In the bowels of a Laotian cave, illuminated by faint sunlight and bright lamps, scientists have unearthed the earliest known evidence of our human ancestors making their way through mainland Southeast Asia en route to Australia some 86,000 years ago.
Any trace of human remains is a delight for archaeologists – but none more so when they dust off a discovery, date it, and realize it could push back timelines of early human migration in an area by more than ten thousand years.
The international team of researchers behind this new discovery dug deeper than others had gone before in a karst cave in northern Laos, unearthing a skull fragment with delicate features, and the shard of a leg bone.
They estimate the two human fossils are between 86,000 and 68,000 years old, by using five different dating techniques to reconstruct the timeline of the cave site in which early humans sheltered on their journeys southward.
Tam Pà Ling Cave, where the bones were found, has a deep history of human occupation, though it is a contested one. A handful of human fossils including two jawbones previously found in shallower layers of sediments – shipped to the United States for study before being returned home to Laos – have dated to between 70,000 and 46,000 years old.
Hellbound and Down 