28/09/2026
'BAYAD NA KO BOSS'
Back when people here were sailing wooden boats, trading gold and doing business without banks, somebody had a debt problem.
The Laguna Copperplate Inscription, dated 900 CE, is the oldest known calendar-dated document found in the Philippines. What survived?
Not a poem or a royal proclamation or a glorious epic about kings and gods and war.
It's resibo. A debt obligation, involving gold, recorded as cleared.
Somebody already knew to get it in writing.
The copperplate was found in Lumban, Laguna. By a man dredging sand from the Lumbang River decades ago.
Today, Lumban unveiled a marker honoring the find and the civilization it revealed.
📸 National Museum
