New Homo Erectus Fossils Reveal Ancient Migration Across Drowned Sundaland

Homo erectus, an extinct human ancestor is a crucial a part of our evolutionary historical past. Emerging not less than 2 million years in the past, it was the primary species to develop human-like physique proportions and the primary human species emigrate out of Africa, finally discovering its approach to Southeast Asia. Homo erectus was first found in Java and was generally known as “Java Man” till the species was formally renamed. Long thought to have been remoted on the island of Java, two fossil fragments of a Homo erectus cranium—which surfaced with current ocean dredging in preparation for the development of a synthetic island—revealed that this hominin species migrated and unfold all through the islands once they may nonetheless stroll over bridges of land.

The drowned Sundaland

According to 4 research revealed in Quaternary Environments and Human, by archaeologist Harold Berghuis and his crew, these misplaced lands, referred to as drowned Sundaland, had been as soon as huge open plains interspersed with rivers round 140,000 years in the past.

During the glacial interval that chilled the Earth 140,000 years in the past, sea ranges within the Indonesian area of Sundaland had been low sufficient for present-day islands to tower like mountain ranges with a lowland savannah stretching between them. It was an expanse of principally dry grasslands with strips of forest edging the rivers, and animals like crocodiles, river sharks, elephants, hippos, rhinos, and Komodo dragons flourished within the area.

Hunting and Cultural exchanges

Berghuis and his crew argue that these historical rivers supplied not simply water, however sustenance by means of fruit-bearing bushes, fish, shellfish, and edible crops. Tool marks on bones Fossils present that Homo erectus hunted river turtles and huge terrestrial animals.

The searching methods noticed, akin to focusing on animals of their prime, are sometimes related to extra fashionable people, elevating questions on whether or not this H. erectus group developed such methods independently or discovered them by means of cultural change with different human family like Denisovans or Neanderthals. H. erectus is believed to have survived on Java till about 117,000 years in the past, effectively after it disappeared elsewhere in Asia.