Deep Skull from Niah Cave and the Pleistocene Peopling of Southeast Asia

Darren Curnoe,Paul S. C. Taçon,Charles Leh Moi Ung,Mohammad S. Sauffi,Ipoi Datan

doi:10.3389/fevo.2016.00075

Darren Curnoe, Paul S. C. Taçon + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2016.00075

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Abstract

The Deep Skull from Niah Cave in Sarawak (Malaysia) is the oldest anatomically modern human recovered from island Southeast Asia. For more than 50 years its relevance to tracing the prehistory of the region has been controversial. The most widely held view, originating with Brothwell’s 1960 description and analysis, is that the Niah individual is related to Indigenous Australians. Here we undertake a new assessment of the Deep Skull and consider its bearing on this question. In doing so, we provide a new and comprehensive description of the cranium including a reassessment of its ontogenetic age, sex, morphology and affinities. We conclude that this individual was most likely to have been of advanced age and female, rather than an adolescent male as originally proposed. The morphological evidence strongly suggests that the Deep Skull samples the earliest modern humans to have settled Borneo, most likely originating on mainland East Asia. We also show that the affinities of the specimen are most likely to be with the contemporary indigenous people of Borneo, although, similarities to the population sometimes referred to as Philippine Negritos cannot be excluded. Finally, our research suggests that the widely supported ‘two-layer’ hypothesis for the Pleistocene peopling of East/South Asia is unlikely to apply to the earliest inhabitants of northern Borneo, in-line with the picture emerging from genetic studies of the contemporary people from the region.

Highlights

Discussions about the initial settlement of Southeast Asia and Australasia by anatomically modern humans (AMH) have historically focused on evidence from a small number of Late Pleistocene human remains scattered across this broad region (Thorne et al, 1999; Dizon et al, 2002; Détroit et al, 2004; Olley et al, 2006; Barker et al, 2007, 2013; Mijares et al, 2010; Demeter et al, 2012; Storm et al, 2013)
It has been widely accepted that these Late Pleistocene to early Holocene hunter-gatherers were related to recent Indigenous Australians and New Guineans, potentially even representing the earliest AMH to have settled the region (Matsumura et al, 2008)
While M3 emergence is commonly considered to be a skeletal marker of adulthood (Hillson, 1996), the failure of the M3s to erupt is common in recent human populations, including indigenous people in Southeast Asia (Turner and Eder, 2006)

Summary

Introduction

Discussions about the initial settlement of Southeast Asia and Australasia by anatomically modern humans (AMH) have historically focused on evidence from a small number of Late Pleistocene human remains scattered across this broad region (Thorne et al, 1999; Dizon et al, 2002; Détroit et al, 2004; Olley et al, 2006; Barker et al, 2007, 2013; Mijares et al, 2010; Demeter et al, 2012; Storm et al, 2013). Superimposed on the Late Pleistocene history of the region are more recent prehistoric migrations by agriculturalists such as Sino-Tibetan, Tai and Austroasiatic speaking people into mainland Southeast Asia and Austronesian speakers across oceanic Southeast Asia (Bellwood, 1997) The idea that these migrations resulted in the replacement of most of the huntergatherers of the regon by Neolithic populations has been debated for 80 years (e.g., van Stein Callenfels, 1936; Hooijer, 1950; Von Koenigswald, 1952; Brothwell, 1960; Coon, 1962; Bellwood, 1997; Matsumura and Hudson, 2005). This model, dubbed the “two-layer” hypothesis (Jacob, 1967), on account of the subsequent replacement of these hunter-gatherers by immigrant Neolithic people (Bellwood, 1997), has enjoyed somewhat of a revival of late (Matsumura et al, 2008; Oxenham and Buckley, 2016), being extended even to encompass Japan (Kaifu et al, 2011)

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