Early Modern Humans and Morphological Variation in Southeast Asia: Fossil Evidence from Tam Pa Ling, Laos

Abstract

Little is known about the timing of modern human emergence and occupation in Eastern Eurasia. However a rapid migration out of Africa into Southeast Asia by at least 60 ka is supported by archaeological, paleogenetic and paleoanthropological data. Recent discoveries in Laos, a modern human cranium (TPL1) from Tam Pa Ling‘s cave, provided the first evidence for the presence of early modern humans in mainland Southeast Asia by 63-46 ka. In the current study, a complete human mandible representing a second individual, TPL 2, is described using discrete traits and geometric morphometrics with an emphasis on determining its population affinity. The TPL2 mandible has a chin and other discrete traits consistent with early modern humans, but it retains a robust lateral corpus and internal corporal morphology typical of archaic humans across the Old World. The mosaic morphology of TPL2 and the fully modern human morphology of TPL1 suggest that a large range of morphological variation was present in early modern human populations residing in the eastern Eurasia by MIS 3.

Initial micromorphological results from Liang Bua, Flores (Indonesia): Site formation processes and hominin activities at the type locality of Homo floresiensis

“…BP or shortly thereafter. If correct, these data corroborate the presence of modern humans in Island Southeast Asia during the last 40 millennia, as reported for sites in Laos, Borneo, the Philippines, Sulawesi, Timor, Papua New Guinea and Australia (Fox, 1970;Roberts et al, 1990Roberts et al, , 1994Turney et al, 2001;Dizon et al, 2002;Bowler et al, 2003;D etroit et al, 2004;Storm et al, 2005Storm et al, , 2013Barker et al, 2007;Summerhayes et al, 2010;O'Connor et al, 2011;Barker, 2013;Aubert et al, 2014;Allen and O'Connell, 2014;Clarkson et al, 2015;Demeter et al, 2015;Hiscock, 2015;O'Connell and Allen, 2015;O'Connor, 2015).…”

Rethinking the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa

“…The oldest South Asian fossils found, from the Sri Lankan cave of Fa Hien, date to ∼33‐30 ka. In Southeast Asia, the oldest fossils are from the cave of Tam Pa Ling in Laos and date to ∼ 65‐45 ka . This age admits the possibility that Homo sapiens either left Africa earlier than the Upper Paleolithic model suggests or that dispersal was extremely rapid, as hypothesized by coastal dispersal models (Table ).…”

“…Vast areas of Asia have yet to produce any Pleistocene hominin fossils . Sites further east face dating problems and taxonomic ambiguities associated with elements such as teeth and foot bones that are not strongly diagnostic of species . While the relatively well understood Levantine record may provide a null hypothesis for demographic change across a wider area of Southwest Asia, this must be qualified by the atypical ecological features of the Levant as a Mediterranean biome in a region more widely characterized by the particularities of the much larger Saharo‐Arabian biome.…”

Possible Signatures of Hominin Hybridization from the Early Holocene of Southwest China

“…Several researchers have questioned our findings and argued that these fossils instead show affinities to either the Late Pleistocene Upper Cave remains from Zhoukoudian18 or Late Pleistocene/early Holocene crania from mainland Southeast Asia19. A recently described mandible from Tam Pa Ling (TPL2) in nearby Laos has also been described as exhibiting archaic hominin features20, although, they are far less numerous than those seen in the Maludong or Longlin remains1516. The similarly dated TPL1 cranium is evidently modern in its morphology19.…”