The history of Luzon covers events that happened in the largest island of the Philippine Archipelago, Luzon. Luzon wrested the record of having the oldest man ever discovered in the Philippines with discovery of the Callao Man in 2007, which predated the Tabon Man by around 20,000 years. The written history of Luzon began in around 900 AD with the discovery of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in 1989. After that, Luzon began to appear in the annals of the Chinese and Japanese. One example would be the Ming Shilu, wherein Luzon appeared in 22 records. Luzon was split among Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, Muslim principalities, and ethnoreligious tribes, who had trading connections with Borneo, Malaya, Java, Indochina, India, Okinawa, Japan and China before the Spanish established their rule. As a result of the Spanish–American War, Luzon became American territory. In the Second World War, Luzon saw one of the fiercest battles during the Japanese occupation. Luzon, apart from being the largest island, had been the economic and political center of the Philippines ever since the country entered the Western Calendar, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, and the country's largest metropolis, Metro Manila.
Prehistory of Luzon
The first evidence of the systematic use of Stone-Age technologies in the Philippines is estimated to have dated back to about 50,000 BC, and this phase in the development of proto-Philippine societies is considered to end with the rise of metal tools in about 500 BC, although stone tools continued to be used past that date. However, new discoveries in Luzon, particularly in Liwan, Kalinga, found stone tools that were dated through potassium argon test at most 920,000 years old, and at least 750,000 years old.
The earliest human remains known in the Philippines are the fossilized remains discovered in 2007 by Armand Salvador Mijares in Callao Cave, Peñablanca, Cagayan. The find was of a 67,000-year-old remains that predate the Tabon Man, which was discovered in 1962 by Robert Bradford Fox. Specifically, the find consisted of a single 61 millimeter metatarsal which, when dated using uranium series ablation, was found to be at least about 67,000 years old. If definitively proven to be remains of Homo sapiens, since there was a certainty that the Callao Man could be a Homo floresiensis, it would antedate the 47,000-year-old remains of Tabon Man to become the earliest human remains known in the Philippines, and one of the oldest human remains in the Asia Pacific.
The primary theory surrounding the migration of Callao Man and his contemporaries to Luzon from what is believed to be the present-day Indonesia is that they came by raft. It is notable that the approximate time this happened is, according to experts, prior to the point when human beings were thought to be capable of making long voyages across the sea. It has also been noted that Callao Man could have crossed into the Philippines by a land bridge. This is because at the time Callao Man lived, it was the period known as Ice age and the sea level was lower. Because of lower sea levels, there could have been an Isthmus between the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Cultural and technological achievements
Mining in the Philippines began around 1000 BC. However, the discovery of a brass needle in Musang Cave, Cagayan pushed back the date to 2160 BC, the date the needle was made. Metal smiths from this era had already developed a crude version of modern metallurgical processes, notably the hardening of soft iron through carburization. However, unlike the typical pattern, there had been no shift to copper or bronze implements before iron implements, it had been from stone to iron.
History of Luzon during the Classical Period
Luzon in early world maps
Greeks may have reached the Visayan Islands around AD 21 and some scholars conflate accounts of the Golden Island (Sumatra) and Golden Chersonese (Malaysia) by classical writers such as Josephus, Pomponius Mela, and Ptolemy with locations in the Philippines. Gold jewelry of Philippine origin has been found in 1st-century Egypt.
Laguna Copperplate Inscription
The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known written document found in the Philippines. The plate was found in 1989 by a sand labourer near the mouth of the Lumbang River in Barangay Wawa, Lumban, Laguna. The inscription on the plate was first deciphered by Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma.