seocontest2008

Alibata - As every ancient culture develops it’s ancient writings and communication techniques such as hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt or sanskrit in ancient India, so too does the Philippines and in this island nation the ancient form of writing is known as alibata which is believed to have originated somewhere in 14th century. Alibata was widely used by the inhabitants of the islands as their form of writing until the arrival of the Spaniards in 16th century.

Alibata - At the time that the Spaniards arrived to the Philippines, they found the people in Manila, then a port town and other places making use of bamboo and specially prepared palm leaves to write on using styli and knives. These people had been using an ancient Tagalog script that had 17 basic symbols of which three were vowels, namely a, i and u. The other symbols were consonants which had an inherent sound, i.e. ka, ga, nga, ta, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, la, wa, sa, and ha.

Eventually the Tagalog script became known as Baybayin and a little later on it was then known as Alibata. The Alibata script was syllabary. meaning that a particular symbol represented a particular syllable. This is different when compared to the standard Latin alphabet where in each symbol actually represents a phoneme or the smallest part of speech. With this difference it makes it difficult for western educated people to understand the correct usage of the script due to their familiarilty to the Latin aplahabet.

Baybayin or Alibata (known in Unicode as the Tagalog script) is a pre-Hispanic Philippine writing system that originated from the Javanese script Old Kawi. The writing system is a member of the Brahmic family (and an offshoot of the Vatteluttu alphabet) and is believed to be in use as early as the 14th century. It continued to be in use during the Spanish colonization of the Philippines up until the late 19th Century. The term baybayin literally means spelling. Closely related scripts are Hanunóo, Buhid, and Tagbanwa.

Paradise Philippines - Banaue Rice Terraces are 2000-year old terraces that were carved into the mountains of Ifugao in the Philippines by ancestors of the Batad indigenous people. The Rice Terraces are commonly referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. It is commonly thought that the terraces were built with minimal equipment, largely by hand. The terraces are located approximately 1500 meters (5000 feet) above sea level and cover 10,360 square kilometers (about 4000 square miles) of mountainside. They are fed by an ancient irrigation system from the rainforests above the terraces.

The Banaue terraces are part of the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, ancient sprawling man-made structures from 2,000 to 6,000 years old. They are found in the provinces of Apayao, Benguet, Mountain Province and Ifugao, and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is a commonly visited place in the Cordilleras aside from Baguio.

Locals to this day still tend to the rice and vegetables on the terraces, although more and more younger Ifugaos do not find farming appealing, often opting for the more lucrative hospitality industry generated by the Rice Terraces. The result is the gradual erosion of the characteristic “steps”, which need constant reconstruction and care.

Bantayan is a magnificent small Island off the northwest coast of Cebu, and it
’s unlike any other provinces: it’s quiet…really quiet - there aren’t many cars on the Island. Bantayan island

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