First human ancestors arrived in Southeast Asia about 86,000 years ago
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Early humans traveled large miles on foot, overcoming obstacles like harsh terrain, lack of food, and inclement weather.
Piecing together our ancestors’ long migration tales is not easy. Archeologists have collected evidence of such lengthy travels via thousands of years-old records found buried in numerous locations worldwide.
And there is no end to it as scientists continue to acquire evidence, with many ancient human artifacts still waiting to be uncovered.
A cave in northern Laos has now revealed fresh details regarding the earliest human migration from Africa to Australia.
A new suggests they passed by this cave between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago on their way through Asia to become Australia’s First People.
The Tam Pà Ling cave
The evidence for the earliest human presence in Southeast Asia was found buried in various sediment layers of Tam Pà Ling cave. “Tam Pà Ling plays a key role in the story of modern human migration through Asia but its significance and value is only just being recognized,” said Fabrice Demeter, a palaeoanthropologist from the University of Copenhagen, and one of the paper’s lead authors, in an official release.
The evidence gathered from this cave shows that our ancestors traveled from Africa to Arabia and then on to Asia far earlier than previously assumed.
This cave first came into the spotlight in 2009 when a skull and mandible were discovered. The skeleton remains were recognized as belonging to Homo sapiens, who had moved through the region some thousands of years ago.
The new findings
In this latest study, an international team of scientists discovered seven sections of the human skeleton at 4.5 meters intervals. They also discovered two rare, complete bovid teeth at 6.5 meters and a fragment of a leg bone at seven meters from the cave.
The researchers applied multiple dating techniques on the skeletons' remains — mainly luminescence dating, uranium-series dating, and electron-spin-resonance dating.
The study found that humans arrived in this location between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago, based on the comprehensive dating analyses. This new chronology pushed the first arrival of prehistoric humans to mainland Southeast Asia further back to approximately 40,000 years.
These new findings reveal our ancestors' ability to travel across forested areas as well as inland river systems to reach other parts of the world. “They traveled through forested regions, most likely along river valleys, too. Some then moved on through Southeast Asia to become Australia’s First People,” said the statement.
The new study was conducted by multiple institutes, including Macquarie University, Southern Cross University, and Flinders University.
The results have been reported in the journal Nature Communications.
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