The ancient people of the Tasaday still lived in the same way as people had done in prehistoric times, in the Stone Age. They had not been discovered before and they had never seen white people. Ever since they existed, they had managed to hide from the modern world in the rainforest of the island of Mindanao, Philippines. The Tasaday still lived like primitive people, with stone tools and in caves. The Tasaday tribe was discovered in 1971 on the island of Mindanao in the Philippine rainforests by the also Filipino researcher Manual Elizalde. The message appeared in newspapers around the world, and many national television stations covered this unique discovery. Of course it was world news. A prehistoric tribe whose members still lived in caves and still made their own stone tools. They had no metal objects, so they still lived in the Stone Age. They walked around naked except for a few pieces of clothing made of leaves, and they had lived isolated from the outside world for generations. The tribe consisted of about 26 people. The prehistoric people, just like our ancestors, looked for their food in nature and they lived by hunting. They also of course had their own unique language, customs and rituals.
Deception?
From 1971 to 1986, the tribe continued to be regarded as a unique discovery, until a Swiss journalist, Oswald Iten, and a journalist from the Philippines, investigated together and sought contact with the special ancient people. They later stated that they were surprised to find that the cave in which the Tasaday were said to live was empty and deserted. They had discovered that the Tasaday people simply lived in nearby villages, together with other local residents. They certainly weren’t prehistoric people. The Tasaday people wore T-shirts instead of leaf skirts, and no stone tools were found at all.
Tasaday tribe did not exist
One of the (former) tribe members of the Tasaday, named Lobo, with the help of an interpreter (who himself could not speak the language of the Tasaday, but could speak the language of another tribe, whose members were able to communicating with the Tasaday) tells Oswald Iten that it had all been a fabrication. The whole story about a people who still lived in prehistoric times is said to have been set up by scientist Manual Elizalda. While the tribe had been filmed by a film crew, the tribe members had performed a play for the camera upon request. Lobo further stated that Elizalda had promised to help them if they did as he asked.
The tribe that never was
Had cultural scientist Manual Elizalda presented humanity with a fabrication in order to enjoy fame as a scientist? The news about the culture fraud spread around the world like wildfire. It was soon assumed that the Tasaday did not use stone weapons, that they did have contact with other communities in the area, that they did not live in a cave but in simple villages with huts, and that the language they spoke was a dialect was of languages from their environment. In fact, Lobo and another young man from the supposed Tasaday tribe, named Adug, stated in a TV movie The tribe that never was that they were actually members of the Tboli and Manobo peoples.
Hoax or truth?
Lobo and Adug were later shown the TV movie and declared indignantly that the TV movie was full of lies. Wouldn’t they have declared that the discovery of the Tasaday had been a fabrication and that the Tasaday did not really exist at all? Yes, of course, but they had only done so because the filmmakers had asked them to explain it. The interpreter Datu Galang had said to them: if you want to say that it is all made up and that the Tasaday do not really exist, they will give you cigarettes, sweets, and anything else you want.
The Tasaday do exist!
After the Tasaday had seen the program, they wanted to know how they could correct the fabrications that the journalists had broadcast about them. They wanted recognition for their originality and their existence. Elizalda brought some Tasaday tribesmen to Manila and they filed a lawsuit against two university professors in the Philippines who claimed that the Tasaday did not really exist. The professors, who soon became known as the hoax professors, refused to appear at the hearing.
Anthropologist Amelia Rogel Rara and her colleague Emanuel Nabayra, both from the Philippines, then spent about a year in the Tasaday area to study them. They came to the conclusion that the Tasaday were indeed original and that the hoax theory had actually been a forgery.
In the early 1990s, a linguist from Hawaii, Lawrence, discovered that the Tasaday had no words for house or parts of houses in their own language, nor did they know words for people outside their tribe, no words for places of residence or areas outside their own environment, simply because they had really not known such things. Only after their discovery in 1971 did they come into contact with the outside world, and also with objects from the modern world. This scientist’s conclusion was that the Tasaday was not a hoax, but original and real.
Also in 1990, the Belgian scientist Pascal Lays, who had lived with the Tasaday for several years and learned to speak their language, also came to the conclusion that the Tasaday are an original and original people. A people who have lived isolated in the rainforests for centuries. Around this period, the Tasaday finally gained recognition for their originality and they, and their discoverer, were protected from any form of fraud.