The sugar industry of the Philippines has had a colorful and dramatic history. The industry started some two to four thousand years before the Christian era where vessels from the Celebes brought sugarcane cuttings to Mindanao. Eventually, these plants spread further north to the Visayan islands and Luzon, such that by the time of the European contact with the archipelago early in the sixteenth century, sugarcane plants could be found in various localities where the soil was tilled by the native inhabitants.