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Map 1. The Philippines in their Southeast Asian setting

In 1894 José P. Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, reported on polished stone tools that he encountered and correctly identified at Dapitan, Mindanao, the place where he was exiled by the Spanish authorities in Manila. Having become acquainted with early works in scientific archaeology while he was studying in Spain and Germany (Evangelista 1962; Solheim 1981), he appropriately noted that these tools had been used by the prehistoric ancestors of the Filipinos.