It was situated between the rivers of Himoragat and Tinambac and closer to the sea or bay of San Miguel.” According to Puya, Tinambac was located ‘” to the south of Siruma, north of Calabanga, and east by Goa and Lagonoy in level terrain. Bounded on the north-northeast by the mission of Siruma at about five leagues on the east by the mountains which extend until Caramoan and on the southwest by the town of Calabanga, at a distance of four leagues.įollowing the Spanish system of measurement where one league was equivalent to 4.2 miles, Tinambac therefore was approximately farther from Calabanga by more than 16 miles and from Siruma by more than 20 miles.Ī more detailed geographic data was provided by the Spanish traveler, Adolfo Puya Ruiz who wrote his travel accounts in the province of Camarines Sur in 1887. In 1865 a Franciscan chronicler, Fray Felix de Huerta, the famous Franciscan chronicler of the second half of the nineteenth century, fixed the location of Tinambac:Īt 13 53” 40’ latitude in a plain terrain on the eastern coast of San Miguel Bay at the left side of a river called Looc.
From Tigaon until Tinambac there is nothing but small settlements and the mission of Manguirin toward the west is about 10 leagues away… from Manguirin about 5 leagues until Tinambac….” According to his sketchy geographic reckoning, from Tinambac which was “ in the summit of its slopes or in its northern hillock until Goa toward the east to six leagues…. The earliest detailed geographic description of Tinambac was made by Bishop Domingo Collantes in his report of his Episcopal visitation in 1792. 4354 hectares and 6.04% of the total land mass of the Province of Camarines Sur. This munipality has a land area of 31, 884. It is bounded on the north by the Municipality of Siruma, on the northeast by Pacific Ocean on the west by San Miguel Bay on the east by the Municipalities of Goa and Lagonoy and on the south by Himoragat and Tigman Rivers. The present location of Tinambac is fixed as 13 37” 16” to 14 2’ 15” latitude and 123 16”’ 57” to 123 26’ 30” longitude. Geography does not only define the culture of the inhabitants but likewise plays the decisive role in the economic life of the people. For the reason, the people shaped their history by creative adaptation to the given environment of their respective geography. Their very existence preceded the emergence of the inhabitants of the locality. Since the geography and the peculiar topographic elements of a specific historical setting are relatively constant elements in the historical process, they exert profound impact on the people within a longer duration. Any history which emerges is a given temporal frame and largely defined by the objective forces found in its geographic setting and its prevailing cultural orientation.
History is conceived in the womb of an existing culture.