I Time-Traveled to the Rice Terraces: Are They Really 2,000 Years Old?

Ask almost anyone how old the Banaue Rice Terraces are, the giant green steps on the back of the Philippine 20-peso bill, and you'll hear the same answer: two thousand years. It's in school books, on travel posters, even in UNESCO's description. So our time traveler goes to check. He finds that the famous number was a guess made in the early 1900s, and that when archaeologists finally dug under the terrace walls, the soil, pollen and cooking pots told a younger, more surprising story: the Ifugao turned whole mountains into rice terraces while staying out of reach of the Spanish Empire. CHAPTERS 0:00 The answer on the 20-peso bill 0:38 The Cordillera and the Ifugao 1:05 What UNESCO listed (and what it didn't) 1:27 2,000 years ago: no terraces 1:40 Where "2,000 years" came from 2:05 1,000 years ago: Old Kiyyangan and taro 2:26 The dig: soil, pollen and cooking pots 3:11 Why the 1600s? The Spanish arrive 3:41 Rice terraces are a team sport 4:13 Built in eleven days? 4:30 Rice for the rich 4:49 Bulul, bayah and the hudhud 5:10 Not everyone agrees 5:46 New enemies: typhoons and giant earthworms 6:09 Back to the 20-peso bill WHAT'S DOCUMENTED, WHAT'S DEBATED The 2,000-year figure goes back to estimates by H. Otley Beyer and Roy Franklin Barton, made without excavation or dating. The Ifugao Archaeological Project (Stephen Acabado and Ifugao community partners, since 2012) dated soil beneath terrace walls and studied pollen, starch, plant fossils and residues in cooking pots; in Acabado's words, a clear, unambiguous appearance of wet rice comes only around 1650. "Roughly 400 years old" is the leading reading of that evidence, not a settled fact: in 2017 eight archaeologists of the National Museum of the Philippines objected that the digs focus mostly on Kiangan, and terraces elsewhere could be older. The video says so. The 11-day experiment, the "one in ten" estimate and the quotes come from the sources below. The earthworm line is a joke; the earthworms are real. SOURCES UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras (722): https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/722/ UNESCO, Hudhud chants of the Ifugao: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/hudhud-c... K. Coates, "One Grain at a Time", Archaeology, May/June 2018: https://archaeology.org/issues/may-ju... S. Acabado et al., "The Short History of the Ifugao Rice Terraces: A Local Response to the Spanish Conquest", Journal of Field Archaeology 44(3), 2019 S. Acabado, "The Ifugao agricultural landscapes", Senri Ethnological Studies 78 (2012) UCLA, "The Origins of the Ifugao Rice Terraces: Challenging the 2,000-Year-Old Narrative": https://vitalmatters.fowler.ucla.edu/... UNESCO WHC news 891 (removal from the List of World Heritage in Danger, 2012): https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/891 Full source list and fact-check notes are kept with the project. PHOTO AND FILM CREDITS Batad rice terraces by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Batad houses by Vinnie Cartabiano, CC BY 2.0 Hapao rice terraces, Hungduan, by Arian Zwegers, CC BY 2.0 · Ibulao River, Kiangan, by Patrickroque01, CC BY-SA 4.0 Stone hagabi, Kiangan, by Shubert Ciencia, CC BY 2.0 · Seated bulul figures, Honolulu Museum of Art, photo by Hiart, CC0 Terraces in University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology (Internet Archive Book Images), no known copyright restrictions Taj Mahal by Yann, edited by King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0 All via Wikimedia Commons; licences: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ VIDEO CLIPS (Pexels licence, free to use): Pexels videos 35998718, 35998482, 35998628, 35998710, 35998720, 35998592, 39878849 (pexels.com/video/number) The 20-peso bill in the video is a cartoon drawing, not the real note. All animation and sound effects were made for this video. MUSIC Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... "Hidden Agenda", "Echoes of Time v2", "Vivacity", "Spy Glass", "Merry Go", "Cool Vibes", "Run Amok", "George Street Shuffle", "Faster Does It", "Heartwarming" Where should the Tiny Time Traveler go next? Tell us in the comments. #Philippines #History #TinyTimeTraveler