There are several opposing theories regarding the origins of
ancient Filipinos. F. Landa Jocano theorizes that the ancestors of the
Filipinos evolved locally. Wilhelm Solheim's Island Origin Theory postulates
that the peopling of the archipelago transpired via trade networks originating
in the Sundaland area around 48,000 to 5000 BC rather than by wide-scale
migration. The Austronesian Expansion Theory states that Malayo-Polynesians
coming from Taiwan began migrating to the Philippines around 4000 BC, displacing
earlier arrivals.
The Negritos were early settlers, but their appearance in
the Philippines has not been reliably dated. They were followed by speakers of
the Malayo-Polynesian languages, a branch of the Austronesian languages, who
began to arrive in successive waves beginning about 4000 BC, displacing the
earlier arrivals Before the expansion out of Taiwan, recent archaeological,
linguistic and genetic evidence has linked Austronesian speakers in Insular
Southeast Asia to cultures such as the Hemudu and Dapenkeng in Neolithic China.
By 1000 BC the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago had
developed into four distinct kinds of peoples: tribal groups, such as the
Aetas, Hanunoo, Ilongots and the Mangyan who depended on hunter-gathering and
were concentrated in forests; warrior societies, such as the Isneg and Kalinga
who practiced social ranking and ritualized warfare and roamed the plains; the
petty plutocracy of the Ifugao Cordillera Highlanders, who occupied the
mountain ranges of Luzon; and the harbor principalities of the estuarine
civilizations that grew along rivers and seashores while participating in
trans-island maritime trade.
Around 300–700 AD the seafaring peoples of the islands
traveling in balangays began to trade with the Indianized kingdoms in the Malay
Archipelago and the nearby East Asian principalities, adopting influences from
both Buddhism and Hinduism
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