The Great Unsettlement

In 2009, UCLA archaeologist Stephen Acabado published a surprising and controversial discovery from his research on the dating of the Ifugao rice terraces in the Cordillera Mountain region in northern Luzon (Philippines) (see Figure 2). As the author mentions in the introduction to his study, the rice terraces are included in UNESCO's World Heritage List, which describes the terraces as a “living cultural landscape of unparalleled beauty… Built 2000 years ago and passed on from generation to generation, the Ifugao Rice Terraces represent an enduring illustration of an ancient civilization that surpassed various challenges and setbacks posed by modernization.” UNESCO's description, however, relied on early scholarship of the rice terraces, which went largely unquestioned for decades. This earlier estimation was based largely on speculation of how long it would have taken for the existing Ifugao highland population to build such a vast network. Acabado's research, however, based on chronometric data from carbon samples along a section of the network close to the lowland regions of Luzon, determined that, far from being 2000 years old, their creation and period of greatest expansion took place after 1585 – in other words, after the arrival of the Spaniards. His research confirms a hypothesis first developed by Felix Keesing: “the terraced landscapes of the Ifugao are the end-result of population expansion into the Cordillera highlands in response to Spanish colonization.” Stitching together Keesing's history with this data led Acabado to the conclusion that the evidence of “indigenous population migration away from the Spanish and into this highland refugium [was] significant enough to expand terrace systems” (811).

While Acabado's findings may come as a great disappointment to both UNESCO and cultural nationalists touting the antiquity of this seemingly superhuman feat of environmental engineering, his research exposes us to a different kind of amazement. It allows us a panoramic view of a secret history unfolding just outside the gaze of the Spanish colonizers – for two and a half centuries.