When Benelyn and I was planning
our mini road trip in Rizal, we came up with a handful of places to visit. I
pitched the Wind Mill Farm in Pililla while she suggested the Petroglyphs in
Angono. “You haven’t been?” I asked her in a surprised tone since she live in
the same town. “Never been” she answered me. “Great, same here”, I told her.
Problem solved. Ditching spontaneity, we now have a road trip destination.
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| The Petroglyps of Angono was included in the 1996 World Monuments Watch |
After taking our lunch at Balaw-Balaw
Restaurant and Art Gallery, we drove off to the site of the Petroglyphs located
in a forested hills spanning the boundary of Angono and Binangonan.
The Re-discovery of the Angono Petroglyphs
Shrouded from the world by the
thick woodland for many centuries, the Petroglyphs re-emerged in 1965 after a
group of boy scouts accompanied by the National Artist Carlos “Botong”
Francisco stumbled upon an interesting cave during a camping trip. It is said
that while resting, Botong Francisco, who surely knows an art when he sees one,
noticed an arresting set of deeply-carved lines and patterns hewn on the outer
walls of the cave. Upon further probing, he recognized the outlines as a form
of primitive drawings.
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| The Petroglyphs of Angono was also declared as a National Cultural Treasure in 1973 |
After reporting his discovery
to the National Museum of the Philippines, a team of archaeologists led by
Alfredo Evangelista trooped to the cave to conduct a research. Excavations on the site revealed fragmented
bits of earthenware, flake stone tools, obsidian flakes and other blunt
instruments believed to date back as far as the Neolithic Age—or before 2000
BC.
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| The rock-art are believed to have been created by using stone tools |
The Angono Petroglyphs also
revealed a total of 127 drawings engraved inside the cave's rock shelter occupying
an area of 63 meters wide and 5 meters high. Many of the rock-art depicted
thin-sized human and animal figures. A few were left indistinguishable because
of the occurrence of erosion.
An educational Road trip
After we arrived at the
location of the Petroglyphs, a group of school kids pointed to us the tunnel
beside the signage, where we should enter. The tunnel around 150 meters long
appeared dreamlike as if one would enter into another dimension. We alighted
out of it with a view of a golf course (the construction of it contributed to the deterioration of the nearby Petroglyph stone wall) before proceeding to the tourism center
where we met the guide who accompanied us to the exact site of the Petroglyphs and narrated its history.
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| For some reason, long tunnels give me the creeps |
It was an educational road-trip
indeed to a place I’ve been meaning to visit for the longest time. Making this
brief exploration of Rizal more special, was the fact that I was with a
wonderful company in the person of Benelyn.
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| with Benelyn at the view deck of Angono Petroglyphs |
Imagine, being in a place where
some of the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines used to take shelter—like
more than 2,000 years ago. I grew up knowing our history started only when the
Spanish came in 1521, but I know that we have been charting our own history a
long time before that.
I’m confident that along with the Tabon Caves in
Palawan, the Kalanay Cave in Masbate, the limestone tombs of Kamhantik in
Quezon, and similar ones in Butuan, our country still hides archaeological
relics that will suggest the presence of more ancient civilizations.
