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Ferdz Decena Blog



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The Voyage starts on the 24th !

AWESOME

it's like the Hawaiian Hokule'a. The funny thing is very few can do that, at least the ancient ways with stellar navigation. Heyerdahl did it but I don't think he used navigation much (he just did the current), the Hokule'a was very successful but it was a Micronesian guy (from Yap I think) who actually taught them star navigation.

i saw a "tidal map" from the marianas in a museum once - sticks tied together at the "islands" where the tides are reflected

it's probably more an experience thing than anything else, so it's good that they start out with a intra-Philippines voyage first.

maybe they should include outriggers.

there's no outriggers? how is it going to stay afloat for long? i always thought, from school book pictures and from boats all over the philippines like the vintas, that balangays had outrigger.

dunno, would make lots of sense, but since the butuan boat didn't have any (or they weren't preserved, which makes more sense) they won't use any. IMHO it's going to be xtremely risky using the balangay on the high seas. maybe it was only used for short intra-island voyages, and it isn't a remnant of a "high seas" boat with outriggers.

well from the map i saw with the guy with the traditional mindanaoan clothes pointing to from the website, it seems they're going to island hop...if they are going to cross the indian or the pacific oceans though,...i think it's going to be tough. but then again heyerdahl's kon tiki made it and it was just a raft so...

Heyerdahl didn't attempt a round-the-world voyage.

trans pacific (only halfway but still), but that in itself is a feat, with just a raft.

his transatlantic voyage was also incomplete, i think the raft was soaking up to much. As you say, it was a raft in both cases - but he designed it himself didn't he ? This is a bit harder or it could be easier, depending if they adapt their skills enough to the historical boat.

well i'd be impressed either way, and for all it's worth good effort at least. seafaring and balangay itself is so integral part of philippine history and society (even today we are in baranggay units).

i wonder what navigation they will use, it'd be impressive if they pull off pacific star wayfinding somehow. maybe after the first trip they could incorporate other people of the area, indonesians and malaysians as part diplomatic effort.

i was thinking about that too, resurrecting ancient knowledge about astronomy & navigation. Repairing & Building new boats might be necessity on the way though. Maybe its gonna be small fleet from the whole of ASEAN & more once they return

well it would be bad @$$ if a Filipino navigator go thru pwo...to think that Filipinos both ancient seafaring and the modern employed (merchant marines, which my grandfather was and so are many ofws, US Navy sailors, fishermen, and those who work at ships all over the world) you'd think we'd at least have one good navigator

I don't think our direct ancestors invented the outrigger canoe because the direct ancestors of filipinos are more agricultural(rice paddy) than seafaring,maybe the ancestors of polynesians invented it and we copied it since the ancestors of polynesians passed via our archipelago

what? outriggers are used all over the philippines (vintas etc.) and indonesia, hell even when magellan 'discovered' marianas (guam---micronesians) they were using outrigger canoes. hell even the taiwanese were documented as sailing out of taiwan south as late as early 1900's.

and the truth is agriculture isn't really the main staple of the philipines, with the exception of luzon to a degree, until commercial agriculture was introduced by euros. and even then luzonians were traders and sailors, given in fact that manila is a port city.

Filipinos are mainly descendants of metal age rice farmers that displaced the ancestors of Polynesians before the spanish came that is the truth,Manila only became a trading port because the kingdom that ruled Luzon leased Manila to Borneans,the original center of trade in Luzon was in Pampanga area not Manila,yes they did use outrigger but i think they did not invent it

The Yami of Taiwan are migrants from the philippines to taiwan 800 years ago and these are their boats

of course not all canoes or boats utilized by austonesian people have outrigger, eg barge and rafts. even in the philippines where a good 90% of boats have outriggers, there are a lot of bangkas and other sea going vessels, small and large that don't have it.

yet outriggers are contested by historians to occur even in indonesia (which also utilize outriggers very much even today).

according to: http://www.archive.org/stream/outriggersof...dduoft_djvu.txt

A. C. HADDON. The Outriggers of Indonesian Canoes.

"A scattered marginal distribution of this kind suggests antiquity, and provisionally we
may accept this supposition. Although the Torres Straits area is not geographically
remote from Indonesia, I am strongly of opinion that it is culturally remote and
that the double outrigger came there by the West Pacific route."

further states

"In a letter to me dated July 14, 1913, Friederici says : " I
have now no doubt that the hop [the Nissan double outrigger canoe with a direct
tied attachment] has been brought by a Philippine or sub-Philippine wandering
stream to New Ireland and neighbourhood, and that the double outrigger has in
course of time been displaced by the Melanesian single outrigger and has stood its
ground only in the island of Nissan." Apparently both forms occurred at Easter
Island (p. 124)."

