<P> The custom of Jar Burial, which ranges from Sri Lanka, to the Plain of Jars, in Laos, to Japan, also was practiced in the Tabon caves . A spectacular example of a secondary burial jar is owned by the National Museum, a National Treasure, with a jar lid topped with two figures, one the deceased, arms crossed, hands touching the shoulders, the other a steersman, both seated in a proa, with only the mast missing from the piece . Secondary burial was practiced across all the islands of the Philippines during this period, with the bones reburied, some in the burial jars . Seventy - eight earthenware vessels were recovered from the Manunggul cave, Palawan, specifically for burial . </P> <P> There have been many models of early human migration to the Philippines . Since H. Otley Beyer first proposed his wave migration theory, numerous scholars have approached the question of how, when and why humans first came to the Philippines . The question of whether the first humans arrived from the south (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei as suggested by Beyer) or from the north (via Taiwan as suggested by the Austronesian theory) has been a subject of heated debate for decades . As new discoveries come to light, past hypotheses are reevaluated and new theories constructed . </P> <P> The first, and most widely known theory of the prehistoric peopling of the Philippines is that of H. Otley Beyer, founder of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines . According to Dr. Beyer, the ancestors of the Filipinos came to the islands first via land bridges which would occur during times when the sea level was low, and then later in seagoing vessels such as the balangay . Thus he differentiated these ancestors as arriving in different "waves of migration", as follows: </P> <Dl> <Dd> <Ol> <Li> "Dawn Man", a cave - man type who was similar to Java man, Peking Man, and other Asian homo erectus of 250,000 years ago . </Li> <Li> The aboriginal pygmy group, the Negritos, who arrived between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago . </Li> <Li> The seafaring tool - using Indonesian group who arrived about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago and were the first immigrants to reach the Philippines by sea . </Li> <Li> The seafaring, more civilized Malays who brought the Iron age culture and were the real colonizers and dominant cultural group in the pre-Hispanic Philippines . </Li> </Ol> </Dd> </Dl>

What is the land bridges theory in the philippines