Mindanao! Mountains and molars

A. Paulita Roa

ONCE again, Mindanao is in the national limelight and this time it is celebratory for a famous son won the presidential elections with a wide margin over his opponents. What made the recent elections a history one is that Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte is the first elected President who hails from Mindanao. He is the answer to our long held dream to have someone from this island who will sit in Malacanang and bring our voice and aspirations to national attention.

When Kagay-anon historian Filomeno M. Bautista published his book, “Glimpses of Mindanao, The Land of Promise” in the 1930s, little did he know that he unwittingly gave a slogan to the island as the land of promise. For many decades, this was our brand. However, aside from this slogan, not many of us are well informed about Mindanao except the barest of facts. Like, the island is located in southern Philippines, that it is the second largest island in the archipelago and the third star in our national flag represents Mindanao. And let me add this fact that it is the home of the Lumads, Muslims and Christians. But there are more interesting facts that we need to know about Mindanao.

Do you know that Mindanao is composed of two geographic unitis–the large main island and the island groups of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-tawi? That aside from these, there are also other 2,000 islands and islets and of these, 1,100 are named and 116 have land areas not exceeding over a square mile? Around 34 percent of our country’s total land surface is located in Mindanao.

Our island was formed millions of years ago. There was a time when the sea covered the higher grounds in many parts of the world including Mindanao. This was during the interglacial period which was about 1,640,000 years ago. In 2010, I was with the Northern Mindanao Archaeology team of the Archaeological Studies Program from UP Diliman that excavated on a hill in Sitio Cota, Jasaan. As we dug deeper in our trenches, we found big corals and sea shells there. The plausible explanation is that said hill was under the sea during the interglacial period over a million years ago.

As the sea reached  high mountains, it also created ancient marine terraces that look like big folds on side of the mountains. These can be seen in many parts of the country and in Mindanao, marine terraces are present in Zamboanga and in Cagayan de Oro. The latter can be seen on the western bank of the Cagayan River. These marine terraces are a result of high levels of land cut by sea waves that crashed against the side of the mountains.

There are four prominent mountain ranges in Mindanao and numerous volcanoes. They are the Diwata Range on the eastern coast of the island and it extends from Surigao in the north to Davao in the south. Farther west is the Tago – Apo Range and it is a parallel ridge to Diwata and resulted in the formation of the Agusan – Davao Valley in the middle. The Kalatugan – Kitanglad Range is within the Bukidnon and Lanao areas while the Daguma Range extends near Sarangani Bay and occupies the coastal area of Cotabato and the high places of the Allah Valley. Between those ranges are valleys and volcanoes.

Camiguin Island was formed though a series of volcanic eruptions from the sea floor. It is the only island in the world that has seven active volcanoes. The other active volcanoes that are part of the ranges in Mindanao are Mounts Kalatungan, Butig, Parker, Blik and Kidongan. Mount Malindang is another volcano and it is on the northern area of Zamboanga province and Mount Dansalan is at the core of the Zamboanga Peninsula.

In 1860, Karl Semper, a German naturalist, met a Manobo medicine man from the Agusan River Valley who used as charms two fossilized remains of two stegodon molars. Stegodon belonged to the elephant species that used to roam in Mindanao during the prehistoric period. This was the first time that these kind of specimens were discovered in the Philippines and a scientific study was done on these in 1887. (to be continued)