National Museum, Kalinga execs drum up protection for Elephant Hill

Composite team members do an ocular inspection of the Rizal archaeological site, known as Elephant Hill, in San Pedro, Rizal, Kalinga on June 8. (PLGU-Kalinga Province photo)

TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Officials of the National Museum and local government here have intensified efforts to protect and preserve an archaeological site, known as Elephant Hill, in Sitio Greenhills, Barangay San Pedro in Rizal town, Kalinga.

A composite team did an ocular inspection on Monday, June 8, at the site to assess the Elephant Hill’s present condition and identify immediate protective interventions.

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Rizal Mayor Karl Baac was joined by representatives of the National Museum, Kalinga provincial government, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Agrarian Reform, police, and other Rizal town and village officials.

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Threats such as unauthorized excavations, looting, land conversion, and other activities that may endanger its historical and cultural integrity were found to be plaguing the site.

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This prompted moves to strengthen inter-agency collaboration and reinforce measures to safeguard the nationally significant archaeological site.

Dubbed as a national cultural treasure, excavations at the site have unearthed stone tools and butchered megafauna fossils dating back over 700,000 years ago, providing the earliest known evidence of early human activity in the country.

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Kalinga officials have planned to build a local research center and museum within Rizal town “to properly showcase the findings to the community.”

In 2018, a French-Filipino archaeological team uncovered 57 stone tools alongside a 75-percent intact fossil of an extinct rhinoceros, Nesorhinus philippinensis. Distinct cut and percussion marks found on the rhinoceros bones provided compelling evidence that early humans, or hominids, had butchered the animal using stone tools.

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Aside from the discovered rhino species, further excavations have reported unearthing fossilized remains of stegodons (relatives of the elephant), monitor lizards, box turtles, and Philippine brown deer which have long been extinct.

Prior to the Elephant Hill diggings, the oldest known human activity was 67,000 years ago from Callao Cave in Cagayan, which archaeologists suggested that the Kalinga site radically predates it, and “completely changing the timeline of human migration in Southeast Asia.”

In 1977, then-President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. declared the Rizal area as a protected archaeological reserve and the National Museum of the Philippines officially elevated it to a national cultural treasure in 2023. The decree was established in response to preliminary archaeological findings suggesting that the Cagayan Valley and Kalinga-Apayao areas may have been inhabited by some of the earliest human beings in the country.

Parts of the dug fossils such as actual bones, teeth, and stone tools in Kalinga were displayed at the National Museum of Natural History in Manila.

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Advanced physico-chemical dating methods later established that the site dates back approximately 709,000 years, proving that human activity in the Philippines occurred far earlier than previously believed. /jpv