(L to R) Lobo sticks flower petals on his face, Belayem gathers fruit, Lobo plucks berries, Udelen and Siyus nibble fruit and flowers, Mahayag’s family members groom one another. Photos--1972-74

    The story of the Tasaday begins at an unknown time past--perhaps 200 years ago--when, ancestoral stories say, people fled a deadly epidemic disease (cholera, smallpox, measles?) and hid in a vast, uncharted rainforest of south central Mindanao, Philippines. The people believed everyone left behind died of the terrible scourge, which was known to their ancestors as a killing wind called “fugu.” Only those in the deep forest survived, they believed, vowing never to return to the fatal north. The survivors came to regard the forest as the entire world and themselves as the only people on earth.

    The people formed into separate groups that established residences at places they called Tasafeng, Sanduka, and Tasaday.  The people at Tasaday had a complex of three

caves in the side of a forested mountain that became their home base. Below the caves flowed a stream where they gathered tiny fish, crabs, tadpoles, and frogs. In the surrounding forest they foraged for roots, fruits, mushrooms and other foods. They made fire with a wooden drill, clothing of leaves, and tools from stone, wood, and bone.     

    Marriage within a group was forbidden, so women married into one of the other groups; men stayed in place. Life went on in this way for several generations; the forest became home as far back in time as any Tasaday could remember.

    Each group usually numbered about 30--too few to be a tribe or band--and stayed in their part of the forest, where they gathered food and firewood, leaves for clothing, stones for tools.

Over time these people became part of the environment and did not damage or change it.  Later, an ethnobotanist who studied the Tasaday said they appeared to have lived “as close to nature as any people known in modern times--in a symbiotic relationship between the people, plants and terrestrial animals.” 

   They satisfied their subsistence needs with a few hours of work each day

and spent the rest of the time with their families, talking, playing with children,             making tools, swinging on vines, splashing in a waterfall. Life was good--

perhaps reflecting the “original affluent society,” as described by one scholar

of the Stone Age.  

    But life was also difficult--infection and injuries, sickness and old age eventu-

ally touched everyone. Death would come to each one. A dying person was

taken into the forest by close relatives so the failing person would not die in the caves, where the departing soul could lure away souls of the living. The Tasaday believed in a great spirit--above the other spirits that resided in the forest--who could send wind and rain and lightning, or even illness or death--for violating certain rules. The spirt also sent great blessings--the always dry caves, delicious food, the waterfall, and much more.

    Life played out in this way for---nobody knows how long... several generations?  Two centuries?  And then a mysterious stranger came into the Tasaday’s lives. . . .

Belayem deposits frog in rolled-leaf cone of Dul. They   said frogs were the largest animals they ever killed.

Tasaday boys replace leaf g-strings,’72