Wajak crania

Last updated
Wajak crania
Wadjak I, cast.jpg
Cast of Wajak 1
Common nameWajak crania
Species Human
Agec. 32,500 years
Place discovered East Java, Indonesia
Date discovered24 October 1888
Discovered byB.D. van Rietschoten and Eugene Dubois

The Wajak crania (also Wadjak, following the Dutch spelling of the toponym) are two fossil human skulls discovered near Wajak, a village in Tulungagung Regency, East Java, Indonesia (then Dutch East Indies) in 1888/90. The first was found on 24 October 1888 by mining engineer B.D. van Rietschoten who sent it to paleontologist Eugène Dubois who subsequently found the second skull in September 1890. When returning to the Netherlands in 1895, Dubois took the skulls with him. They are now located in Naturalis, Leyden.

Contents

Dubbed Wajak Man, and formerly classified by Dubois as a separate species (Homo wadjakensis) and Pramujiono as a subspecies of Homo erectus in a self-published paper, [1] the skulls are now recognized as an early anatomically modern human fossil. They were dated to the early-to-mid Holocene (12,000 to 5,000 years ago) in the 1990s, but a 2013 study revised the date to between 28,000 and 37,000 years ago. [2] [3] Their morphological characteristics have been described as showing affinity to both proto-Australoid (intermediate between Solo Man and contemporary Australo-Melanesians) and to Mongoloid populations, specifically Chinese people, sharing specific Mongoloid traits such as flat face. Some anthropologists argue that a population related to the Wajak crania may be ancestral to both Mongoloid and Australo-Melanesian populations, with the Wajak crania representing a link between these populations. Anthropologists such as Bulbeck and Turner concluded, based on these and other findings, that "southern Mongoloids" are indigenous to Southeast Asia, with the proto-Mongoloid population to have originated in the Sunda region or Mainland Southeast Asia, while their distant relatives, the Australo-Melanesians originated in the Sahul region with at least 50,000 years of divergence. [4] Anthropologist Paul Storm argues that "the most likely interpretation is to consider the Wajak skulls as Mesolithic robust representatives of the present inhabitants of Java", Javanese people. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

Australo-Melanesians is an outdated historical grouping of various people indigenous to Melanesia and Australia. Controversially, some groups found in parts of Southeast Asia and South Asia were also sometimes included.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peking Man</span> Subspecies of the genus Homo (fossil)

Peking Man is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited the Zhoukoudian cave site in modern northern China during the Chibanian. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudian Cave has since then become the most productive H. erectus site in the world. Peking Man was instrumental in the foundation of Chinese anthropology, and fostered an important dialogue between Western and Eastern science for decades to come. The fossils became the centre of anthropological discussion, and were classified as a direct human ancestor, propping up the Out of Asia hypothesis that humans evolved in Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solo Man</span> Extinct subspecies of Homo erectus

Solo Man is a subspecies of H. erectus that lived along the Solo River in Java, Indonesia, about 117,000 to 108,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene. This population is the last known record of the species. It is known from 14 skullcaps, two tibiae, and a piece of the pelvis excavated near the village of Ngandong, and possibly three skulls from Sambungmacan and a skull from Ngawi depending on classification. The Ngandong site was first excavated from 1931 to 1933 under the direction of Willem Frederik Florus Oppenoorth, Carel ter Haar, and Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, but further study was set back by the Great Depression, World War II and the Indonesian War of Independence. In accordance with historical race concepts, Indonesian H. erectus subspecies were originally classified as the direct ancestors of Aboriginal Australians, but Solo Man is now thought to have no living descendants because the remains far predate modern human immigration into the area, which began roughly 55,000 to 50,000 years ago.

<i>Homo</i> Genus of hominins that includes humans and their closest extinct relatives

Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens and a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans. These include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan, with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Java Man</span> Subspecies of Homo erectus (fossil) discovered on the island of Java in 1891

Java Man is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type specimen for Homo erectus.