If and if, the outriggers was employed by Polynesian ancestors only, that would make that the outrigger was created far later. Yet, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesians (some of which group like the Hawai'ans had been isolated for hundreds of years in stretches) as well as majority of seafaring people of Western Pacific (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines) use the outrigger design pretty commonly. We know that the Outer Oceania (from E. to W., eg from SEAsia towards E. Pacific) was settled in waves (and from different places of origin eg. what are now in Philippines, Indonesia etc.), yet almost all of the cultures there have had significant use of outriggers. Hell even the Madagascar folks employ outriggers (traditionally single)...yet Moken (esp. those from Burma) don't (both of which are resident Austronesians of the Indian Ocean). Which shows that perhaps earlier, rather than later, employment of outriggers.

Here on pg. 323 shows a Maori war canoe which do NOT have outrigger, yet we are all aware that a lot of Maori canoes do employ outriggers.

Further more "...probably the most that can be said is that, at some earlier date---perhaps around 1,500 BC when austronesian people were probably established in the ‘voyaging corridor’ of island south-east Asia –the ancestors of the Oceanic people had outrigger boats with mast and sail.” (318)

I was just pointing out that "filipinos" are descended more from Wet Rice Farmers,I was pointing out that the direct ancestors of filipinos don't use Outriggers because the Yami/Tao don't use it they used outriggers later they used outriggers to expand to palawan,visayas,mindanao and Sulawesi. However they got Outrigger Canoe later,i think OutRiggers are invented in South East Asia by other austronesians who expanded first which is indo-melanesian(ex.malays and polynesians) before the ancestors of filipinos.

The opposite thing happened to Malayic People of Indonesia and Malaysia and Indo-Melanesian People who acquired wet rice farming from DongSon but already use outrigger first.

But you're talking as if "Filipinos" (which you've grouped pretty liberally and you're self created 'Tao' distinction) were one group of people, or state. What we now call Philippines and people in it had been settled by different groups in different times and in different waves MUCH LIKE Oceania (eg as isolated as Hawai'i was, Marquesan, Tahitian <two waves>, and who's descendants then possibly settled far off New Zealand etc.). Now Hawai'i is the middle of the biggest Ocean in the world, and who's ecosystem so isolated that today it is still so fragile...but the Philippines who's cradled next to the insular SEasia and mainland SEAsia, in between the Indian and Pacific Ocean, and between the prospected homeland of the Austronesian (hours from Taiwan, and Indonesia and S. China)...how the hell am I suppose to believe that we a people of hundreds of linguistical origins and of different cultural upbringing came from one direct unbroken ancestry, when over and over again historical facts that we've established contacts with people as far off as Palau before the Spanish came?

One thing is certain though Filipinos have had used outriggers and had been seafarers, yesterday and as well as today.

Filipinos are different from the rest of austronesians because they have rice farming first that is why they had a preference to live near lakes or rivers,outrigger was invented in indonesia because as you said moklen does not have the outrigger,other people adapted outrigger once it has been invented not just the people who live in the philipppine archipelago,the inland groups in luzon don't use outrigger.....


I was pointing out that filipinos are not just descendants of byproducts of the migration to the pacific although they are partly descended from that and filipinos are also mostly descendants of the rice farmers who later migrated here,those are also austronesian but mixed with those people who invented rice paddy agriculture....

Inland groups? Dude I've seen outriggers in Malabon near where I grew up, and up the some river up in Bulacan. But even so it makes sense, why use outrigger when you're navigating rivers? First if it's shallow and or small, outriggers are illogical to use, and plus it's costlier to make. I think they had common sense. It's like saying that they did not use balangay to get there (as we know for sure most of them did use huge canoes that housed at least two to five families) yet most canoes in inland rivers are small and used mostly for travel and only carried a half dozen, if that much, people. It doesn't mean our ancestors didn't get there by balangay (or at least some of them did). It's just that huge ocean or seafaring crafts have no use or illogical to use in tributaries which they eventually settled as they got there. It's common sense. It's like saying Europeans must not have used huge ships to get to AMerica because in Poudre River they only used fishing boats. It's just common sense and use; some don't have it, or completely disused it, while some changed or influenced to change by other designs (ie double hull <catamaran> to outrigger, one to two, two to one, etc.)

As for rice farming, the earliest documented rice farming in SEA was in Indonesia. PLUS not all groups of Philippine people cultivated rice, hell a few of them don't even have real agriculture are still subsistence and hunter gatherers. In Visayas I know for sure fishing is big. And plus of course who wouldn't live near rivers. I know there's the whole 'people of the river' similarities in terms of tribal name, but which people don't? I can guarantee you people in the Amazon prefer to be somewhat close to the rivers than inland. It's just common sense. I can guarantee you that people in Indonesia and elsewhere mostly settle rivers and lakes AS the hundreds of other civilizations in the world.

Balangay embarks on epic voyage

Offical site launched, no updates yet, but the 1. route are displayed.

Voyage of the Balangay

so no outriggers planned, at all.

inq7

LOL I don't think our ancestors only sailed when there was good weather. I don't think they had doppler radars yet.