page_title: Science and technology in the Philippines
section_title: Pre-Colonial Period
hierarchical_section_title: Science and technology in the Philippines / History / Pre-Colonial Period
caption_attribution_description: English: Banaue rice terrace
context_page_description: Science and technology in the Philippines describes scientific and technological progress made by the Philippines and analyses related policy issues. The main agency responsible for managing science and technology is the Department of Science and Technology. There are also sectoral councils for Forestry, Agriculture and Aquaculture, the Metal Industry, Nuclear Research, Food and Nutrition, Health, Meteorology, Volcanology and Seismology.
  Among the men and women who have made contributions to science are Fe del Mundo in the field of pediatrics, Eduardo Quisumbing in plant taxonomy, Gavino Trono in tropical marine phycology and Maria Orosa in the field of food technology.
context_section_description: Even before the colonization by the Spaniards in the Philippine islands, the natives of the archipelago already had practices linked to science and technology. Filipinos were already aware of the medicinal and therapeutic properties of plants and the methods of extracting medicine from herbs. They already had an alphabet, number system, a weighing and measuring system and a calendar. Filipinos were already engaged in farming, shipbuilding, mining and weaving.
  The Laguna Copperplate Inscription shows the use of mathematics in precolonial Philippine societies. A standard system of weights and measures is demonstrated by the use of precise measurement for gold, and familiarity with rudimentary astronomy is shown by fixing the precise day within the month in relation to the phases of the moon.
  Shipbuilding showed geometric thinking and mastery of convexity, concavity, and the proper proportion between ship breadth and length to ensure sailing efficiency. The practice of constructing as much as twelve ships and boats to fit inside each other, not unlike matryoshka dolls containing each other, can be interpreted as large three-dimensional wooden demonstration of sets, subsets, volumes, and ordinality.
  The Banaue Rice Terraces are among the sophisticated products of engineering by pre-Spanish era Filipinos.
caption: The Banaue Rice Terraces
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