--Because of the erroneous belief that the cradle of all civilization is the west, the significance of many great eastern pre-colonial societies become overlooked. Due to this, various social contributions of countries such as China, Japan, Indonesia, & even the Philippines, gets neglected and their people's civility thought to be none existent prior to colonization. Contrary to this, Asian civilizations did exist and flourished despite early western historians' unconscious efforts to exclude them from mainstream academia.

--The above notion led me to examine the extent of knowledge Filipinos had (especially among the youth) about their pre-colonial ancestry and what I discovered possessed a laughable, if not disturbing, trend. Beyond the joke about Lapu-lapu eating Magellan, not much else is truly known about the epic pre-history of the country known as the Pearl of the Orient. Because of this, I will endeavor to reveal, in this section using my training as an anthropologist, the true richness of the pre-colonial Filipino culture.

--To do this, it is first necessary to determine the definition of a civilization. This, however, is not an easy task considering scholars, to this day, still disagree as to how to define the word. Nonetheless, the basic qualities of a civilization, as described by most text books, are as follows: The ability to erect architectural structures, the presence of a social structure, the ability to keep the society intact through either religion or codes of law, & written language (although this quality may not always be present).

--The early Philippines possessed most, if not all, of the above qualities and one of the first things I would like to delve into is the written script. Perhaps the most famous ancient writing is the Egyptian hieroglyphics. And although the Filipino script known as Tagalog is not as researched, it is by no means less intricate nor less impressive.

--It is believed by experts that this Philippine script is derived from the South Indian Brahmi writing called Pallava Grantha, a type of inscription done on palm leaf books (called grantha) during the Pallava dynasty around the fifth century AD. The origin is thought to be so due to similarities in Kistna & Assam letters such as g, k, ng, t, m, u, & h). It is believed that the writing reached the Philippines during the middle of the 5th Century AD and was brought to the islands through the Buginese characters.

--The most interesting trait of this form of writing is that it is written from bottom to top with the following lines written on the right. The Calatagan Pot, perhaps the best example of the script, contains 39 symbols in the line written around the mouth of the pot. It is believed that the seven-syllable lines of writing are a Tanaga, which is a type of poetry with no rhyme scheme.

--It is important to note that the Mangyan & Tagbanwa still use a form of this writing to this day hence indicating that cultural preservation is possible despite 400 years of foreign dominance.