Memoirs, accounts, photographs and publications have often highlighted a magnificent description of the Ifugao terraces. The “Ifugao rice terraces” was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. These rice terraces were built by their ancestors for several generations and such history is recorded in their rice rituals and ancestor worship. Rice terraces are primary properties because these are the most productive of all properties. In the past, rice production was linked to ritualized headtaking practiced in the Cordilleras. Headtaking was practiced to confer with the mystical worlds of ancestral spirits and gain benefits of high rice yield. As the succeeding generations of Igorots stopped practicing this, some of the stories of successful headtaking activities remained invoked in present day rituals.
Text: Prof. Dr. Leah Abayao