History of STS (Pre-colonial Period)

• Very little reliable written information about Philippine society, culture and technology before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1521
• Culture


  • Believers of superstition
  • Animism is the belief that various objects, places, and creatures possess distinctive spiritual qualities
  • Diwata
• Writing System


  • Mainly used for messages and letters
  • Baybayin was the early Filipino script used
• Social Organization


  • Geographically scattered, self-sufficient, autonomous communities
  • Kinship groups or social units rather than political units
  • Essentially subsistence economies
• Craftsmanship


  • 40,000 years - made simple tools or weapons of stone flakes
  • 3,000 B.C. - adzes ornaments of seashells and pottery of various designs copper, gold, bronze and, later, iron
• Transportation


  • Filipinos learned to build boats for the coastal trade early Spanish chroniclers took note of the refined warship called caracoa
  • By tenth century A.D., Butuan traded with Champa (Vietnam); Ma-i (Mindoro) with China
• Agriculture


  • Rice, cotton, and other vegetables
  • Domesticate swine, goats, and fowls
  • Lowland rice was cultivated in diked fields and in the interior mountain regions as in the Cordillera, in terraced fields which utilized spring water
• Settlements


  • Two groups of Filipinos based on their settlement's coastal areas and mountain settlements
  • Settlements along the coastal areas such as Manila, Mindoro, Cebu, Southern Mindanao and Sulu, seem to have attained a more sophisticated technology
  • Interior and mountain settlements were still living as hunters
• Tools and Products


  • Beeswax
  • Honey
  • Growing rice, vegetables and cotton
  • Mining gold in such places as Panay, Mindoro and Bicol
  • Copper (for table display)
  • Porcelain jars (for storage of food)
  • Iron (used in warfare called Lantaka)
  • Handwoven blankets