Author: Woods, Damon L.
Before the advent of Spanish rule of these islands, how did early Filipinos count and how did they reckon time? Were they literate? Was the barangay the basic unit of Tagalog society? Apart from the customary materials written in Spanish, are there surviving texts written in the indigenous languages during the precolonial period? Can historians reconstruct these aspects of precolonial societies given the scarcity of sources? These are some of the questions that Damon Woods asks in The Myth of the Barangay and Other Silenced Histories. The answers he offers are informed by a philological approach that seeks to decipher preconquest thought and action. Woods provokes the reader not to be content with received knowledge that may rest on shaky ground. The result is an engaging book that is a rare exploration in early Philippine historiography.
C.2017 / UPP