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| The photo is not mine. Photo courtesy of National Geographic. See the original photo and story here. (Disclaimer: This was not taken in Inopacan) |
When I read the National Geographics story written by Ed Yong, "Meet the Agta, a tribe where a quarter of men have been attacked by giant snakes," the narrative told us of the frequency of occurrence when natives had an encounter with or been attacked by giant snakes.
The time before the westerners came and brought metal and more advanced weapons later to fend themselves, natives were already skilled in hunting and killing these reptiles. But I cannot help but wonder so much about how plenty is many and how giant the biggest snake in the olden days was in our locality.
The one in the photo taken by National Geographic somewhere in Luzon was not the biggest but 3rd as recorded by the researcher then. So it is possibly true the dreaded giant serpentine reptilian creature of olden era Canamocan was truly so so big.
This supports my story that in olden times snakes were so many and so big. So many that native settlers or hunters would surely find shedded off dead skin of snakes or the hinup-akan. The name Inopacan came from the word "hinup-acan" referring to the skins shed off by snakes also known as luno in the local vernacular.
Luno must be significantly found as giant snakes were so many and so big that they called the place the place of hinup-akan, in fact, we have another story of a snake of Barrio Binitinan (now Barangay Guadalupe) aside from the epic giant snake encounter of Inong.
But because Spaniards would always pronounce silently the letter "h" of any word (e.g. hielo, haber, ahora, etc.) that hinup-akan was read and pronounced as Inup-acan then became Inupacan or now Inopacan.
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