New Homo Erectus Fossils Reveal Ancient Migration Across Drowned Sundaland-OxBig News Network

Homo erectus, an extinct human ancestor is a crucial a part of our evolutionary historical past. Emerging at the very least 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, ultimately discovering its approach to Southeast Asia. Homo erectus was first found in Java and was often called “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 latest ocean dredging in preparation for the development of a man-made island—revealed that this hominin species migrated and unfold all through the islands after they might nonetheless stroll over bridges of land.

The drowned Sundaland

According to 4 research published in Quaternary Environments and Human, by archaeologist Harold Berghuis and his crew, these misplaced lands, known 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 historic rivers supplied not simply water, however sustenance by way of fruit-bearing timber, fish, shellfish, and edible crops. Tool marks on bones Fossils present that Homo erectus hunted river turtles and huge terrestrial animals.

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