Tag Archives: Niah Caves

Sarawak to re-submit bid to make Niah Caves Unesco heritage site

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Source: Sarawak Forestry Corporation, via Malay Mail 20190122
Source: Sarawak Forestry Corporation, via Malay Mail 20190122

via Malay Mail, 22 January 2019: The Sarawak Government expresses renewed interest to nominate the Niah Caves as a World Heritage Site due to recent findings of Pleistocene occupation of the cave dating 65,000 years.

The Sarawak government will re-submit nomination for the Niah Caves National Park in Miri Division to be a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage Site, Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Openg said today.

He said an archaeological works carried out by researchers from University of New South Wales, Australia, showed evidence of human settlements at the caves dated back to about 65,000 years ago.

“On record, human settlements in other parts of the world is about 40,000 years ago, but the Niah caves have evidence to show that the settlement was much more earlier,” he said at the opening of the stakeholders consultation on the proposed forestry policies here.

Source: Sarawak to re-submit bid to make Niah Caves Unesco heritage site | Malaysia | Malay Mail

Categories: Malaysia UNESCO World Heritage

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This Borneo archaeological dig cave could shed light on the Mt Toba super-volcano eruption and humans’ arrival in the region

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Trader's Cave Excavation. Source: ABC news 20181027

via ABC, 27 October 2018: A beautiful multimedia essay about recent excavations in the Niah Caves complex.

Trader's Cave Excavation. Source: ABC news 20181027

Trader’s Cave Excavation. Source: ABC news 20181027

The caves are also one of the most important fossil sites in the region.

Over the past 60 years, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of hundreds of skeletons in a Neolithic cemetery up to 4,000 years old, and an Iron Age cemetery up to 2,000 years old.

It is also where an iconic fossil known as Deep Skull was unearthed in 1958 by British palaeontologists Tom and Barbara Harrisson.

Source: This Borneo archaeological dig cave could shed light on the Mt Toba super-volcano eruption and humans’ arrival in the region – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Categories: Borneo Malaysia

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New pre-history timeline discovered for Borneo

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via Borneo Post, 22 October 2018: New materials recovered from the Niah Cave complex pushes the dates of human habitation to 65,000 years and shedding light into early modern humans in Southeast Asia.

Darren Curnoe. Source: Borneo Post 20181012

Darren Curnoe. Source: Borneo Post 20181012

Human civilisation has been established to exist as far back as 65,000 years ago at Niah Caves complex, Sarawak – vastly exceeding the previous estimate of 35,000 years following the initial discovery of the ‘Deep Skull lady’ at the cave complex.

Discovered in the Niah Caves back in 1958, the ‘Deep Skull lady’ are remains of a female human skull that was ascribed an age of about 35,000 years, making it one of the oldest modern humans discovered in South-East Asia.

Source: New pre-history timeline discovered for Borneo – BorneoPost Online | Borneo , Malaysia, Sarawak Daily News | Largest English Daily In Borneo

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Categories: Borneo Lithics Malaysia

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[Paper] Rare Late Pleistocene-early Holocene human mandibles from the Niah Caves (Sarawak, Borneo)

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New paper in PLOS One describing mandibles from the Niah Caves – these were excavated by the Harrissons in 1957.

Rare Late Pleistocene-early Holocene human mandibles from the Niah Caves (Sarawak, Borneo)
Darren Curnoe, Ipoi Datan, Jian-xin Zhao, Charles Leh Moi Ung, Maxime Aubert, Mohammed S. Sauffi, Goh Hsiao Mei, Raynold Mendoza, Paul S. C. Taçon
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196633