<i>Homo floresiensis</i> Archaic human from Flores, Indonesia

Homo floresiensis( also known as "Flores Man") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tabon Man</span> Oldest modern human remains from the Philippines

Tabon Man refers to remains discovered in the Tabon Caves in Lipuun Point in Quezon, Palawan in the Philippines. They were discovered by Robert B. Fox, an American anthropologist of the National Museum of the Philippines, on May 28, 1962. These remains, the fossilized fragments of a skull of a female and the jawbones of three individuals dating back to 16,500 years ago, were the earliest known human remains in the Philippines, until a metatarsal from the Callao Man discovered in 2007 was dated in 2010 by uranium-series dating as being 67,000 years old. However, some scientists think additional evidence is necessary to confirm those fossils as a new species, rather than a locally adapted population of other Homo populations, such as H. erectus or Denisovan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lantian Man</span> Subspecies of the genus Homo (fossil)

Lantian Man, Homo erectus lantianensis) is a subspecies of Homo erectus known from an almost complete mandible from Chenchiawo (陈家窝) Village discovered in 1963, and a partial skull from Gongwangling (公王岭) Village discovered in 1964, situated in Lantian County on the Loess Plateau. The former dates to about 710–684 thousand years ago, and the latter 1.65–1.59 million years ago. This makes Lantian Man the second-oldest firmly dated H. erectus beyond Africa, and the oldest in East Asia. The fossils were first described by Woo Ju-Kan in 1964, who considered the subspecies an ancestor to Peking Man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistoric Thailand</span>

Prehistoric Thailand may be traced back as far as 1,000,000 years ago from the fossils and stone tools found in northern and western Thailand. At an archaeological site in Lampang, northern Thailand Homo erectus fossils, Lampang Man, dating back 1,000,000 – 500,000 years, have been discovered. Stone tools have been widely found in Kanchanaburi, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Lopburi. Prehistoric cave paintings have also been found in these regions, dating back 10,000 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luzia Woman</span> Upper Paleolithic period skeleton of a Paleo-Indian woman

Luzia Woman is the name for an Upper Paleolithic period skeleton of a Paleo-Indian woman who was found in a cave in Brazil. The 11,500-year-old skeleton was found in a cave in the Lapa Vermelha archeological site in Pedro Leopoldo, in the Greater Belo Horizonte region of Brazil in 1974 by archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistoric Asia</span> Period in the history of Asia

Prehistoric Asia refers to events in Asia during the period of human existence prior to the invention of writing systems or the documentation of recorded history. This includes portions of the Eurasian land mass currently or traditionally considered as the continent of Asia. The continent is commonly described as the region east of the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, Black Sea and Red Sea, bounded by the Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. This article gives an overview of the many regions of Asia during prehistoric times.

Balangoda Man refers to hominins from Sri Lanka's late Quaternary period. The term was initially coined to refer to anatomically modern Homo sapiens from sites near Balangoda that were responsible for the island's Mesolithic 'Balangoda Culture'. The earliest evidence of Balangoda Man from archaeological sequences at caves and other sites dates back to 38,000 BCE, and from excavated skeletal remains to 30,000 BC, which is also the earliest reliably dated record of anatomically modern humans in South Asia. Cultural remains discovered alongside the skeletal fragments include geometric microliths dating to 28,500 BC, which together with some sites in Africa is the earliest record of such stone tools.

<i>Homo erectus</i> Extinct species of archaic human

Homo erectus is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Its specimens are among the first recognizable members of the genus Homo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liujiang man</span> Hominin fossil

The Liujiang man is among the earliest modern humans found in East Asia. The remains were discovered in the Tongtianyan Cave (通天岩) in Liujiang, Guangxi, China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistoric Indonesia</span>

Prehistoric Indonesia is a prehistoric period in the Indonesian archipelago that spanned from the Pleistocene period to about the 4th century CE when the Kutai people produced the earliest known stone inscriptions in Indonesia. Unlike the clear distinction between prehistoric and historical periods in Europe and the Middle East, the division is muddled in Indonesia. This is mostly because Indonesia's geographical conditions as a vast archipelago caused some parts — especially the interiors of distant islands — to be virtually isolated from the rest of the world. West Java and coastal Eastern Borneo, for example, began their historical periods in the early 4th century, but megalithic culture still flourished and script was unknown in the rest of Indonesia, including in Nias and Toraja. The Papuans on the Indonesian part of New Guinea island lived virtually in the Stone Age until their first contacts with modern world in the early 20th century. Even today living megalithic traditions still can be found on the island of Sumba and Nias.

