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Ijangs are the terraced and defended settlements on hill tops and ridges in the
Batanes Islands Batanes, officially the Province of Batanes ( ivv, Provinsiya nu Batanes; Ilocano: ''Probinsia ti Batanes''; fil, Lalawigan ng Batanes, ), is an archipelagic province in the Philippines, administratively part of the Cagayan Valley region. It i ...
in the
Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
. These high rocky formations can serve as fortress or refuge against attacking enemies for the Ivatan people.


Background

In 1994, Eusebio Dizon, the deputy director of the
National Museum of the Philippines The National Museum of the Philippines ( fil, Pambansang Museo ng Pilipinas}) is an umbrella government organization that oversees a number of national museums in the Philippines including ethnographic, anthropological, archaeological, and vis ...
, went to Batanes with his team for an archeological project. They found a triangular-shaped hill in Savidug, a town in Sabtang. These structures were called ''ijang''. Ijangs are similar to the ''gusuku'' castles found in Okinawa, Japan. Aside from both of them being strategitically built in high places, 12th century Sung-type ceramics and Chinese beads and other artefactual materials recovered from an ijang were dated at almost the same time as the foundations of the Okinawan castles beginning from circa 1200 CE. The Ivatan traditionally lived in the ''ijang'' which were fortified mountain areas and drank sugar-cane wine, or ''palek''. They also used
gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...
as currency and produced a thriving agriculture-based industry as well as expertise in seafaring and boat-building.


Functions

Based on oral history and tradition, pre-Hispanic Ivatans were divided into small clans that lived not far from the sea. During clan wars, those attacked climbed for safety to the tops of the ijangs where they defended themselves by throwing stones at the enemy below. The tops of the ijangs today are still full of stones - the primitive ammunition of the people. Building a shelter atop the ijang became necessary when fighting continued long for some time. Ijangs were first described by the English freebooter Captain William Dajnpier when he visited the island of Ivuhos in 1687. Today, there are still traces of such ancient dwellings, including stone posts standing or lying where the Ivatans left them when they abandoned their pagan way of life for Christianity in the late 18th century.


Due to the colonial era

In 1783, the Spanish claimed Batanes as part of the Philippines under the auspices of Governor-General José Basco y Vargas. This made its own history to be vanished rapidly. The Bashi Channel had come to be increasingly used by English East India Company ships and the Spanish authorities brought the islands under their direct administration to prevent them from falling under British control., p.18. However, the Ivatan remained on their ijangs, or mountain fortresses. In 1790, Governor Guerrero decreed that Ivatans were to leave their ijang and to live in the lowlands, thereby giving them more people to tax. Basco and Ivana were the first towns.


See also

*
Dap-ay A dap-ay ( Kankanaey and Applai), ato, or ator (Bontoc) is a paved raised ceremonial platform ringed with stone seats and with a central fireplace among the Cordilleran cultures in the northern Philippines. It primarily serves as a venue for mee ...
*
Torogan A torogan () is a traditional ancestral house built by the Maranao people of Lanao, Mindanao, Philippines for the nobility. A torogan was a symbol of high social status. Such a residence was once a home to a sultan or ''datu'' in the Maranao co ...
*
Bahay Kubo The ''bahay kubo'', also known as ''payag'' (Nipon) in the Visayan languages and, is a type of stilt house indigenous to the Philippines. It often serves as an icon of Philippine culture. The house is exclusive to the lowland population of ...
*
Mỹ Sơn Mỹ Sơn () is a cluster of abandoned and partially ruined Hindu temples in central Vietnam, constructed between the 4th and the 14th century by the Kings of Champa, an Indianized kingdom of the Cham people. The temples are dedicated to the wor ...
*
Angkor Wat Angkor Wat (; km, អង្គរវត្ត, "City/Capital of Temples") is a temple complex in Cambodia and is the largest religious monument in the world, on a site measuring . Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the g ...
*
Prambanan Prambanan ( id, Candi Prambanan, jv, ꦫꦫꦗꦺꦴꦁꦒꦿꦁ, Rara Jonggrang) is a 9th-century Hindu temple compound in Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, dedicated to the Trimūrti, the expression of God as the Creator (Brahma), the P ...


References

{{coord missing, Philippines Archaeological sites in the Philippines Culture of Batanes Houses in the Philippines National Cultural Treasures of the Philippines 01