page_title: Tasaday
section_title: Introduction of the Tasaday
hierarchical_section_title: Tasaday / Background / Introduction of the Tasaday
context_page_description: The Tasaday are an Philippine indigenous people of the Lake Sebu area in Mindanao. They are considered to belong to the Lumad group, along with the other indigenous groups on the island. They attracted widespread media attention in 1971, when a journalist of the Manila Associated Press bureau chief reported their discovery, amid apparent "Stone Age" technology and in complete isolation from the rest of Philippine society. They again attracted attention in the 1980s when some accused the Tasaday living in the jungle and speaking in their dialect as being part of an elaborate hoax, and doubt was raised about their isolation and even about being a separate ethnic group. Further research has tended to support their being a tribe that was isolated until 1971 and that lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. The Tasaday language is distinct from that of neighbouring tribes, and linguists believe it probably split from the adjacent Manobo languages 200 years ago.
context_section_description: Elizalde brought the Tasaday to the attention of PANAMIN, which funded all efforts to find, visit, and study the Tasaday. With a small group including Elizalde's bodyguard, helicopter pilot, a doctor, a 19-year-old Yale student named Edith Terry, and local tribesmen for interpreting attempts, Elizalde met the Tasaday in an arranged clearing at the edge of the forest in June 1971.
  In March 1972, another meeting occurred between the Tasaday, Elizalde, and members of the press and media including the Associated Press and the National Geographic Society, this time at the Tasaday's secluded cave home site. This meeting was popularly reported  by Kenneth MacLeish in the August 1972 issue of National Geographic, which featured on its cover a photograph by photojournalist John Launois of a Tasaday boy climbing vines.
  Since these first meetings and reports, the group was subject to a great deal of further publicity, including a National Geographic documentary, The Last Tribes of Mindanao (shown December 1, 1972). Visitors included Charles A. Lindbergh and Gina Lollobrigida.
caption: Tasadays riding on a motorbike.
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