Our traditional scheme during the twentieth century was that Homo erectus had thrived on the vast terrain of eastern Asia since the Early Pleistocene, followed by the appearance of a more advanced ...but still primitive form of Homo in China during the mid-Middle Pleistocene. Recent discoveries or (re-)recognitions of other archaic hominins, such as Homo floresiensis from an Indonesian island, Neanderthals and the “Denisovans” from southern Siberia, as well as an extremely robust mandible from Taiwan, now open up a different view. By incorporating these latest discoveries, this paper intends to offer a phylogenetic model of diverse archaic Asian hominins distributed from southern Siberia to Southeast Asia and India. On the basis of this new model, I discuss how paleoanthropological data inform the taxonomic identity of the Denisovans and the admixture event with modern humans.
Human skeletal remains of Late Pleistocene ages are known from both continental and insular regions of East Asia. This paper critically reviews some of these, with the aim of clarifying what is known ...and what remain to be known about fossil evidence regarding the origins, dispersals, and morphological diversification of early modern humans in the area. The focus is on relatively well-dated and/or morphologically informative specimens, including those from Zhiren Cave in South China, Tianyuan Cave and Upper Cave in North China, Salkhit in East Mongolia, and Yamashita-cho Cave I and Minatogawa Fissure in Okinawa, Japan. Although uncertainties still remain in the chronology and morphological status of some of these specimens, this small sample of fossil specimens has the potential to significantly contribute to an understanding of the early population history in East Asia. Compatibility of the available fossil evidence with recent genetic evidence is also discussed.
How Palaeolithic maritime transportation originated and developed is one of the key questions to understand the world-wide dispersal of modern humans that began 70,000-50,000 years ago. However, ...although the earliest evidence of maritime migration to Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) has been intensively studied, succeeding development of Paleolithic maritime activity is poorly understood. Here, we show evidence of deliberate crossing of challenging ocean that occurred 35,000-30,000 years ago in another region of the western Pacific, the Ryukyu Islands of southwestern Japan. Our analysis of satellite-tracked buoys drifting in the actual ocean demonstrated that accidental drift does not explain maritime migration to this 1200 km-long chain of islands, where the local ocean flows have kept the same since the late Pleistocene. Migration to the Ryukyus is difficult because it requires navigation across one of the world's strongest current, the Kuroshio, toward an island that lay invisible beyond the horizon. This suggests that the Palaeolithic island colonization occurred in a wide area of the western Pacific was a result of human's active and continued exploration, backed up by technological advancement.
Major gaps remain in our knowledge of the early history of Homo sapiens in Wallacea. By 70-60 thousand years ago (ka), modern humans appear to have entered this distinct biogeographical zone between ...continental Asia and Australia. Despite this, there are relatively few Late Pleistocene sites attributed to our species in Wallacea. H. sapiens fossil remains are also rare. Previously, only one island in Wallacea (Alor in the southeastern part of the archipelago) had yielded skeletal evidence for pre-Holocene modern humans. Here we report on the first Pleistocene human skeletal remains from the largest Wallacean island, Sulawesi. The recovered elements consist of a nearly complete palate and frontal process of a modern human right maxilla excavated from Leang Bulu Bettue in the southwestern peninsula of the island. Dated by several different methods to between 25 and 16 ka, the maxilla belongs to an elderly individual of unknown age and sex, with small teeth (only M1 to M3 are extant) that exhibit severe occlusal wear and related dental pathologies. The dental wear pattern is unusual. This fragmentary specimen, though largely undiagnostic with regards to morphological affinity, provides the only direct insight we currently have from the fossil record into the identity of the Late Pleistocene people of Sulawesi.
Maritime adaptation was one of the essential factors that enabled modern humans to disperse all over the world. However, geographic distribution of early maritime technology during the Late ...Pleistocene remains unclear. At this time, the Indonesian Archipelago and eastern New Guinea stand as the sole, well-recognized area for secure Pleistocene evidence of repeated ocean crossings and advanced fishing technology. The incomplete archeological records also make it difficult to know whether modern humans could sustain their life on a resource-poor, small oceanic island for extended periods with Paleolithic technology. We here report evidence from a limestone cave site on Okinawa Island, Japan, of successive occupation that extends back to 35,000−30,000 y ago. Well-stratified strata at the Sakitari Cave site yielded a rich assemblage of seashell artifacts, including formally shaped tools, beads, and the world’s oldest fishhooks. These are accompanied by seasonally exploited food residue. The persistent occupation on this relatively small, geographically isolated island, as well as the appearance of Paleolithic sites on nearby islands by 30,000 y ago, suggest wider distribution of successful maritime adaptations than previously recognized, spanning the lower to midlatitude areas in the western Pacific coastal region.
