Luzon is the largest and most populous island of the Philippines, home to Manila and to the northern Cordillera Central mountain range, whose stone rice terraces at Banaue and Ifugao are a UNESCO World Heritage site built by the ancestors of today's Cordilleran peoples. Collectively grouped as Igorot, a term originally applied by outsiders and since reclaimed, these peoples, among them the Ifugao, Bontoc, Kankanaey and Ibaloi, maintain traditional religions centered on Kabunian, a sky deity and culture hero credited with teaching agriculture and ritual, and on the anito, ancestral and nature spirits addressed through the mumbaki, ritual specialists who preside over harvest rites, healing and the elaborate Ifugao funeral. Lowland Luzon, by contrast, was thoroughly Christianized under three centuries of Spanish rule, so the island holds one of Southeast Asia's largest concentrations of Roman Catholics alongside the highland traditions the lowlands never fully reached.
Facts
Geography
LatitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim. LongitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim. Modern AreaLuzon, the largest island of the Philippines, including the northern Cordillera Central mountain range. 2 Traditions
Principal Religious TraditionsThe Igorot traditional religion of the Cordillera peoples, centered on the sky deity Kabunian and on the anito, ancestral and nature spirits addressed by mumbaki ritual specialists; and Roman Catholicism, dominant in the lowlands since Spanish colonization. 2 Sacred and Liturgical LanguagesThe Cordilleran languages, among them Ifugao, Bontoc, Kankanaey and Ibaloi; Filipino and English as national languages; Spanish, in the historical liturgy of the lowland church. 2 Learn More
The Terraces at Banaue and the Songs Kept to Farm Them By
The stone walled rice terraces the Ifugao carved into the Cordillera slopes over centuries, radiating outward from the town of Banaue, were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995 under the name the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, recognition of both the engineering, an irrigation system carrying mountain water down through thousands of stepped fields, and of the living agricultural religion still bound up with maintaining them. Rice cultivation in Ifugao practice is not a secular technical matter set apart from Kabunian and the anito, planting, harvest and the terraces' upkeep are accompanied by ritual addressed to both.
Central to that ritual life is the hudhud, a chanted narrative tradition performed by older women during harvest and at funerals, recounting ancestral heroes and genealogies across sung episodes that can run for days. UNESCO recognized the hudhud in its own right in 2001, among the first works proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, citing a decline in the number of practitioners able to perform it in full as the tradition's younger generations moved toward wage labor and formal schooling, a documented loss set against the terraces' own continued, if also pressured, survival.
Luzon
Filter Results1 entry
Connections
Associated With
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Modern Area
Source GeoNames: GeoNames search for Luzon
Originated Here
Source Igorot (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Same As
Also in Geography Atlas: the same subject.
Used In
Also in Language Atlas: which uses this subject.
Also in Language Atlas: which uses this subject.
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source 2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source GeoNames: GeoNames search for Luzon
GeoNamesModern Area: Philippines, Search result for LuzonQuote, Modern Area: Philippines, Search result for Luzon
16.0 121.0 Philippines , island
Igorot (Wikipedia)
Originated Here: Igorot, LeadQuote, Originated Here: Igorot, Lead
The indigenous peoples of the Cordillera in northern Luzon, Philippines, often referred to by the exonym Igorot people, or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples, are an ethnic group composed of 11 main ethnolinguistic groups whose domains are in the Cordillera Mountain Range, altogether numbering about 1.8 million people in the early 21st century.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.