The skeletal remains of Late Pleistocene-early Holocene humans are exceptionally rare in island Southeast Asia. As a result, the identity and physical adaptations of the early inhabitants of the region are poorly known. One archaeological locality that has historically been important for understanding the peopling of island Southeast Asia is the Niah Caves in the northeast of Borneo. Here we present the results of direct Uranium-series dating and the first published descriptions of three partial human mandibles from the West Mouth of the Niah Caves recovered during excavations by the Harrissons in 1957. One of them (mandible E/B1 100″) is somewhat younger than the ‘Deep Skull’ with a best dating estimate of c30-28 ka (at 2σ), while the other two mandibles (D/N5 42–48″ and E/W 33 24–36″) are dated to a minimum of c11.0–10.5 ka (at 2σ) and c10.0–9.0 ka (at 2σ). Jaw E/B1 100″ is unusually small and robust compared with other Late Pleistocene mandibles suggesting that it may have been ontogenetically altered through masticatory strain under a model of phenotypic plasticity. Possible dietary causes could include the consumption of tough or dried meats or palm plants, behaviours which have been documented previously in the archaeological record of the Niah Caves. Our work suggests a long history back to before the LGM of economic strategies involving the exploitation of raw plant foods or perhaps dried and stored meat resources. This offers new insights into the economic strategies of Late Pleistocene-early Holocene hunter-gatherers living in, or adjacent to, tropical rainforests.

Source: Rare Late Pleistocene-early Holocene human mandibles from the Niah Caves (Sarawak, Borneo)

Categories: Bones Borneo Malaysia

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More Studies On Niah Caves Skull

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via Malaysian Digest, 06 January 2018:

FURTHER studies and researches are being conducted to determine if the first human civilisation in Southeast Asia started from Sarawak’s very own background, which is the Niah Caves tucked within Miri division.

Source: More Studies On Niah Caves Skull

Categories: Borneo Malaysia

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Follow Darren Curnoe on his Niah Caves excavation

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Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales is on his three-week excavation of the Niah Caves in Sarawak and he will be tweeting and broadcasting his experiences on Facebook Live. You can follow his progress here:

Darren Curnoe – Anthropologist. 80 likes. Biological anthropologist and archaeologist with an insatiable curiosity about the kind of creature we are and how we came to be this way.

Source: Darren Curnoe – Anthropologist

Categories: Archaeologists Borneo Malaysia Websites

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Reassessing the Deep Skull from Niah

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The Deep Skull of Niah. Source: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

A study of the Deep Skull from Niah has some new interpretations – female, not male;and likely originating from East Asia.

The Deep Skull of Niah. Source: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

The Deep Skull of Niah. Source: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

Deep Skull from Niah Cave and the Pleistocene Peopling of Southeast Asia
Front. Ecol. Evol., 27 June 2016 | http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2016.00075

37,000-year-old skull from Borneo reveals surprise for scientists
Popular archaeology, 27 June 2016

Could this skull rewrite human history? 37,000-year-old cranium found in Borneo may be evidence that ancient Aborigines were not the first to settle in Pacific island
Daily Mail, 27 June 2016

The Deep Skull from Niah Cave in Sarawak (Malaysia) is the oldest anatomically modern human recovered from island Southeast Asia. For more than 50 years its relevance to tracing the prehistory of the region has been controversial. The most widely held view, originating with Brothwell’s 1960 description and analysis, is that the Niah individual is related to Indigenous Australians. Here we undertake a new assessment of the Deep Skull and consider its bearing on this question. In doing so, we provide a new and comprehensive description of the cranium including a reassessment of its ontogenetic age, sex, morphology, and affinities. We conclude that this individual was most likely to have been of advanced age and female, rather than an adolescent male as originally proposed. The morphological evidence strongly suggests that the Deep Skull samples the earliest modern humans to have settled Borneo, most likely originating on mainland East Asia. We also show that the affinities of the specimen are most likely to be with the contemporary indigenous people of Borneo, although, similarities to the population sometimes referred to as Philippine Negritos cannot be excluded. Finally, our research suggests that the widely supported “two-layer” hypothesis for the Pleistocene peopling of East/Southeast Asia is unlikely to apply to the earliest inhabitants of Borneo, in-line with the picture emerging from genetic studies of the contemporary people from the region.

Paper here.

Categories: Bones Borneo Malaysia

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