Palawan's First Inhabitant Was Tabon Man, Not Chinaman

That explorer Zheng He "discovered" Palawan isn't the only historical lie Communist Chinese is peddling.

- JARIUS BONDOC

They also agitate to "retake ancient territories" Siberia from Russia and Okinawa from Japan. They call Tibet an "original province", when it was a millennia-old independent kingdom before Mao Zedong annexed it in 1949.

Same with previously free central Asian Xinjiang, southeast Asian Yunnan, inner Mongolia and Taiwan.

Eunuch Zheng He supposedly voyaged to India and Africa in 1405-1431. He hugged mainland Asia coasts and never crossed what the British Admiralty named a century later, the South China Sea.

Tabon Man preceded Chinamen in Palawan by tens of thousands of years. Excerpts from three of countless scholarly accounts:

• International websitehistorylearning.com

"Tabon Man is the oldest confirmed modern human to have been found in the Philippines. His bones, evidence of existence of Homo sapiens between 37,000 and 47,000 years ago, were discovered in Tabon Caves, Quezon, Palawan in 1962.

"While later discoveries — including Callao Man and animal remains in Rizal — hint at early man finding their way onto the archipelago up to 70,000 years ago, Tabon Man is the only confirmed example of modern man found on the island dating back to the Stone Age.

"Anthropologist Dr. Robert Fox unearthed the skull, jaw and mandible and teeth of three individuals in Tabon Caves. These remains were surrounded by evidence of stone tools and charcoal left from three assemblages of manmade fire, dated back to 7,000, 20,000 and 22,000 years ago.

"These early men were hunters and gatherers, not farmers, searching for food rather than cultivating it.