Showing posts with label South East Asia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South East Asia. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
A prehistoric human skeleton, thought to be at least 5,000 years old, was uncovered during construction of a gallery for the Guar Kepah Neolithic site near Kepala Batas, on mainland Penang, on Monday.
The prehistoric human skeleton was found at Guar Kepah Neolithic site on mainland Penang, near Kepala Batas [Credit: USM]
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Global Archaeological Research Centre director Professor Datuk Dr Mokhtar Saidin said a skull, a femur bone and a rib cage were found beneath the floor of a house which had been recently flattened to make way for the gallery.
He said the bones were found 70cm underground as Public Works Department (PWD) backhoes were digging on Monday.
"This is an important discovery not only for us, but the state, and the nation as a whole. Digging works were immediately stopped following the discovery, and we took over to conduct the excavation.
"We have yet to conduct scientific studies, but we estimate it to be around 5,000 years old. More details, such as how the prehistoric people lived, what they ate and their burial patterns, will be released once we complete the studies," Dr Mokhtar told newsmen at Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng's office here, yesterday.
Mokhtar believes they could possibly find three skeletons at the site, but it would take them at least two weeks to excavate even the current findings.
USM's Global Archaeological Research Centre had been conducting excavation works and research at the site back in 2010, where prehistoric shells, pottery remnants, tool remnants and food remnants from the Neolithic period were found, documented and dated.
“With this latest discovery, our research is complete. We have the shells, the food, the hunting tools and now we have the skeleton. So, the gallery will be complete with all these on display,” Dr Mokhtar added.
Guar Kepah, the country's final remaining Stone Age site, features shell middens or mounds that date back more than five millennia.
According to a book by F. David Bulbeck, titled “The Perak Man and Prehistoric Skeletons of Malaysia”, a total of 37 skeletons were excavated from the site after British colonial officer G.W Earl first discovered the shell middens in 1860; dating placed the skeletons at between 4,000 and 5,000 years old.
Back in 2013, Mokhtar had said that the Neolithic period site at Guar Kepah, which is older than the ancient civilisation site of neighbouring Lembah Bujang, had the potential to be a major tourism draw.
The Neolithic era is considered to be the last period of the Stone Age, before the discovery of metal tools led humans into the Bronze Age.
He had said that the site was the only prehistoric evidence of marine adaptation by prehistoric humans living near the sea in Malaysia.
No new human remains were found beyond the 37 skeletons previously unearthed, and taken to the National Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden, Holland.
Meanwhile, Lim announced a RM20,000 allocation for further excavation works.
The Chief Minister also said that the state government is in talks to have the skeletons repatriated from Holland, to be placed in the new Guar Kepah gallery. Author: Audrey Dermawan | Source: New Strait Times [April 19, 2017]
The Papua Center for Archaeology has discovered a prehistoric cave dwelling in the Malaumkarta Village, Makbon Sub-district, Sorong City, West Papua Province.
Kalabus Cave [Credit: Papua Center for Archaeology]
"The local community named the cave as Kalabus Cave," Hari Suroto, an archaeologist of the Papua Center for Archaeology, stated during a telephonic conversation here on Sunday.
Suroto said the cave is located 200 meters west of the Kalabu River. When it was discovered, the caves floor was covered by the droppings of swallows, while the mouth and yard of the cave were in dry condition.
"Pottery and food remains, in the form of sea shells, were found on the floor of the caves mouth," he noted.
Based on the artifacts discovered in the cave, it could be assessed that Kalabus Cave had served as a prehistoric dwelling, as the men who once inhabited the cave largely depended on natural resources in the vicinity.
"The findings of food remains, in the form of sea shells, indicated that the men who once lived in the cave reached the coast in search of food," he revealed.
The finding of pottery artifacts also indicated that food processing activities were more varied, which included boiling.
"In addition, the pottery was used to store food or water," he noted.
Furthermore, Suroto, who was also an alumnus of the University of Udayana in Bali Province, said the observation results of the soil type around Kalabus Cave revealed that it could not have been used to make pottery. Hence, it could be assumed that the pottery came from outside the cave.
"Physically, Kalabus Cave is comfortable and safe, as it has spacious spaces, good lighting, dry and flat floor surface, good air circulation, and is located close to a water source," he stated.
"Kalabus Cave had the potential to be used as a place to live and move by humans," he added.
Archaeologists have put a face to the oldest human remains excavated from Thailand's northern highlands.
The facial approximation of Tham Lod woman, who lived about 13,600 years ago in Thailand's northern highlands [Credit: Hayes, Shoocongdej et al./Antiquity]
The remains of the woman, who lived about 13,600 years ago, were found in the Late Pleistocene Tham Lod rock shelter in north-west Thailand. The woman was between 25 and 35 years old and between 1.48 and 1.56 metres tall.
The age of her remains and the location they were found in suggest that she descended from the first humans to colonise South-East Asia. The findings are reported in the journal Antiquity.
The first approximation of the woman's face has now been created, using a global dataset of measurements of skulls, muscles, skin and other soft facial tissue from a large sample of the population across the world.
Estimating the face of a prehistoric human can be rife with pitfalls. Using data from a range of ethnicities in different countries and continents helps to make sure the impression of the face isn't biased towards one population, study author Susan Hayes of the University of Wollongong, Australia, told IBTimes UK.
The 'facial approximation' method uses facial soft tissue data from a global population to try to recreate the subject's appearance [Credit: Hayes, Shoocongdej et al./Antiquity]
Hayes used a method called "facial approximation", based on the analysis of soft tissues and skull measurements from an international sample population, rather than the popular method of "forensic facial reconstruction".
"Facial reconstruction fascinates people, and it attracts a lot of enthusiasm from both artists and scientists," Hayes said. "Unfortunately, some are scientists without any understanding of the technicalities of artistic depiction, others are artists without any understandings of the technicalities of science.
