Ancient Anda
Imagine that in that time a people settled east of Bohol, in what is today called Lamanok Point off the Anda Peninsula.
Imagine that these people left marks upon their shelters, mixing hematite rocks with animal fat and vegetable juices to make the blood-red paint with which they stained the sallow stone of their dwellings.
One wonders what could have been the rituals under which one was allowed to leave a mark for others to see. Was it something all of them did or was it a privilege kept for a select few? These may be mere handprints or streaks of red on a rock face for some but for those people each of this prints may have been the philosophical equivalent of “Cogito ergo sum.”
There are still many of these hematite paintings for others to see, but most have been taken by archaeologists who have chipped away at the rock face to bring samples for laboratory testing and dating or by wayward visitors of the island who had less scholarly intentions.
A skeptic might say “Aren’t they just smears of red paint on a cave wall? How genuine can they be? Is it not improbable that such an important archaeological site be found in Bohol of all places?”
But why not in Bohol? In Europe as in other places, hematite paintings are found in caves and rock shelters in limestone cliffs and most are dated towards the end of the last ice age, some twelve thousand years ago. Even at a much later age, why would it be improbable for Bohol?
There was a time when there was more than just these paintings to be seen at Lamanok. Several skeletal remains, pottery, boat coffins, and other artifacts were found in the area. Of that rich find, however, what now remains in the caves and rock shelters of the island are odd bones, shattered and split, a few pieces of wood that seems more like spongy fiber, and incongruent shards of pottery. Most of the artifacts, you see, had been shipped to and are stored for safekeeping at the National Museum branch in Butuan City. Some others were stolen or misplaced.
We cannot say for certain where those who settled Anda may have gone to. It is possible that they remained there for a long time or left and were later replaced by other peoples. We may never know the answers to all these questions, unless a legitimate scientific study is begun and completed to establish for all and sundry the truth of the archaeological finds in Anda.
In an effort to preserve the past in the ever-intrusive world of the present, the fisherfolk of the village of Badiang, through the Badiang Fishermen’s Association, has set up an ecological-cultural tour of Lamanok through the CoMET or Community-Managed Ecological-Cultural Tourism project implemented by the Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF) with, as secretariat, the Bohol Alliance of Non-Government Organizations (BANGON). BANGON also handles the project’s marketing and promotions.
The project is funded by the Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Project through the Focused Community Assistance Scheme 2, which aims to enhance ecological-cultural tourism in central and eastern Bohol so that entire communities and not just individual businessmen benefit from tourism that is ecologically and culturally sustainable.
It is easy to believe that Lamanok Point, in Barangay Badiang, six kilometers from Anda proper, may still be in the state that it was in when the first of the hematite paintings were made. The village mainland itself is a place that remains out of reach of cellphones and we set foot on the island only after paddling a boat through a 74-hectare natural growth mangrove forest.
Leaving the forest behind, the boat pilot rowed us on towards what seems to be three, forbidding islands. Silent and ominous, they loomed over the waters like ageless, ever-vigilant sentries of these parts.
That morning we were to head off to Lamanok – a place where sands merge to make pathways, where yellowed mangrove leaves line the Shaman’s Trail, where sharp rocks and earth lead the way to caves where stories of Iska – an actual historical person who in some accounts may have been a goddess, a witch, or a madwoman – are still whispered, if not told, and to a mystic cave that gives the island its name: a cave that to this day is a home to mystics and age-old rituals that recall a covenant between man, nature, and otherworldly spirits.
The few hours that we spent in the island were more a communion with nature than a tour.
Lamanok is not for the tourist who seeks comfort and entertainment. It is for one who seeks the soul of a land; one who would show respect for it; and one who would have the patience to listen as it speaks in the ancient silence.