"A modern relic from the Stone Age"; "The Most Primitive City Ever Discovered"; "The first living cavemen". This news drew the world's attention to 25 members who lived in the dense jungle of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. His discovery led to the formation of several expeditions made up of Filipino and American anthropologists, news correspondents, television crews from the National Geographic Society, a Philippine government minister, and an environmental attorney. American, late Charles A. Lindbergh.
Why should such a small group of people as Tasaday attract such unparalleled interest and attention? What makes it so special Can modern civil society learn something from this small, primitive group?
Discover the inhabitants of the forest
Tasaday's discovery was not intended. In 1966 a hunter from a village on the edge of the forest discovered that he was setting up his boar traps in the mountains south of Cotabato. After a trail of strange footprints, he found three little brown men wearing only flip-flops. They hollowed out a large root with sharp sticks. They fled in horror. But the hunter chased after him and shouted, "I'm fine! I'm fine. Finally the men stopped at a stream and shivered.
Although the language spoken by the hunter is now related to Tasada, he used sign language due to communication difficulties. The hunting tribe practically lives in harmony with Tasaday, but the difference in its language can be compared to Old German and modern English. The researchers concluded that this suggests an isolation of around a thousand years. The name Tasaday (pronounced Taw-sawdai) combines the Malay word sadai ("leave") and the Malay-Polynesian word tawo ("man")! Tasaday is also the name of the wooded peak that rises above its hidden valley. Their isolation was so complete that when they first contacted them, they knew nothing about a nation called the Philippines.
The existence of this tribe was brought to the attention of outsiders through the efforts of Panamin, an agency that advocates the interests of cultural minorities in the Philippines. During the first encounters between the hunter and the tribesmen at the edge of the forest, they were not known to be living in caves and there were no immediate attempts to enter the forest. The final decision to visit the caves was made to protect Tasaday from the loggers, farmers, farmers and miners who invaded his doomed kingdom. Shortly afterwards, the President of the Philippines signed a proclamation reserving about 200,000 hectares of land (nearly 500,000 hectares) for them.
Enter the world of Tasaday
On March 23, 1972, the first outsiders and in the 20th century marked the world invasion by Tasaday. The helicopter was the only means of transport that could effectively lead the expedition near the caves. Because the dense jungle made it impossible to land on the ground, a wooden platform was attached to the top of a tree. Expedition members had to jump from the floating helicopter to the fragile landing pad, which swayed like a canoe in rough water due to ropes on the rotor blades. Lindbergh said his hope was "like stepping through a glass" from modern times to ancient times.
From the top of the tree, the group sank 23 meters to the ground. There they found a young Tasaday who was only wearing the green thong. A one-hour hike on a ridge and along a glittering stream brought the group to Tasaday: three limestone caves about 570 meters above the ground. Here you are at the foot of a tropical rainforest and full of vegetation. Around them were huge ferns and orchids, rattans, climbing bamboos, wild bananas and palm trees, and large and large diptera that soared skyward to stretch their crowns 30 meters or more to the side. . from the sloping valley.
His head stood curiously from the ledges as his eyes looked at the first strangers who entered the hidden valley. A boy came out of one of the caves, wrapped his arms and legs around a thin tree with white bark and slid five meters to the ground. He joined others who shouted and took a dusty road to gather visitors. The strangers were speechless when the scene unfolded! There were men, women and children here dressed in orchid earrings, straps and skirts, beautiful people with tanned skin and soft dark hair. They were far from the thick, hairy, listless creatures portrayed by evolutionary artists. No, men do not beat their wives with truncheons or pull their hair. They are probably the cutest people in the world.
Tasaday's lifestyle
When the tribe was discovered, it consisted of five families with thirteen children. Dagens Tas practices monogamy without hope of divorce or similar arrangements. Couples mate for the rest of their lives, "until all our hair turns white," say Kulataw and Sikal, one of Tasaday's couples. Weddings are celebrated mainly with the tribe gathering at the entrance to the main cave, where a group is formed around the new couple and simply says "Mafeon, Mafeon" ("Well, yes"). The brides were also taken to the Tasafang and Sanduka mountain ranges, from which Tasaday came only to a limited extent.
A careful examination of the caves, the largest of which was 30 meters deep and thirty-five wide (nine times 11 meters), was instructive. The walls have no drawings or marks and the branches clean the floor without leaving dirt. There is no furniture except for some bark rugs. There are also pieces of dry wood and bamboo, wood and stone tools. The cave walls glow like painted charcoal and have been exposed to soot from fires for several years which is used to repair and heat the caves on cold nights.
Food collection is today's main activity and requires teamwork. Usually three hours are spent searching for food, and the menu depends on what you can get: crabs, fish and tadpoles, which Tasaday hears under and around the bay with his bare hands. People have no knowledge of agriculture and only collect what they need when it is available. Their diet includes fruits, berries, flowers, bamboo shoots, sweet potatoes and wild palm pulp, which are transformed into a starch cake called natak. The food is prepared in bamboo tubes or bundles of leaves that are directly on glow. By the way, fire is created by turning a wooden drill between the palms until the base burns with friction. Then a dry moss bait is applied and, when lit, it is blown over a flame. The whole process takes about five minutes.
Due to the abundance of food, Tasaday does not leave his habitat as nomadic tribes who "collect the mail" when they run out of food. The entire forest is a Tasaday supermarket. They say they did not dare more than 8 km from their home. "Our parents and grandparents told us we could go to the forest during the day, but we always had to go back to the caves at night," said one. It is believed that misunderstanding, war or fear of the plague (fugu) caused Tasaday to cut off contact with the other Manobo tribes from which they originally came.
After lunch, spend the afternoon resting, sleeping or getting rid of dry leaves, twigs or lice. During the game, a child was seen flying a butterfly on a string as if flying a kite. Their needs are simple and they have no words for rice, salt, sugar, needles or tobacco. Although Tasaday's diet is low in calories (1000 to 1500 per day), there is no malnutrition, tooth decay, malaria and tuberculosis. When visitors asked what they wanted, they replied: "What do you mean by 'that’?