Free gold

TO CELEBRATE International Museum Day, it will be free admission today at the Ayala Museum in Makati. Grab the opportunity to visit the museum’s many collections, especially the exhibit, “Gold of Ancestors,” featuring hundreds of pre-colonial gold items excavated from different parts of the Philippines.

You might also want to buy the museum’s latest publication, “Philippine Ancestral Gold,” edited by Dr. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker. It is a coffee table book with excellent photographs not just of Ayala’s gold exhibits but of other archaeological excavations of gold items.

The book launch turned out to be a crash course on pre-colonial Philippines, with lectures by Capistrano-Baker, who spoke on “ancestral gold” in general and not just those of the Ayala Museum, together with Dr. Eusebio Dizon and Professor Wilfredo Ronquillo, both archaeologists from the National Museum and faculty members of the University of the Philippines.

Before I go into the lectures, let me explain why it is so important to appreciate the gold exhibits. On my way home after the book launch, I thought of the dramatic progress that has been made in reconstructing our history, thanks to the archaeological findings in the last 50 years or so. At the same time though, I also felt rather sad thinking of how the public has not kept pace with these findings, mainly because our educational institutions and the mass media have not had access to the publications that have come out on these findings.

<STRONG>Inferiority complex</STRONG>

Shortly after the Ayala Museum book launch, the UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy had its annual summer training workshop for social science teachers. In my opening remarks, I referred to the Ayala Museum collections, including some photographs from the book. I pointed out it was important to talk about what we do know about pre-colonial Philippines, and to junk all that nonsense around the Code of Kalantiaw and the Maragtas Code.

There’s a play, “Fake” by Floy Quintos, that has been running at UP, focusing on the Code of Kalantiaw and the Tasaday controversy. Like an earlier play—dating back to the 1990s, I think—by Rene Villanueva, “Fake” talks about how we Filipinos actually wanted to be fooled by such stories. It reflects an almost desperate craving for a past, accompanied by an inferiority complex. While our neighboring countries can boast of megaliths or grand stone structures like temples, we seemed to have nothing to boast about in terms of a “civilization.”

The three lectures at Ayala Museum remind Filipinos that we do have a rich and colorful past waiting to be reconstructed. The gold collections offer a focal point which, linked to other archaeological, historical and anthropological studies, strongly suggests the Philippines may have been one of the more important trading and cultural hubs in the region several centuries ago.

Capistrano-Baker started her lecture pointing out the wide distribution of gold from throughout our islands. After all, we are one of the world’s largest producers of gold. The archaeological findings reflect this, yielding an amazing variety of gold objects—jewelry, clothing accessories, even household items and weighing scales.

Imagine the reactions of the Spaniards when they saw the Indios’ gold ornaments all over tattooed bodies, including chastity covers, some of which are on display at the Ayala Museum. Imagine, too, what the Indios must have thought seeing the ragtag bands of Spanish soldiers and friars.

The jewelry designs vary, some unique to the Philippines, others with motifs similar to those found in Java and other parts of Southeast Asia—e.g., the Indonesian garuda, a mythological bird. These regional similarities tell us that our ancestors were “trading” not just material goods but also ideas and culture.

While the Ayala collections are dazzling, they probably represent only a small percentage of what’s been excavated, as well as what will be excavated in the future.  Because archaeological excavations are poorly regulated in the country, treasure-hunters have long been digging up the gold and selling them to private collectors.

What did get to our museums are still significant. Capistrano-Baker pointed out that all the gold excavated from one Vietnamese site, Oc Eo, was still less than the gold in one caste cord (a kind of sash worn across the chest to indicate one’s status) found in Surigao del Sur and weighing 3.8 kg.

<STRONG>Extravagance</STRONG>

There was extravagance, if not excess, in the ancestral gold. There is a chapter in the book, “Philippine Ancestral Gold” by Jaime Kelly, about the famous “Agusan image,” 12-cm high and weighing two kilos.  It was found in 1917 in Agusan del Sur and is now in the Chicago Field Museum of History. Kelly notes the striking similarity of the figure to statues associated with Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism, excavated from Nganjuk, East Java, although the Indonesian versions are smaller and made of bronze. These are called “offering goddesses,” meaning more minor deities.

Capistrano-Baker shared Kelly’s questions: if these images were actually “minor” figures, what were the main images like? And considering how much went into this minor image, who could have been behind this “lavish devotion”?  Even today, we do have a tendency to overdo our religious images in the Philippines, almost as if to compete with others.

The largest numbers of gold ornaments come from northeastern Mindanao, particularly the Surigao provinces. Link this fact to the descriptions of the Butuan balangay (large boats) by Professor Ronquillo and the huge volumes of ceramics found in shipwrecks around the southern Philippines, and you realize the Visayas and Mindanao must have been flourishing centers of trade, both domestic as well as international. The photographs of hundreds of ceramics found in each shipwreck tell us that our ancestors already had an appetite for imported stuff. Dizon also mentioned that one of the shipwrecks, the Pandanan, was dated to the 14th century, yet had ceramic wares that were dated to the 13th century. Is it possible that the demand wasn’t just for “made-in-China” stuff, but for antiques as well?

Gold, unfortunately, cannot be dated, but the ceramics can be, so we know that this “golden era” was probably around the time of China’s Sung dynasty, meaning the 9th to the 13th centuries.

The “Philippines” didn’t exist yet, so we’re talking about communities independent from each other, but with elaborate trading networks and, most probably, political ties.  From the historical records of neighboring countries, we know, too, that this was a period of intense rivalry and competition, and one can imagine the gold ornaments were not just used as adornment but also as ways of displaying one’s status and power. There was probably also a prestige angle to the ceramic wares.

There are more exciting times ahead as we learn more about our past. I hope, too, we will look beyond the glitter and opulence, and derive lessons around the rise and fall of societies.

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