by: Ma. Christina Perez The Tasaday, earlier numbering only 27
individuals, inhabit the tropical rain forests of South
Cotabato. In 1986, their population increased to 61. (Peralta, 1
987). According to Nadjo Tarlito Buntas, a Manobo tribal leader,
Tasadays are the ancestors of people who came from the T'boli
and Manobo tribes. They were originally called "Linat Batang".
Though not a "Stone Age people," they continue to hunt and
gather, dwell in caves, use stone tools, and wear garments of
curcoligo (a kind of fern plant) |along side practices acquired
through long contact and exchange with neighboring people. They
are socially and geographically distant, though not completely
isolated, and linguistic studies, Peralta said, show Tasadays
are an ethnolinguistic group. return to top The actual period is
unknown, shrouded in the mists of an unrecorded past, but
anthropologists think it likely that since the days of Christ, a
splinter group of Manubo Filipinos-completely isolated from
civil-ization-lived in the r