The First to Circumnavigate the World May Have Been a Cebuano Seafarer

The First to Circumnavigate the World May Have Been a Cebuano Seafarer argues that Filipino seafaring traditions may trace back to Austronesian maritime expansion across the Pacific and Indian oceans. The article links modern Filipino hospitality crews and ship officers to early migrations, citing evidence that people from Taiwan sailed between 3,000 and 2,500 BCE to the region now known as the Philippines. It further claims descendants reached Easter Islands by 800–1200 CE and settled in Madagascar between 500–800 CE, with possible movement to South America around 1100 CE. The piece adds a later episode involving “Manilamen,” Filipino sailors who, between 1763 and 1765, fled brutal forced labor on the Manila-Acapulco Galleon by jumping ship in the Gulf of Mexico and settling in Louisiana’s Bayou Saint Malo in what is now St. Bernard Parish. It proposes that Enrique de Malacca, recorded as enslaved by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, fits the same seafaring lineage. The article breaks off before explaining further details.