Post by Sharon Faulkner on Mar 29, 2007 19:13:48 GMT -5
MODERN HUMANS IN BORNEO
An international team claims to have nailed the earliest evidence for Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia--to about 46,000 years ago.
In 1958, excavators working at Niah Cave on the island of Borneo unearthed a skull cap and upper jaw of an anatomically modern human. Although radiocarbon dating of nearby charcoal fragments put the age at about 40,000 years, many experts suspected the skull was a newer "intrusion" into an older layer.
CREDIT: NIAH CAVE PROJECT
Since 2000, researchers led by archaeologist Graeme Barker of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom have been reexamining the site. New radiocarbon dates, reported in the March issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, show that the cave was continuously occupied between 46,000 and 34,000 years ago. What's more, the group has now been able to date the skull itself, using a technique called uranium series that revealed it was up to 37,000 years old.
The scientists contend that Niah Cave is the earliest securely dated sighting of modern humans in Southeast Asia. They also uncovered evidence that the occupants were sophisticated hunter-gatherers, hunting pigs and monkeys and detoxifying poisonous yams and nuts before eating them.
Sandra Bowdler, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia in Crawley, says the new dates "suggest that we can forget about the skull being from an intrusive … burial." James O'Connell, an archaeologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, adds that the work shows that the Niah Cave people's sophisticated subsistence activities "were practiced at a surprisingly early date."
Article
An international team claims to have nailed the earliest evidence for Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia--to about 46,000 years ago.
In 1958, excavators working at Niah Cave on the island of Borneo unearthed a skull cap and upper jaw of an anatomically modern human. Although radiocarbon dating of nearby charcoal fragments put the age at about 40,000 years, many experts suspected the skull was a newer "intrusion" into an older layer.
CREDIT: NIAH CAVE PROJECT
Since 2000, researchers led by archaeologist Graeme Barker of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom have been reexamining the site. New radiocarbon dates, reported in the March issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, show that the cave was continuously occupied between 46,000 and 34,000 years ago. What's more, the group has now been able to date the skull itself, using a technique called uranium series that revealed it was up to 37,000 years old.
The scientists contend that Niah Cave is the earliest securely dated sighting of modern humans in Southeast Asia. They also uncovered evidence that the occupants were sophisticated hunter-gatherers, hunting pigs and monkeys and detoxifying poisonous yams and nuts before eating them.
Sandra Bowdler, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia in Crawley, says the new dates "suggest that we can forget about the skull being from an intrusive … burial." James O'Connell, an archaeologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, adds that the work shows that the Niah Cave people's sophisticated subsistence activities "were practiced at a surprisingly early date."
Article