Our traditional scheme during the twentieth century was that Homo erectus had thrived on the vast terrain of eastern Asia since the Early Pleistocene, followed by the appearance of a more advanced ...but still primitive form of Homo in China during the mid-Middle Pleistocene. Recent discoveries or (re-)recognitions of other archaic hominins, such as Homo floresiensis from an Indonesian island, Neanderthals and the “Denisovans” from southern Siberia, as well as an extremely robust mandible from Taiwan, now open up a different view. By incorporating these latest discoveries, this paper intends to offer a phylogenetic model of diverse archaic Asian hominins distributed from southern Siberia to Southeast Asia and India. On the basis of this new model, I discuss how paleoanthropological data inform the taxonomic identity of the Denisovans and the admixture event with modern humans.
Homo floresiensis is an extinct, diminutive hominin species discovered in the Late Pleistocene deposits of Liang Bua cave, Flores, eastern Indonesia. The nature and evolutionary origins of H. ...floresiensis' unique physical characters have been intensively debated. Based on extensive comparisons using linear metric analyses, crown contour analyses, and other trait-by-trait morphological comparisons, we report here that the dental remains from multiple individuals indicate that H. floresiensis had primitive canine-premolar and advanced molar morphologies, a combination of dental traits unknown in any other hominin species. The primitive aspects are comparable to H. erectus from the Early Pleistocene, whereas some of the molar morphologies are more progressive even compared to those of modern humans. This evidence contradicts the earlier claim of an entirely modern human-like dental morphology of H. floresiensis, while at the same time does not support the hypothesis that H. floresiensis originated from a much older H. habilis or Australopithecus-like small-brained hominin species currently unknown in the Asian fossil record. These results are however consistent with the alternative hypothesis that H. floresiensis derived from an earlier Asian Homo erectus population and experienced substantial body and brain size dwarfism in an isolated insular setting. The dentition of H. floresiensis is not a simple, scaled-down version of earlier hominins.
The earliest colonization of oceanic islands by Homo sapiens occurred about 50,000-30,000 years ago in the tropical and temperate waters of the western Pacific, yet how this was achieved remains ...unclear. Under the experimental archaeology program called 'Holistic Reenactment Project of Voyages 30,000 Years Ago', we designed, built, and tested reed-bundle rafts as one of the candidate seagoing crafts in Paleolithic East Asia. Two rafts made by the best locally available reed, Typha domingensis, showed excellent stability and buoyancy at sea, but lacked mobility, speed, and durability required to cross fast-flowing seas in the Ryukyu Islands, southwest Japan. This supports the hypothesis that the first Ryukyu islanders used more sophisticated watercrafts to reach these islands about 35,000 years ago.
The emergence of modern humans in the eastern edge of the Eurasian Continent is debated between two major models: early (∼130−70 ka) and late (∼50 ka) dispersal models. The former view is grounded ...mainly on the claims that several cave sites in Southeast Asia and southern China yielded modern human fossils of those early ages, but such reports have been disputed for the lack of direct dating of the human remains and insufficient documentation of stratigraphy and taphonomy. By tracing possible burial process and conducting direct dating for an early Late Pleistocene paleontological site of Punung III, East Java, we here report a case that demonstrates how unexpected intrusion of recent human remains into older stratigraphic levels could occur in cave sediments. This further highlights the need of direct dating and taphonomic assessment before accepting either model. We also emphasize that the state of fossilization of bones and teeth is a useful guide for initial screening of recent intrusion and should be reported particularly when direct dating is unavailable. Additionally, we provide a revised stratigraphy and faunal list of Punung III, a key site that defines the tropical rainforest Punung Fauna during the early Late Pleistocene of the region.
The rise of water transport technology enabled early modern humans to expand their habitable territory to insular environments. However, apart from intensive discussion for Wallacea, developmental ...process and regional variation of Palaeolithic seafaring remain unclear. To contribute this issue, the author presents a synthetic model for Palaeolithic seafaring in another region of the western Pacific, the Ryukyu Islands (Ryukyus). Here, some islands were more than 100 km away and invisible beyond the horizon, and one of the world's strongest ocean currents intervened the seaways. Despite these challenging situations, Palaeolithic sites appeared throughout much of the 1,200 km chain of the islands ~35,000-30,000 years ago. By integrating currently available information from archaeology, skeletal morphology, genetics, palaeogeography, oceanography and our own experimental voyage project, the author discusses probable migration routes, possible watercrafts, preparation and strategy needed for successful maritime migrations, and other issues relevant to deeper understanding of the origins and development of human maritime activities.
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