Southeast Asian fossil record

Abstract

The hominin fossil record in Southeast Asia comes predominantly from Indonesia. The earliest fossil specimens come from Sangiran and Mojokerto, which may be as old as 1.8 million years. Sangiran fossils show a set of regional characteristics that continue in later specimens from Ngandong. Traits include a long and low cranial shape, receding forehead, sagittal keel, thick and projecting supraorbital torus, and well‐developed nuchal torus. These morphological similarities are also found with coeval specimens from Africa. Within the Indonesian fossil record, encephalization and gracilization are observed, which echo the global trend of human evolution. The chronic and persistent problem of unreliable dates for Asian fossils is slowly being addressed with modern developments in the field. Systematic studies of the fossil specimens from Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan are yet to be conducted. The Southeast Asian fossil record continues to show that the pattern of human evolution is intricate and multilayered.