Modern humans in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3: palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Great Cave of Niah

Late quaternary turnover of mammals in Borneo: the zooarchaeological record

“…BP, and artefacts and other signs of human activity continued to 14 C 45,900 ± 800 BP outside calibration (Barker et al 2007, Table 1). The palynology of a vertical transect extending 215 cm downwards from these levels indicates that the local environment at Niah went through a series of very rapid and intense changes (Hunt and Rushworth 2005;Hunt et al 2007). No dates have been determined but, by reference to global events, the authors estimate an age *52 ka cal.…”

“…No dates have been determined but, by reference to global events, the authors estimate an age *52 ka cal. BP for the basal pollen sample (=Zone H-1 of Hunt et al 2007). This zone was rich in conifers, dominated by Podocarpus (52%), with Picea, Pinus and Dacrydium also present, sedges Cyperaceae (12%) and some grasses Poaceae (5%), as well as broad-leaved trees including oaks Quercus; this vegetation is consistent with a cooler and drier climate and lowered tree-line.…”

“…The most important mangrove species in H-9 to H-11 is Avicennia, reflecting airfall deposition from nearby mangrove vegetation. Summing up, Hunt et al (2007) concluded that at *52-49 ka cal. BP the margin of the savanna corridor proposed by Bird et al (2005) extended to Niah, and that any forest refugium indicated by other evidence lay further north and/or in the interior uplands where orographic rainfall would have maintained sufficient humidity to support closed forest.…”

The cultural antiquity of rainforests: Human–plant associations during the mid-late Holocene in the interior highlands of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

“…Indeed recent work (e.g. Barker et al, 2007;Hunt et al, 2007Hope, 2009;Summerhayes et al, 2010;Barker and Janowski, 2011;Barton and Denham, 2011) suggests that people may have been exploiting rainforest environments in Southeast Asia and Melanesia for over 50,000 years. This is far removed from previous assumptions e both scientific and popular e that tropical forests were, in the past, pristine environments, relatively untouched by humans (e.g.…”

Mass movements in cave sediments: investigation of a ∼40,000-year-old guano mudflow inside the entrance of the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak, Borneo

“…One difficulty in this respect is that much of the vegetation change throughout the Indonesian-northern Australian region around this time appears to be associated with increased burning and may be the result of human impact rather than climatic change (Kershaw et al 2002). To highlight the uncertainty, Van der Kaars et al (2000) suggested an increasingly wet climate up to 37 ka in eastern Indonesia and the Sahul Shelf, based on palaeoecological data, whereas drier conditions with open woodland/savannah are indicated for the Niah region by palynological (Hunt and Rushworth 2005;Hunt et al 2007) and vertebrate (Cranbrook 2000) evidence.…”