Treasure Hunting Activities

When I was still in college, I wrote about treasure hunting practices and beliefs, and the piece appeared in the Young Blood column of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. More than eight years since, I found out that some people here in Kulaman Plateau are still as crazy about finding the purportedly lost treasures of General Yamashita. One expedition even has a backhoe at its disposal. Big time! The group must have a wealthy financer.

Let me be blunt about it: I consider such an undertaking foolish, something reasonable people should not do if they care about the future of their family. It’s a big waste of time, money, and even dignity. There is no clear evidence that the Japanese set foot in these boondocks during World War II. Since pre-Spanish time, there was no one here but the indigenous Dulangan Manobo. Outsiders, mostly Ilonggos and Ilocanos, only started to flock here in 1960s and 1970s.

 Treasure hunters use a backhoe to dig a hole. Most diggers in Kulaman
Plateau use shovels, so this particular group probably has a wealthy 
financer. The hole is covered with tarpaulin to hold off gossipmongers.
I’m sorry for the blurry and badly angled photo; I have to take this
covertly because a man in civilian clothes seemed
to be guarding the hole when I passed by.

One illogical thing most of these hunters believe is that the treasure moves. They say that one taboo committed by anyone around could be enough for the chest of gold bars to change location. So the diggers speak in hushed codes, don’t let strangers take a peek at the hole, and walk on tiptoe. OK, I just made up the last one. My point is that excavation is almost like a holy ritual for these people—no dirty jokes and rum drinking at the site. If they know I’m writing this and making light of their life-changing endeavor, they would accuse me of putting a jinx on them. Heck, some of these people might even be homicidal because they’re putting all their resources on the excavation, so I’m not going to specify the locations of existing treasure hunting activities.

Perhaps the only good thing these treasure hunters contribute is that they sometimes stumble on an entirely different kind of treasure. The narrow entrance to the magnificent White Cave of Kuden was first suspected to be a tunnel dug by fleeing Japanese soldiers. A treasure hunter shoveled the dirt and found an immense underground hall of sparkling speleothems. (I wrote a fictional account of discovery in another post.) The clay burial jars of Maitum, Sarangani Province, were also discovered by men searching for treasures in a cave.

My brother and his classmate pose near abandoned holes

by treasure hunters at the top of Ilyan Hill, considered mystical

by the Dulangan Manobo. Many hunters believe that yellow

Chinese bamboos indicate a treasure’s location.

In the same manner, hunters can also destroy valuable archaeological artifacts. In a cave in the village of Tacupis, it is said that there was once a bas-relief of a woman on its wall, and treasure hunters broke the figure to see if the woman had golden internal organs. Kulaman Plateau, having a Karstic topography, is a land of a hundred caves, and who knows what the treasure hunters have been digging or smashing inside them for the past few decades.

And writing this has made me thinking: Perhaps there should be a municipal ordinance banning any form of excavation or at least requiring excavations to seek a permit first. This way, treasure hunters could dig in their backyard or even inside their house to their hearts’ content but caves and other natural treasures—Kulaman’s true treasures—could be protected.