The Previous Discovery Of Homo Luzonensis Was Partly Funded By The University Of The Philippines
DISCOVERY OF HOMO LUZONENSIS – The discovery of unknown human species that lived 50,000 to 67,000 years ago in Luzon was funded partly by the University of the Philippines.
Archaelogist Armand Salvador Mijares revealed the processes and trails he and his team went through to finally end up with the success they have today.
Armand also claimed that he did not start off as an arhaelogist. He did his master’s thesis in Anthropology and worked with Mangyan communities in Mindoro back in the days.
He worked as a teacher in Manila for a while was eventually filed. Saying he was not renewed.
This is based on an article from CNN. It was also revealed during his conversation with the CNN staff that he looked for work elsewhere.
He landed a job in researcher position at the National Museum in 1994 while he was in his 20’s and he worked there until 2006.
The National Museum had already been exploring the dirt and soils of Callao Cave in 1979 to 1981. Armand back in 1990’s has already digging somewhere close.
22 years later, Armand would be digging into the same cave. He revealed some history about the excavation in his statement:
“After doing my diploma in archaeology here ASP, I was the first student here in 1996, I was able to get a Fullbright Scholarship to study in the U.S., so for that, before I went to the U.S., I dug my first site in Peñablanca where Callao Cave is called Minori Cave.”
Urged by his adviser, Peter Bellwood, Armand started digging in the actual site in 2003. After only 1.3 meters of digging into the cave, he already found evidence of human activity from around 25,000 to 26,000 years ago.
After this, the Filipino archaeologist kept on putting work into his Callao Cave excavation. He told CNN about how difficult the work was.
He said that the previous excavation took him and his team six weeks. Most excavations only take two. And he said it involved consistent digging.
Preparing for it was just as difficult too, as he says. He had to acquire permits from Department of Environment and Natural Resources or DENR and the local governor’s office.
The funding wasn’t cheap too. Armand and his team of researchers had to get a grant for excavation that may have costed up to almost 1 million pesos!
That is all there is to it for now, we’ll post updates as soon as we got them!