The Keilor archaeological site was among the first places to demonstrate the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia when a cranium, unearthed in 1940, was found to be nearly 15,000 years old. Subsequent investigations of Pleistocene alluvial terraces revealed hearths about 31,000 years BP, making Keilor one of the earliest sites of human habitation in Australia. Remains of megafauna suggest a possible association with Aboriginal hunting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red Deer Cave people</span> Prehistoric humans from 12,500 BCE in southwest China

The Red Deer Cave people were a prehistoric population of modern humans known from bones dated to between about 17,830 to c. 11,500 years ago, found in Red Deer Cave and Longlin Cave in Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces, in Southwest China.

The 'Two Layer' Hypothesis, or immigration hypothesis, is an archaeological hypothese that suggests the human occupation of mainland Southeast Asia occurred over two distinct periods by two separate racial groups, hence the term 'layer'. According to the Two Layer Hypothesis, early indigenous Australo-Melanesian peoples comprised the first population of Southeast Asia before their genetic integration with a second wave of inhabitants from East Asia, including Southern China, during the agricultural expansion of the Neolithic. The majority of evidence for the Two Layer Hypothesis consists of dental and morphometric analyses from archaeological sites throughout Southeast Asia, most prominently Thailand and Vietnam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaic humans in Southeast Asia</span>

The region of Southeast Asia is considered a possible place for the evidence of archaic human remains that could be found due to the pathway between Australia and mainland Southeast Asia, where the migration of multiple early humans has occurred out of Africa. One of many pieces of evidence is of the early human found in central Java of Indonesia in the late 19th century by Eugene Dubois, and later in 1937 at Sangiran site by G.H.R. van Koenigswald. These skull and fossil materials are Homo erectus, named Pithecanthropus erectus by Dubois and Meganthropus palaeojavanicus by van Koenigswald. They were dated to c. 1.88 and 1.66 Ma, as suggested by Swisher et al. by analysis of volcanic rocks.

<i>Ape to Man</i> Dramatised documentary on the finding the missing link in evolution

Ape to Man is a dramatised documentary on the scientific community's journey to find the missing link in human evolution, between our ancestors the apes and modern man today.

References

  1. Pramujiono, Agung (December 2009). "Berbagai pandangan asal bangsa dan Bahasa Indonesia: dari kajian lingusitik historis komparatif sampai arkeolinguistik dan paleolinguistik". Medan Bahasa Jurnal Ilmiah Kebahasaan (in Indonesian). 4 (2). Surabaya: Balai Bahasa: 61–71. ISSN   1907-1787.
  2. Storm, Paul; Wood, Rachel; Stringer, Chris; Bartsiokas, Antonis; de Vos, John; Aubert, Maxime; Kinsley, Les; Grün, Rainer (May 2013). "U-series and radiocarbon analyses of human and faunal remains from Wajak, Indonesia". Journal of Human Evolution. 64 (5): 356–365. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.11.002. PMID   23465338. Laser ablation U-series dating results on human and faunal bone fragments from Wajak, Indonesia, indicate a minimum age of between 37.4 and 28.5 ka (thousands of years ago) for the whole assemblage. These are significantly older than previously published radiocarbon estimates on bone carbonate, which suggested a Holocene age for a human bone fragment.
  3. Krigbaum, John (2017). "Early Occupation of Southeast Asia: Dental-Skeletal Evidence". In Habu, Junko; Lape, Peter V.; Olsen, John W. (eds.). Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology. New York, NY: Springer. ISBN   978-1-4939-6521-2.
  4. Bellwood, Peter (2007). Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (revised ed.). Canberra: ANU E Press. ISBN   978-1-921313-12-7.
  5. Storm 1995.

Bibliography