"The deceased deserve a bit better than this."
The resulting image is thought to give a good general impression of the woman's face, but is "unlikely to be a portrait likeness", Hayes said. This is because the data used for comparison are averaged over a large population. So if the Tham Lod rock shelter woman was entirely like the average person with her facial measurements, then the image would be a good likeness. But, Hayes notes, no one is average.
"But the average [image] is better, I think, than intuition, inspiration, self-portraiture, or doggedly sticking to relatively simple methods that are simply wrong."
Griffith University archaeologists Associate Professor Adam Brumm, who with Indonesian colleagues led the excavations that yielded the new findings, and Dr Michelle Langley, who analysed the recovered ornaments and art objects.
Excavations at the limestone cave of Leang Bulu Bettue on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi [Credit: Justin Mott]
Griffith University archaeologists are part of a joint Indonesian-Australian team that has unearthed a rare collection of prehistoric art and ‘jewellery’ objects from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, dating in some instances to as early as 30,000 years ago.
The Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) team, based in Griffith’s Environmental Futures Research Institute, together with Indonesian colleagues, have shed new light on ‘Ice Age’ human culture and symbolism in a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dated to between 26,000 to 22,000 years ago, this humanly modified artefact consists of a drilled and perforated finger bone from an endemic bear cuscus. The hole at one end formerly bore a string, while wear marks on the ornament show that it repeatedly rubbed against human skin or clothing during the period of its use. These facts suggest the perforated bone was suspended for use as a 'pendant' or similar jewelry object [Credit: Griffith University]
The study was co-led by Associate Professor Adam Brumm, an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, and Dr Michelle Langley , who also holds a fellowship from the ARC, analysed the recovered artefacts, and is the country’s leading expert in the study of ancient ornaments and bone technology.
“Scientists have long been curious about the cultural lives of the first Homo sapiens to inhabit the lands to the immediate north of Australia sometime prior to 50,000 years ago — part of the great movement of our species out of Africa,” Associate Professor Brumm says.
Prehistoric ornaments excavated from the Sulawesi cave site Leang Bulu Bettue [Credit: Michelle Langley/Adam Brumm/Bear/Luke Marsden]
“Some have argued that Pleistocene human culture declined in sophistication as Homo sapiens ventured beyond India into the Southeast Asian tropics and the island chains east of continental Eurasia, known as ‘Wallacea’. “However, the onset of new research programs in Wallacea is steadily dismantling this view.”
Adding to the 2014 breakthrough discovery of 40,000-year-old cave art on the Wallacean island of Sulawesi, which is said to be some of the world’s oldest, is a unique assemblage of previously unknown symbolic objects excavated from a Sulawesi cave site called Leang Bulu Bettue.
Hollow bone tube with red and black pigments, made from the long bone of a bear cuscus, may have been used as an ‘air-brush’ to create human hand stencils on rock surfaces [Credit: Michelle Langley]
The recovered artefacts, dated to between 30,000 to 22,000 years ago, consist of disc-shaped beads made from a babirusa (‘pig-deer’) tooth and a pendant fashioned from the bone of a bear cuscus (a large and primitive possum-like marsupial found only on Sulawesi), as well as ‘portable’ art objects: stones incised with geometric patterns, the meaning of which is unknown.
Dr Langley’s analysis also revealed extensive evidence for rock art production at the site, including discarded ochre pieces, ochre stains on tools, and a bone tube that may have been a ‘blow-pipe’ for creating hand stencil motifs, the earliest of which date to at least 40,000 years ago on Sulawesi.
Hand stencils may have been created using pigments and a bone 'air-brush' [Credit: Yinika Perston]
“Previously, assemblages of multiple and diverse types of Pleistocene ‘symbolic’ artifacts were entirely undocumented from Wallacea,” she said.
“It was also unknown if or how Sulawesi cave artists adorned their bodies or whether their artistic repertoire even extended beyond rock paintings. Our understanding of the symbolic lives of these people is now much richer.”
Wallacea, the zone of oceanic islands positioned east of the Wallace Line, one of the world’s major biogeographical boundaries, and lying between the continental regions of Asia and Australia-New Guinea [Credit: Adam Brumm]
The team says these early examples of art and ‘jewellery’ imply that the spiritual beliefs of modern humans may have transformed as they encountered new forms of animal life on the journey from Asia to Australia.
“Sulawesi, in particular, is renowned among biogeographers for its extremely high rate of species endemism – essentially all of the island’s land mammals, except for bats, occur nowhere else on earth,” Associate Professor Brumm says.
“The discovery of ornaments manufactured from the bones and teeth of two of Sulawesi’s flagship endemics – babirusas and bear cuscuses – and a previously recorded painting of a babirusa dated to at least 35,400 years ago, shows that humans were drawn to these dramatically new faunal species. This may indicate that the conceptual world of these people changed to incorporate exotic animals.”
The researchers think that this ‘symbolic negotiation’ with novel species might have been fundamental to the later settlement of Australia, which harboured unprecedentedly rich communities of endemic faunas and floras.
They speculate that the human journey through the biogeographically unique zone of Wallacea might have prompted new ways of thinking about the natural world, suggesting elements of the complex human-animal spiritual relationships that define Aboriginal cultures may actually pre-date the initial colonization of Australia.
The work reported in PNAS was conducted in collaboration with scientists from a range of Indonesian academic institutes, including the National Research Centre for Archaeology (ARKENAS), as well as a large team of Sulawesi-based archaeologists. Other Griffith University scientists involved were Associate Professor Maxime Aubert, Dr Jillian Huntley and Professor Rainer Grün. Associate Professor Aubert and Dr Huntley are also members of members of the Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU) within the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research.
