Emano welcomes Senate probe on prehistoric site

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY — Mayor Vicente Emano welcomed any Senate investigation into the reported "desecration" of the prehistoric Huluga site here which has yielded, among other artifacts, the skeletal remains of a man dating back to 377 A.D.

Emano said in a radio interview Wednesday night that he is also willing to expropriate the site if the city government has the money.

This was in answer to the challenge of Bencyrus Ellorin, convenor of the Heritage Conservation Advocates (HCA), for City Hall to follow the example of Butuan City by purchasing the Huluga site and preserving it.

"They should do what the Butuan City government did to preserve and protect the balangays and other historical sites in the city," Ellorin earlier told The STAR.

The Butuan City government had expropriated and purchased some areas of historical value following the discovery of the famous balangays, the boats used by early Filipinos in the Caraga region.

The discovery of the balangays has bolstered Butuan City’s claim that the first Mass in the country was held there and not on Limasawa Island as Philippine history books have it.

Emano, however, expressed doubts about such a Senate inquiry, citing the investigation into the July 27 mutiny which he said just quizzed the mutineers on their personal backgrounds instead of focusing on their grievances.

"It was no longer in aid of legislation but in aid of re-election," he said.

Meanwhile, the office of the city legal officer said it will not pay even a single centavo nor the P50,000 fine (not P50 million as erroneously reported earlier) which the Environmental Management Bureau in Northern Mindanao (EMB-Region 10) has imposed on City Hall for allegedly desecrating and destroying the Huluga site in Sitio Taguanao, Barangay Indahag.

Lawyer Mart Damian Maandig, assistant city legal officer, said they would file a motion questioning the EMB’s ruling within 15 days, arguing that the city government’s road and bridge construction project has not destroyed the Huluga site.

The Huluga site, where early Filipinos purportedly lived, has yielded artifacts dating back to 370 AD. It was said to be occupied in the early part of the Neolithic period between 5000 B and 1000 B up to the Metal Age, and between 500 B and 500 A.D.

The National Museum has found human skeletal remains, a boat-shaped coffin, broken pieces of earthenware, stone and metal tools, wild boar tusks and a female skull in the area in 1970 and 1971.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California found out that the human remains belonged to a man who lived in the Huluga site in 377 A.D. after conducting racemization dating tests on the fragments sent by the National Museum.

Surface scans on the Huluga site made by local historians from March 4 to May 11, 2001 yielded prehistoric potsherds and volcanic obsidian flakes or stone tools.