Comments by "Angry Kittens" (@AngryKittens) on "Voices of the Past" channel.

  1. 0:47 and 9:23 I'm still constantly annoyed at these secondhand drawings of pre-colonial FIlipino natives. Even though the descriptions in NUMEROUS books, including by the accounts of the Magellan expedition, described the natives in great detail, artists in Europe always insisted on depicting the natives as nearly-naked or with grass-skirts waving spears, clubs, stone axes, and bows or somesuch with feathers in their hair. Pre-colonial Filipinos are not Native Americans. While they were related to the Chamorro, they kept in contact with mainland Asia. The pre-colonial Filipino society was IRON AGE. People wore actual clothes and had swords. While men usually went nearly-naked, this was to display their full-body tattoos (a common heritage with Pacific Islander tattoos) as well as to make it easier to crew boats. Not because they didn't have textiles. In other circumstances, they wore shirt-like baro and a square of cloth wrapped around the legs and drawn up in the middle (like a dhoti). Almost all of which were richly decorated. Woven from native abaca bananas and supplemented with clothing made from imported silks and cottons from China and India. You can see depictions of these in the Boxer Codex, which unlike the European drawings, were made in situ, by a person who ACTUALLY saw these people. The fact that the natives didn't run away or react weirdly with Magellan's crew is also something commonly overlooked. The people recognized them immediately as potential traders. Island Southeast Asia was the birthplace of maritime trade. White people weren't strange, they were something people already knew about from trade with India and the Middle East, as well as the fact that the Portuguese were already IN Southeast Asia. They were already taking over Malacca and the Moluccas when Magellan arrived. The "bamboo spears" that they described were the disposable bagakay javelins. They were made from sharpened poles from a species of bamboo (called the bagakay) filled with sand to give them weight. These were used in naval warfare. But the actual spears that warriors carried, was called the bangkaw. It was not made from bamboo but from fire-hardened RATTAN, a kind of palm vine. Making them light but also quite sturdy. They were also tipped with iron, often also heavily ornamented. Unlike the bagakay, these spears were NOT disposable. These were the primary weapons of warriors, supplemented by a sword (usually a straight-edged gigantic kampilan, but can also be any varieties of other swords known collectively as sundang), a vertical (kalasag) or circular (taming) shield, and a dagger (balaraw or gunong).
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