Fact #4: The Filipino Race Descended from the Maharlikans Through the Ylayas

4. The later descendants of the Maharlikan race were those "Ylayas" (Isidro Escare Abeto, 1989) in a land called Ophir, from whom King Solomon obtained ships of gold. During that period the Ylayas have already well established their communities after the cataclysmic event that destroyed the Muian civilization.

The next 10,000 years, during and after the last ice age was a survival period for the Maharlikans in view of the last great upheaval they have undergone through, which was followed thereafter by the decrease of the Earth's temperature freezing most part of the hinterlands forcing them to thrive in the caves. It was during that period when waves of succeeding migrants begun to populate the land of Ophir.

It is interesting to acknowledge here the work of a world renowned American anthropologist in the person of Henry Otley Beyer, founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines. Beyer proposed in his Migration Wave Theory that the peopling of the archipelago was a result of migrations in different time periods. The first group Beyer called the “Dawn Man” or cave men type of who, according to his theory, arrived around 250,000 years ago. Beyer was actually referring to the “escaped remnants” of Muian descendants (Maharlikans) who survived the last great upheaval and found refuge in the archipelago. They did not arrive as a result of unintentional wandering in search for food, as Beyer proposed, but rather already been here and aware of its existence as they used to visit the place during the Muian times. This fact supports the Core Population Theory of Felipe Landa Jocano, another known anthropologist of the University of the Philippines who refuted Beyer’s migration theory. Jocano instead did propose that the first people of Southeast Asia (including the Philippines) were products of a long process of evolution and migration. His research indicates that they shared more or less the same culture, beliefs, practices and even similar tools and implements.

The second wave of migrants in Beyer's theory were the so-called “Negritos” who, according to Beyer, came around or between 25,000 to 30,000 years ago. These group fused in their communities and culture with the already established Maharlikan settlements, socialized and intermarried with the Maharlikan people. These migrant people came from the neighboring islands in the south, from Indonesia and Malaysia through land bridges. From that point of origin being in the south, going to north (ilaya meaning "upper part" or "north") to the Maharlikan’s direction of location, the next migrating people (Third Wave A and B, between 6,000 to 500 years ago) did refer to them the ylayas, a term which became prevalent as being referred to the "people of the north".

It has to be noticed here that there was a reversed pattern of migrations, first, from the Maharlikan group going outside, and then from the outside coming to the Maharlikan territory. The explanation was that, these migrating people coming into the land of Maharlika (Ophir) were on the clandestine process of revisiting their true origin as told in their oral traditions. This was true to both the Indonesian's Srivijayan and Majapahit empires, respectively.

The advent and emergence of the Ylayan culture, which was an assimilation of the surviving Maharlikans and foreign migrants (second and third waves) paved way for the revival of the Muian ways through their system of governance, arts, belief, medicine, and in their knowledge of the supernatural. It has to be noted that the people of the Pre-European Philippines were mostly animist (who really did not worship the spirits of nature but rather honored them in a less elaborated rites) have records or books of mystical in nature. These knowledge or abilities traced back from the Muian period.

It should not also be confused that the term ilaya (ylaya) has no connection with the term Malaya, such that of the Malayan Peninsula or Malaysia, which refers to the land far south-west of the then land of Ophir.