Tourist attraction in Peñablanca, Philippines
Address: Peñablanca, Cagayan
Entrance: 1
Callao Cave is one of the limestone caves located in the municipality of Peñablanca, Cagayan province, in the Philippines. The seven-chamber show cave is one of 300 caves that dot the area and the best known natural tourist attractions of the province. The town is named as Peñablanca (Spanish for white rocks) for the presence of white limestone rocks in the area. Callao Cave is located in the Barangays of Magdalo and Quibal in Peñablanca about 24 km (15 mi) northeast of Tuguegarao City, the capital of the Province of Cagayan.
Callao and the other caves are situated in the western foothills of the Northern Sierra Madre Mountains of the Philippines. They are situated within the Peñablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape, which stretches from the caves to the eastern shores of Peñablanca town of the Pacific Ocean.
Callao Cave was visited by American Governor-General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. in 1932 who under his term created the National Park system of the country with the passing of Act no. 3195 in 1932.[4] Callao Cave was one of the earliest national parks of the country when it was established on July 16, 1935 by Proclamation no. 827. The Callao Cave National Park encompassed an area of 192 hectares (470 acres) of land.[5] With the passing of the NIPAS Act of 1992 that revamped the protected areas of the country, the Callao National Park was reclassified but enlarged by Proclamation no. 416 on June 29, 1994. The protected area was reestablished as the Peñablanca Protected Landscape.
In 2003 upon the recommendation of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Philippines) (DENR), the protected area was further enlarged to include certain parcels of land in the public domain. Proclamation 416 no. was amended by Proclamation no. 484, signed by President Arroyo on October 6, 2003. The law enlarged the park to 118,781.58 hectares (293,515.7 acres) and renamed as the Peñablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape (PPLS).[6]
The protected area is particularly described as bounded on the North and East of Public Forest under FR-1011 per Proclamation No. 584 dated July 8, 1940; on the South by Callao Reforestation Project and on the West by Block I, Alienable and Disposable of Cagayan Project No. 13-C, Certified on February 27, 1923.[7]
Callao man refers to fossilized remains discovered inside Callao Cave in 2007 by Armand Salvador Mijares. Specifically, the find consisted of a single 61 mm (2.4 in) metatarsal which, when dated using uranium series ablation, was found to be at least about 67,000 years old. If definitively proven to be remains of Homo sapiens, it would antedate the 47,000-year-old remains of Tabon Man to become the earliest human remains known in the Philippines, and one of the oldest human remains in the Asia Pacific. It has been noted by researchers that Callao Man was probably under four feet tall. Researchers also believe that Aetas, mountain dwellers today on Luzon Island, could be descendants of the Callao Man.
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