TICAO Island is small; it is a part of Masbate, a huge island that is almost at the center of the Philippine archipelago.

Ticao, running the length of 334 kilometers, is composed of four municipalities: Batuan, San Fernando, San Jacinto and Monreal. The last town is the youngest in terms of being founded as town and also the least developed. But if recent developments are a gauge, this small town may become the most popular of the sites on the island.

Months back, a Bikolano anthropologist based in the University of the Philippines was summoned by her cousin to go to Ticao. A huge flat stone was being examined for what looked like inscriptions, the shape of which resembled the pre-Spanish baybayin or syllabary. Aside from that slab, there was another smaller stone, also containing inscriptions.

Dr. Francisco Datar, the anthropologist, grew up in Ticao and the discovery was not only of scientific importance to him but of sentimental value as well. Ticaonons or Tigaonons, as they call themselves, are strongly emotional when it comes to the island or the towns on the islands. In Facebooks and in social networks, photographs of the beautiful beaches, coves and caves on the island are posted. The comments, particularly those who are no longer residing in Ticao, are always of deep longing. The entire island is described invariably as mysterious, steeped in lore and legend. The “discovery” or rediscovery of the stones, now called singly as “Ticao Stone” distances the place from the rest of the country but also locates itself distinctly.

Having remained a poor cousin for a long time to the provinces of mainland, Bikol, this island on one of the poorest provinces in the country is getting its name burnished.

Ticao itself has lately been gaining a lovely reputation. A bowl of manta ray off the coast of San Jacinto has been linked astutely by tour guides to the butanding in Donsol. The Sorsogon phenomenon itself is shown on brochures swimming around the blue space that ends with the majesty of Mayon Volcano. Along the way of one’s Internet journey, one encounters the pili nut and the sili, serving as shorthand of the exotica called Kabikolan. A stone is about to take its place among those symbols.

The flat stone was there already for some 10 years. It was, as the story goes, being used as doormat to a classroom. It was only in June last year that people were alerted to the carvings on the surface of the big stone. At a certain point, the big stone was mounted on a pedestal to serve as decoration inside the school. Then the First Ticao Stone Conference was held in the town of Monreal, with social scientists coming all the way from Manila and some parts of the region.

The Ticao Stone did something to the centrality of knowledge in this republic. The first know-how was emanating from the local. The “native” was having its small victories. The local government recognized the importance of the two stones, and the people became involved in the investigation of the Ticao Stone.

Outside of the Philippines and even within, experts and other social scientists began to be engaged in debate although they had not even seen the artifacts. Some declared the found as “hoax” without any cursory examination of the two pieces.

The media came into the picture, with GMA 7 and Howie Severino keenly at the helm, traveling to the island of Ticao and talking with local cultural leaders and workers. One of these key informants was Dr. Roger Lim, a medical practitioner, artist, cultural leader who is also into archaeology. For the first time, the world saw Ticao not as an impoverished island but one that was in the word of Lim, a “Paraiso Arkeologo,” an archeological paradise. Scratch the surface of a ground and shards come out. Pots are easily dug from farm territories revealing the rich contact the island and its inhabitants had in the past.

The entire Masbate, including Ticao and Burias, were in the 16th and 17th centuries, according to historians, in contact with seafaring traders. Gallant boats were being constructed in the seaside villages of Ticao. The town of San Jacinto, itself, served as a station for the galleons coming from Acapulco.

The island of Ticao, however, and the greater island of the Philippines were not ready to confront the fact or fiction borne by the artifacts that would be the first specimen for the syllabary being inscribed on stone. If proven to be authentic, the history of literacy and civilization would be vastly changed. Ticao would not be beautiful merely but also sophisticated, literary and literate.

The greater lesson though is not about the authenticity of the Ticao Stone but in this continuing desire of a group of people forever searching for any marker of identities. The civilizing institutions of the colonial forces, even in the post-modern world, can never be the source of our identifying marks. True, the conjectural, as Said puts it, is as valuable as the essential, but it is easier to embrace, for an island and its people, for an island and its democracy, a label of a nation that is closer to what is perceived as the essence than a confluence of influences and shifts.

On February 10, 2012, at the Ateneo de Naga, under the administration of its new president, Fr. Primitivo Viray, SJ, the Second Batong Ticao/Ticao Stone conference was held with social scientists from the University of the Philippines and the National Museum coming together to discuss them. And once more initiate the search for, at least, the Bikolano identities, if not those of the Filipino.