Earliest known hominin activity in the Philippines by 709 thousand years ago

Abstract

Over 60 years ago, stone tools and remains of megafauna were discovered on the Southeast Asian islands of Flores, Sulawesi and Luzon, and a Middle Pleistocene colonization by Homo erectus was initially proposed to have occurred on these islands. However, until the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003, claims of the presence of archaic hominins on Wallacean islands were hypothetical owing to the absence of in situ fossils and/or stone artefacts that were excavated from well-documented stratigraphic contexts, or because secure numerical dating methods of these sites were lacking. As a consequence, these claims were generally treated with scepticism . Here we describe the results of recent excavations at Kalinga in the Cagayan Valley of northern Luzon in the Philippines that have yielded 57 stone tools associated with an almost-complete disarticulated skeleton of Rhinoceros philippinensis, which shows clear signs of butchery, together with other fossil fauna remains attributed to stegodon, Philippine brown deer, freshwater turtle and monitor lizard. All finds originate from a clay-rich bone bed that was dated to between 777 and 631 thousand years ago using electron-spin resonance methods that were applied to tooth enamel and fluvial quartz. This evidence pushes back the proven period of colonization of the Philippines by hundreds of thousands of years, and furthermore suggests that early overseas dispersal in Island South East Asia by premodern hominins took place several times during the Early and Middle Pleistocene stages. The Philippines therefore may have had a central role in southward movements into Wallacea, not only of Pleistocene megafauna , but also of archaic hominins.

Fladmark + 40: What Have We Learned about a Potential Pacific Coast Peopling of the Americas?

“…When and where systematic seafaring originated remains unknown. There is limited evidence for the crossing of short marine straits by archaic members of our genus (probably Homo erectus ), including the colonization of Flores, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian islands 700,000–1,000,000 years ago (Brown et al 2004; Ingicco et al 2018; Morwood et al 2004). However, the fact that only Homo sapiens appears to have been capable of reaching the islands of Wallacea and greater Australia, possibly as early as 60,000 ± 5,000 years ago (see Clarkson et al 2017), suggests that seafaring by archaic hominins was limited in nature, both technologically and geographically.…”

Previously unknown human species found in Asia raises questions about early hominin dispersals from Africa

“…The correlation properties of the radiation can be determined from the variation in the intensity measured by either of the detectors as a function of the time delay. A perfect interference pattern (one that is at its maximum visibility) is observed if the intensity oscillates between a certain maximum H. luzonensis are both descendants of H. erectus populations that evolved separately on their respective islands for hundreds of thousands of years, if not more 13,14 . However, explaining the many similarities that H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis share with early Homo species and australopiths as independently acquired reversals to a more ancestral-like hominin anatomy, owing to evolution in isolated island settings, seems like a stretch of coincidence too far 15 .…”

A ‘Denisovan’ genetic history of recent human evolution

“…This raises the distinct possibility that the introgression events recorded in the Philippines populations took place east of Wallace's Line, and if so, that perhaps multiple populations of Denisovans were present on other islands in the area. An early hominid presence on the Philippines is supported by the finding of a 70 ka fossil hominid finger bone in Callao Cave 16 , well before AMH arrival in the area 3 , while butchered rhino bones indicate hominid presence as early as 700 ka 17 .…”