The Marriage of the Sky and the Sea: Visayan Creation Myths

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The Marriage of the Sky and the Sea: Visayan Creation Myths

The Marriage of the Sky and the Sea: Visayan Creation Myths

The earliest settlements in the Visayan Islands of the Philippines, to the southernmost islands of Luzon and to the northern and eastern parts of Mindanao, are dated from c. 6,000 to 30,000 BC. Therefore, the Visayans was probably the oldest, as well as the largest ethnic group in the Philippines, numbering at around 33 million as of 2010. The earliest notable written account on the creation myths of the Visayans is told by navigator Miguel de Lopez Legazpi in 1576. Francisco Ignacio Alcina, a Jesuit missionary and historian, also wrote a summary of the creation myth in his Historia de las islas e indios de Bisayas in 1668.

Although there are different versions of the Visayan creation myth, they are similar in characters, conflicts and resolutions. The way the story was narrated and its different subsequent retellings strongly portray the common experience of the people. The creation myth of the Visayans not only tells the story of how the world was created and how humanity came into existence, thus effectively describing how the Visayans view the world and their origins, it also describes the first death, war, social classes, and race.

Map of the Philippines showing the location of Visayan Islands

Map of the Philippines showing the location of Visayan Islands. (SEAV/CC BY-SA 3.0)


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