User:Josieemadrii/sandbox

Josieemadrii (talk) 01:58, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

The 200 year old Hypothesis

The 200 year old hypothesis came as a result of newer archaeological datasets by Ifugao Archaeological Project. The 200 year old hypothesis refutes the 2,000 year old hypothesis, originally proposed by Barton and Beyer, that has evidence pointing to a “short history” model grounded on ethnographic, ethnohistoric, archaeological, and paleoenvironmental datasets (Acabado, 2017:1). The evidence accounts for a more recent history of Cordillera rice terracing traditions which were originally thought to be 2,000 years old. This model reinforces an awareness of the technological and cultural sophistication of the people who constructed the terraces and does so without diminishing their value as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The result of the 200 year old hypothesis was a critical re-analysis of the colonial history of Ifugao and the highland and lowland people (Acabado, 2017:3). The former narrative of the history of Ifugao proposed that Filipinos were just passive observers, waiting for someone from the outside to bring in new material and cultural innovations. It perpetuated the belief that Filipinos peacefully moved out of the way of newcomers and that nothing was ever developed or invented in the Philippines. It labelled the people as unchanging and “warriors” that fought their way to resistance giving them the stereotype of savage indigenous people.

However from the work conducted in the IAP, archaeologists proposed the alternative model based on archaeological data and sound modeling. The evidence that was found accounted for a more recent history and changed the perceptions of the highland and lowland peoples interactions and resistance of Spanish colonialism. The old model states that the highland people were isolated from lowland people and seen as “untainted” by Europeans. This created an emblematic stereotype that labelled highland people as the “original Filipino” which was seen as an ethnocentric view that denotes unchanging culture through centuries of existence (Acabado, 2017:5). Though the highland people were not directly conquered by the Spanish, the influence of the colonization of the lowland people impacted them politically and economically. and Until the IAP, this ethnocentric view about the highlands was widely held and still has racist implications throughout the Philippines today. It wasn’t until the 2012-2013 results from the IAP that indicated the introduction of wet rice varieties in the northern Philippine highlands post-date the arrival of the Spanish at ca. AD 1575 in the northern Luzon, Philippines (“The Ifugao Archaeological Project”). This in turn was enough evidence to propose that the Cordillera rice terracing traditions were within 200 years and not 2,000 years old.

The work of the IAP proved how the highland people faced Pericolonialism but resisted Spanish Colonialism by exploring settlement patterns in Ifugao and not by “fighting to the death” as was previously proposed. Through IAP and the work conducted in 2015-2016 at the Old Kiyyangan Village, archaeologists and anthropologists worked collaboratively and dubunked the 2,000 year old hypothesis, changing the historical colonial narrative of the Ifugao people (“The Ifugao Archaeological Project”).