• The name Butuan is believed to have existed before the Spanish conquistadores arrival in the Philippines
• An indication of this is a rhinoceros ivory seal with a design carved in ancient Javanese or early Kawi script
• Another account suggests the name derives from the word ‘batuan’, a mangosteen-like fruit tree thriving in Mindanao
• Butuan has been around for a very long time in the northeast part of Mindanao
• An indication of this is a rhinoceros ivory seal with a design carved in ancient Javanese or early Kawi script (used around the 10th century AD) according to a Dutch scholar Antoon Postma, was deci-phered as ‘But-wan’.