14-6-2023 (SYDNEY) A groundbreaking discovery has been made by an international research team, including Australian experts, from fossils found at Tam Pa Ling Cave in Laos. The findings provide compelling evidence of early human presence in mainland Southeast Asia, dating back between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago.
The remarkable findings, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, offer valuable insights into the earliest human migrations from Africa to Australia and suggest alternative migration paths beyond coastlines and islands.
Traditionally, research has focused on island locations, but the excavation at Tam Pa Ling Cave in 2009 uncovered a human skull and jawbone, redirecting attention to the mainland as a significant migration route.
To unravel the age of the fossils, scientists employed luminescence dating, a technique that relies on light-sensitive signals accumulated in buried sediments over time. The luminescence dating analysis revealed that the fossils were at least 46,000 years old, aligning with the expected timeframe of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Southeast Asia.
Further excavations carried out between 2010 and 2023 brought to light seven fragments of a human skeleton, found at various depths within the sediment layers. To validate the age estimates obtained from luminescence dating, additional dating methods such as uranium-series dating and electron-spin resonance dating were employed. These methods confirmed the established chronology.
The established timeline demonstrates that humans have inhabited the region for over 56,000 years, with the earliest arrival estimated to be between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago. This significant discovery effectively pushes back the timeline for human presence in mainland Southeast Asia by approximately 40,000 years.
The findings shed new light on the history of human migration and challenge previous assumptions about migration patterns.
