Very exciting news out of the Philippines today, a paper published in Nature describes the discovery of stone tools and a butchered rhino fossil in the Cagayan Valley that dates to between 777,000 – 631,000 years ago. This early date forces us to rethink hominin capabilities in crossing water during the Pleistocene.
Earliest known hominin activity in the Philippines by 709 thousand years ago
Ingicco et al.
Nature, doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0072-8
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 islands1,2,3,4. 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 scepticism5. 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 colonization6 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 stages1,2,3,4. The Philippines therefore may have had a central role in southward movements into Wallacea, not only of Pleistocene megafauna7, but also of archaic hominins.
Source: Earliest known hominin activity in the Philippines by 709 thousand years ago | Nature
See also:
- Ancient humans settled the Philippines 700,000 years ago | Science, 02 May 2018
- Butchered Rhino Suggests Humans Lived in the Philippines 700,000 Years Ago | Seeker, 02 May 2018
- 700,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Point to Mysterious Human Relative | National Geographic, 02 May 2018
- Stunning Discovery Shows Early Humans Were Hunting Rhinos in the Philippines Over 700,000 Years Ago | Gizmodo, 02 May 2018
- New find shows early humans were in the Philippines 700,000 years ago | Phys.org, 02 May 2018
- Ancient butchered rhino suggests humans lived in the Philippines 700,000 years ago | ABC, 03 May 2018
- Rhino fossil rewrites the earliest human history of the Philippines | The Conversation, 03 May 2018
- Traces of early humans in Philippines 700,000 years ago raise question of whether they were seafarers | Japan Times, 03 May 2018
- Discovery suggests humans lived in Philippines much earlier than believed | NBC News, 03 May 2018
- Butchered rhino unearthed in Philippines suggests the origin of ‘hobbits’ | The Independent, 03 May 2018
- A Mysterious Human Ancestor Used These 700,000-Year-Old Tools From The Philippines | Science Alert, 03 May 2018
- Find pushes back hominin arrival in the Philippines seven hundred thousand years | Cosmos, 04 May 2018
