A recent discovery of a highly advanced maritime society thriving across the Philippine archipelago over 35,000 years ago should not be dismissed as merely an archaeological curiosity. It is, in fact, a quiet bombshell in the ongoing battle over China’s sweeping “historical rights” claims in the West Philippine Sea.

The findings suggest that ancient Filipinos were not just coastal foragers—they were seasoned navigators and skilled deep-sea fishers, active thousands of years before the earliest Chinese maritime records. This challenges the narrative that China has some kind of primordial entitlement to the South China Sea, a notion already rejected by the 2016 arbitral ruling.

The research highlights that early inhabitants of the Philippines possessed complex tool-making abilities and adapted seamlessly to diverse island environments. This points to long-standing knowledge of marine navigation and resource extraction—behaviors aligned with territorial use and occupation under both anthropological and legal perspectives.

China’s claim to “historical rights” often hinges on records from the Ming dynasty or earlier, but these new archaeological insights place advanced Philippine maritime culture tens of thousands of years earlier. If history is a basis for ownership, then the Philippines’ ancestral connection to the sea vastly predates China’s presence in these waters.

More than just a historical correction, this is a powerful narrative weapon. It reaffirms what Filipino fishers have always known: these waters are not only economically vital—they are part of a legacy that runs deeper than colonial maps and nine-dash lines.

The West Philippine Sea is not just a flashpoint of modern geopolitics. It is our ancestral seaway.