Tabon Cave Complex Palawan The Philippines, Home Of Tabon Man
The Tabon Cave Complex and all of Lipuun Point is located on the
west coast of Palawan. It is located on a limestone promontory which is
visible from any direction for many kilometers and honeycombed with at
least 200 caves and rock shelters. This point is called Lipuun by the
local people but marked "Abion Head" on charts made from British
surveys in 1851. The point is about 104 hectares in are and is formed
by a number of rounded limestone domes separated by deep chasms.
The some 200 caves located in the limestone formation are
collectively known as the Tabon Caves, after the main cave, called
Tabon, so named after a megapode bird that digs its nest into the
ground. This was the site to first establish the presence of humans in
the Philippines during the Pleistocene. The different cave sites
document through a corpus of C 14 dates a virtually continuous
occupation between at least 50,000 years ago and ca. 9,000 BP, which
have been widely cited because the Tabon Caves Complex is one of the very few sites in Southeast
Asia to have yielded Pleistocene fossil Homo Sapiens. The data provide
new chronological data on the questions of Pleistocene Homo Sapiens
settlement.
The Tabon Cave, itself, is the site where possibly the oldest Homo
sapiens fossil evidence in Southeast Asia in the form of a
tibia fragment dating to 47,000 +/- 11-10,000 years ago ( IV-2000-T-97 )
has been found ( Dizon et al, 2002, Annex 8 ). There are also a right
mandible dating to 31,000 +-8-7,000 years ago (PXIII-T-436) and a
frontal bone dating to 16,500 +- 2,000 years ago ( previously dated to
22,000-24,000 BP ). The dates are based on isotopic 230 Th/U 234 ratio.
Another fossil mandibular fragment raises the issue of a possible
colonization of Palawan by Pongidae during the Upper Pleistocene
( 16,500 +- 2,000 BP ).
These caves contained an astonishing wealth and an extensive
time-range of cultural materials: a flake tool tradition which dates
from the Late Pleistocene and early post-Pleistocene periods including
a highly developed jar burial complex which appeared during the Late
Neolithic and continued on to the developed Metal Age; and finally,
porcelains and stoneware indicating local trade with China during the
Song and Yuan Dynasties. The excavations have revealed more than 50,000
years of Philippine prehistory and south and East Asian relationships.
Palawan, on the southwestern side of the archipelago is a northeast,
southwest trending long island that serves a natural bridge between
Borneo, and thence to the mainland of Asia. Geologically it is part of
the island of Borneo. In fact the flora and fauna are more related to
Borneo rather than the rest of the Philippines. During the glacial
periods, Palawan was a land bridge to Borneo allowing early man, fauna
and flora to enter the archipelago. Due to its position, it is crucial
to the movement of peoples and biota into Central and Northern
Philippines.
Archaeological sites in Palawan have been reported even as early as
1922 when Dr. Carl Guthe visited the El Nido ( Bacuit ) area during the
expedition of the University of Michigan ( 1922-1925 ). Four caves were
excavated by this University. The finds were discussed by Dr. Solheim in his study of the " Iron Age " in central Philippines. One
of the caves was re-excavated by Robert Fox in 1965, which upgraded the
site from an " Iron Age " to a Neolithic site. Mr. E.D. Hester, in 1932
and again in 1935 visited the Uring-uring area south of Brookes' Point
on the eastern side of Palawan and recovered a sizable collection of
trade ceramics dating between the 14th to the 16th centuries, coming
from China, Thailand and Vietnam. IN 1962, Fox again re-visited the
place a recovered similar materials. Even a superb gold ornament was
found identified as a garuda image dating from the Indonesian
Madjapahit period ( 13th-14th AD ), although the associated materials are
trade ceramics from China from the late 14 to 16 centuries AD. In
1951, Fox recovered an early Neolithic oval adze from a Tagbanua
community in the municipality of Aborlan.
The above finds comprised the matrix of data about Palawan until the
systematic excavations conducted at Lipuun Point in 1962 by the
National Museum, that verified the importance of these sites to
Philippine and Southeast Asian Prehistory.
The integrity and authenticity of these sites are such that it is
the National Museum of the Philippines that conducted the excavations
which were partially funded by the Asia Foundation, National Geographic
Society, the National Museum, the Research Foundation in Philippine
Anthropology and Archaeology, Inc., and supported by many individuals
from the Department of Education, the Department of Health, the
National Science Development Board ( NSDB ), the National Institute of
Science and Technology, The Social Science and Humanities Branch of the
NSDB, local officials, even personnel of the United States Coast Guard
LORAN station at Tarumpitao. The Institute of Geophysics, University of
California at Los Angeles made possible the C-14 determinations for the
Tabon Cave sites.
Comparison with other similar properties:
Niah Cave in northern Sarawak contains the oldest remains of Homo
sapiens found in Borneo, excavated from layers dated to about 40,000
years. The 10-hectare cave also contained sequences of human occupation
from the period around 40,000 years to 2,000 years ago. The cave was
excavated by Tom Harrison from 1954 to 1962. The excavations, however,
were never published in a comprehensive form. There are many doubts
about the reliability of his stratigraphic interpretations and the age
of the radiocarbon dated layers. Further excavations were done in 1976
to clarify the issues, but these remained unresolved. Succeeding, a
long term Niah Caves Project, a four year program of an
interdisciplinary research, was started in 2000. Participating are
universities from UK, Philippines, United States, Australia and
Sarawak. The project is now on its third year headed by Professor
Graeme Barker of the University of Leicester. This new project is an
inter-disciplinary thrust which will include not only archaeology but
also, settlement history of Southeast Asia, rainforest reconstruction,
strategies for living, development of farming, sediment analysis,
studies in ceramics, lithics, organic remains, archeozoology,
archeobotany, isotope studies, etc.
There is no information as to whether attempts are being made toward
the conservation of the Niah Cave sites since the initial excavations
in 1954. Although, certainly artifacts, if not the site will be
preserved. Protection is certainly a concern of the government and
local peoples since this cave is also the site for resources like birds
nests, where extraction is continuous.
On the other hand, the Tabon Caves of the Philippines at Lipuun
Point, located in the island of Palawan which is geologically linked to
north Borneo have been systematically excavated by the National Museum
of the Philippines led by the late Dr. Rober B. Fox. The data has been
published in many forms and cited by pre-historians involved in
Southeast Asian archaeology. The radio-metric dates for the Tabon Caves
sites, including that for the Homo sapiens sapiens tibia have also been
published, with the latter with a positive date of 47,000 +- 10-11,000
years ago, which antedates the yet unverified 40,000 years for the
" Deep Skull " of Niah Cave.
