Sorry Ian, but i'm with Ron on this one. Sure, Cato is pretty much all we have to work with and frankly i don't know what he's gotten right and what he's gotten wrong. All of it, some of it, none of it? I do think to is fair to use Cato as our guide, it being pretty much all we have published to go on, but you act as if being published adds automatic credibility and respectability to his ideas. Correct me if i am wrong, but Moro Sword isn't some academic treatise that has been tested by an academic peer group in some major university. What was Cato's background beyond his own collecting interest (honestly, i'm asking, i don't really know). Obviously this work was approved by his publisher, Graham Brash, but that doesn't mean they fact checked his work carefully, something that would be very difficult to do given the subject and the lack of other written works on the topic. I don't quite see why you place so much importance on the fact that this is the only published work on the subject and so little importance on the testimony of native Filipino collectors who dismiss Cato. How can you dismiss them solely on the fact that they have never published their own thoughts and theories. Really, anyone can publish a book these days. That doesn't make those books all worth reading.
Ron IS putting his theory out there for discussion right here in our forum. I find quite a bit of what he has to say sound. I don't think we should shut down the discussion simply because there re no published works to support his theories.
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