Important Find in Philippines

An interesting excavated burial dated to the Iron Age - and no Chinese influence found.  Not sure what that is about -- is there some kind of controversy about the Chinese coming to and/or trading with Filipino people?
From the Philippine Information Agency
PIA Press Release
Friday, June 17, 2011

Ancient burial site in northern Cebu town yields Iron Age relics
by Eli C. Dalumpines
SAN REMIGIO, Cebu, June 17 (PIA) -– An archeological dig conducted by a team from the University of San Carlos (USC), University of the Philippines (UP) and University of Guam in an ancient burial site in San Remigio town, yielded three earthen pots and a skeletal remains of a woman.
San Remigio is about 109 kilometers northwest from Cebu City.
Professor Jojo Bersales of the USC’s Anthropology Department said that their latest discovery dates back to the Iron Age, estimated to be around 500 B.C. to 900 A.D., and is part of the artifacts they excavated from the same site in March, this year.
According to Bersales, this is the 7th burial site they have uncovered so far since they started digging in the area in early summer after they got permission from church authorities.
Bersales’ group from USC uncovered six burial sites at the backyard of San Juan Nepomuneno Church in San Remigio during a dig they conducted on March 25-April 17, this year.
Also recovered in the site were 10 earthen wares which, according to experts, were part of the Philippine pre-historic artifacts.
The absence of ceramics in the site is a proof that the settlement is earlier than the coming of the Chinese to the Philippines, the anthropology professor claimed.

“Definitely, there was no Chinese influence here. They may have traded with other local people but not with the Chinese,” Bersales clarified.
San Juan Nepomuceno Church was built in 1863 by the Spanish missionaries. The following year, the town of San Remigio was founded.
Students from Hawaii, Canada and Vietnam also assisted Bersales’ team in the conduct of the archeological dig.
Local government officials here expressed optimism that with this latest archeological finds, San Remigio, a third class town, will be placed in the map as having one of the earliest settlements in Asia.

Local anthropologists here believed the team has excavated the oldest undisturbed archeological site in Cebu. (FCR/ECD/PIA 7-Cebu)

Calatagan Pot Inscription Finally Translated?

(Image: Calatagan pot) This is a fascinating story. The artifact in question is dated to between the 14th and 16th centuries (700 to 500 years ago) - not that old in terms of archaeology. But for years no one had any luck trying to render the inscription into a comprehensible message in modern language. How quickly the old languages seemingly passed into oblivion once Spanish took hold in the Philippines. Inquirer Visayas The mystery of the ancient inscription By Rolando O. Borrinaga First Posted 02:11:00 05/23/2009 Filed Under: history AFTER 50 years of enigma, the text inscribed around the shoulder of the Calatagan Pot, the country’s oldest cultural artifact with pre-Hispanic writing, may have been deciphered as written in the old Bisayan language. Diggers discovered the pot in an archeological site in Calatagan, Batangas, in 1958. They sold it for P6 to a certain Alfredo Evangelista. Later, the Anthropological Foundation of the Philippines purchased the find and donated it in 1961 to the National Museum, where it is displayed to this day. The pot, measuring 12 centimeters high and 20.2 cm at its widest and weighing 872 grams, is considered one of the Philippines’ most valuable cultural and anthropological artifacts. It has been dated back to the 14th and 16th centuries. The inscription puzzle Sometime in the early 1960s, the National Museum sought help from sculptor Guillermo Tolentino, the National Artist who produced the University of the Philippines (UP) Oblation, in deciphering the inscription on the pot. He was known for his fascination with the ancient Tagalog “baybayin” (alphabet). However, Tolentino’s output was set aside on scientific grounds. It was allegedly achieved through seance—he supposedly invoked the spirit of the ancient pot maker and asked him for the meaning of the inscription. According to Tolentino’s translation, the pot was an offering of a son or daughter to a dead mother. Through the decades, other scholars had tried to decipher the inscription. Among them were Juan Francisco, Jean-Paul Potet, Antoon Postma, Harold Conklin and Johannes de Casparis, known experts in the field of paleography. But no one was able to produce a transliteration, whether complete or partial. Only Francisco (in 1973) and Potet (in 1983) had come up with more or less complete symbol equivalence. But they failed to determine the actual language. Previous attempts at transcription faced three seemingly insurmountable problems: -- Equivalents of many symbols are unknown. --Language used is unknown, although the possibility of Tagalog or Mangyan had been proposed. --Even if the symbols are successfully identified, it is difficult to determine the start and end of words, as well as the final consonants of certain words. Recent attempts Early this year, Prof. Ramon G. Guillermo of UP Diliman published results of his attempt in a paper titled “Ina Bisa Kata: An Experimental Decipherment of the Calatagan Pot Inscription,” which has been posted in the Internet. He said he used paleography, cryptography and “brute force” to crack the code and decipher the symbols around the mouth of the pot. He approached his task by transcribing in clockwise direction starting from the character at the break of the circle of symbols, similar to what Francisco and Potet had done. In March, Guillermo released the following translation of the text: Sinikap sabihin ni ina / Para sa iyo mahal kong anak / Kumain ka sa aking dulang / Dibdib ko ’tong mabango / Doon ika’y mabasa / Tulad ng bulaklak His version carries a mother’s endearing message to her beloved child, the opposite of Tolentino’s interpretation. But although the methods that Guillermo used were deemed scientific and technical enough in academic circles, and his output was declared “most definitive” in an Internet feature story, some sectors have lingering doubts about the final revelation. These doubts prodded me to contribute my effort to resolve the issue. Rest of article.