ANCIENT CAVE DWELLERS OF BATWAAN, MASBATE, 
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 
By Warren D. Smith 
Head, Department of Geology, University of Oregon; and Acting Chief, 
Division of Mines, Bureau of Science 
FIVE PLATES AND TWO TEXT FIGURES 
INTRODUCTION 
On a recent trip to inspect the mines of the Aroroy district 
of Masbate, a large triangular and forked island just south of 
the southeast end of Luzon, the writer had the opportunity to 
visit some ancient cave-dwellings in the interior of that island 
which was on the whole a most interesting experience. He was 
told of the existence of these caves by Mr. Paul Schwab, an 
American prospector, who has lived in that district since 1905. 
The caves were shown to Mr. Schwab by a Filipino who harvests 
rice in Batwaan Valley each year. It is reported that a 
Mr. Wilson, a lawyer of Masbate, who has some agricultural 
interests in the interior, had visited these caves or similar ones 
and had brought away some relics, but the writer has been unable 
to learn anything about his finds and, as far as is known, noth- 
ing about them has heretofore been published. 
In the preparation of this article the writer has consulted 
Prof. H. 0. Beyer, professor of anthropology in the University 
of the Philippines, but the author alone is responsible for the 
statements herein. No one has as yet made an exhaustive study 
of the caves or the materials found there and the writer wishes 
merely to place on record the information he now has, as a 
preliminary contribution to further study of these and other 
Philippine caves. Similar burial caves have been noted in other 
parts of the Archipelago, but aside from some notes by the 
traveler Jagor, 1 with reference to some caves on the coast of 
Samar and Leyte, with Virchow’s important appendix, little or 
nothing has been written about prehistoric peoples in the Philip- 
pines, and to the writer’s knowledge this is the first description 
of cave dwellings in the Philippines. Many stories and reports 
'Jagor, Fedor, Viajes por Filipinas. Madrid (1875). This is a trans- 
lation from the German. 
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