The Unknown Philippines: Cradle of Early Asian Seafaring

Image by Barnabas Davoti from Pexels via Canva. Note: This is not the actual Butuan boat.

May 24, 2025 — Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines

An Article by Emmanuel Lobitaña

One balangay had a fifteen-meter long, straked hull in a continuous piece. The second boat’s pegs, keels, and strakes were made of doongon wood. Although other remains were found in pieces, they’re as recognizable as maritime architecture, and that the wood samples accounted for by University of Tokyo are dated as early as thirteenth century—which means early Filipinos, or earlier inhabitants of the Philippines, ventured seas in and out way before than that of recorded.

Discoveries like the Kalinga and Callao fossils are unbelievable not only for their ages, but how they were unearthed in a land isolated by sinister seas. So, imagine strong winds, waves crashing, boat rocking among gigantic waves, yet early Filipino inhabitants still managed to reach an unknown archipelago that would eventually be named the Philippines. Many historians and sociologists believed that early Filipinos possessed advanced seacraft-making.

“If they had boats traveling then, then the level of technology was certainly more sophisticated than we had assumed. And that raises all sorts of interesting questions about the rate at which technological advancement occurs,” said Felipe Jocano Jr., an anthropologist-professor at the University of the Philippines, from Timothy Dimacali’s From the Sea to the Stars: The Forgotten Journeys of the Philippines’ Ancient Explorers.

Image by y-studio from Getty Images via Canva

Much of the Philippine maritime history is undocumented and limited. That’s why many prehistoric seafaring studies encapsulated the Southeast Asia region’s wholeness. The mentions of Indian’s navigation to Melaka Strait, the Malay Peninsula, or shipwrecked cargoes in fourteenth century linked to the Philippines and Champa relations, branched the presumptions of primitive maritime trading in the Philippines—commonly, the Chinese traders who not only traded, but resided in nearby ports, significantly in Laguna, Cebu, and Mindoro where historical records of sea trade growth occurred.

Since the Malay race is defined to be a community of Bugis navigators, ancient Filipinos had similar traditional seafaring methods. Pretty much passed down as oral instructions—and many of us likely learned them through movies—they used the knowledge of reading storms and area phosphorescence, the currents, wind rhythms, and, astonishingly, astronomy.

The maritime history in the country had so much to boast about. The many studies suggested that the early Filipino inhabitants were the ones, amongst other Southeast Asians, ventured seas way before the West circumvented the world.

Image by Igor-Kardasov from Getty Images via Canva

Today, Filipinos emerged as the topnotchers in the seafaring industry, at twenty-five percent of the total global maritime workforce on cruises, oil tankers, cargo, fishing, etc.  And as one of the first sea voyagers in the world, many local maritime schools encourage their students to be more than a stereotypical seafarer in a white uniform and a cap, but a leader who steers the sea.

Bibliography:

Dimacali, Timothy James M. From the Sea to the Stars: The Forgotten Journeys of the Philippines' Ancient Explorers. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. Master's thesis. MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, https://cmsw.mit.edu/from-the-sea-to-the-stars-the-forgotten-journeys-of-the-philippines-ancient-explorers/.

“DMW Honors Filipino Seafarers, Partners on National Maritime Week.” Philippine News Agency, 29 Sept. 2023, https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1234312.

Hall, Kenneth R. A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development, 100–1500. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011, pp. 242, 319.

Lacsina, June Keith D. Examining Pre-Colonial Southeast Asian Maritime Trade Networks: A Philippine Case Study. Master’s thesis, University of the Philippines Diliman, 2016. https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/54800536/ThesisLacsina2016-libre.pdf

Tagliacozzo, Eric. “Navigating Communities: Race, Place, and Travel in the History of Maritime Southeast Asia.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2009, pp. 257–269. Taylor & Francis Online, https://doi.org/10.1080/14631360902906748.

Tan, Noel Hidalgo. “Preliminary Report: Archaeology Education in Southeast Asia.” SPAFA Digest, vol. 6, no. 2–4, 1985, pp. 15–33. SEAMEO Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts.