Mount Pinatubo - Cultural History

Cultural History

The word pinatubo could mean a fertile place where one can make crops grow or could mean "made to grow" in Tagalog and Sambal, which may suggest a knowledge of its previous eruption in about 1500 AD. There is a local oral tradition that is suggestive of a folk memory of earlier large eruptions; ancient legend tells of Bacobaco, the terrible spirit of the sea, who could metamorphose into a huge turtle and who threw fire from his mouth. When being chased by the spirit hunters, Bacobaco fled to the mountain and dug a great hole in its summit showering the surrounding land with rock, mud, dust and fire for three days; howling so loudly that the earth shook.

Read more about this topic:  Mount Pinatubo

Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or history:

    The rumor of a great city goes out beyond its borders, to all the latitudes of the known earth. The city becomes an emblem in remote minds; apart from the tangible export of goods and men, it exerts its cultural instrumentality in a thousand phases.
    In New York City, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)