4000 Years of Migration and Cultural Exchange

The project reported on in this monograph has been concerned with the archaeology of the Batanes Islands, an archipelago that must have been settled quite early in the process of Austronesian dispersal from Taiwan southwards into the Philippines. A multi-phase archaeological sequence covering the past 4000 years for the islands of Itbayat, Batan, Sabtang and Siayan is presented, extending from the Neolithic to the final phase of Batanes prehistory, just prior to the late 17th century arrivals of foreign navigators such as Jirobei (Japan) and William Dampier (England), followed by the first Spanish missionaries. So far, no traces of preceramic settlement have been found in Batanes, but the archaeological sequence there from the Neolithic onwards, like that in the Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon, is now one of the best-established in the Philippines

Small Size in the Philippine Human Fossil Record: Is It Meaningful for a Better Understanding of the Evolutionary History of the Negritos?

Pygmy populations are recognized in several places over the world, especially in Western Africa and in Southeast Asia (Philippine negritos, for instance). Broadly defined as small-bodied Homo sapiens (compared with neighboring populations), their origins and the nature of the processes involved in the maintenance of their phenotype over time are highly debated. Major results have been recently obtained from population genetics on present-day negrito populations, but their evolutionary history remains largely unresolved. We present and discuss the Upper Pleistocene human remains recovered from Tabon Cave and Callao Cave in the Philippines, which are potentially highly relevant to these research questions. Human fossils have been recovered in large numbers from Tabon Cave (Palawan Island) but mainly from reworked and mixed sediments from several archaeological layers. We review and synthesize the long and meticulous collaborative work done on the archives left from the 1960s excavations and on the field. The results demonstrate the long history of human occupations in the cave, since at least ~30,000 BP. The examination of the Tabon human remains shows a large variability: large and robust for one part of the sample, and small and gracile for the other part. The latter would fit quite comfortably within the range of variation of Philippine negritos. Farther north, on Luzon Island, the human third metatarsal recently recovered from Callao Cave and dated to ~66,000 BP is now the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Philippines. Previous data show that, compared with H. sapiens (including Philippine negritos), this bone presents a very small size and several unusual morphological characteristics. We present a new analytical approach using three-dimensional geometric morphometrics for comparing the Callao fossil to a wide array of extant Asian mammals, including nonhuman primates and H. sapiens. The results demonstrate that the shape of the Callao metatarsal is definitely closer to humans than to any other groups. The fossil clearly belongs to the genus Homo; however, it remains at the margin of the variation range of H. sapiens. Because of its great antiquity and the presence of another diminutive species of the genus Homo in the Wallace area during this time period (H. floresiensis), we discuss here in detail the affinities and potential relatedness of the Callao fossil with negritos that are found today on Luzon Island

Ancient jades map 3,000 years of prehistoric exchange in Southeast Asia

We have used electron probe microanalysis to examine Southeast Asian nephrite (jade) artifacts, many archeologically excavated, dating from 3000 B.C. through the first millennium A.D. The research has revealed the existence of one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world. Green nephrite from a source in eastern Taiwan was used to make two very specific forms of ear pendant that were distributed, between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., through the Philippines, East Malaysia, southern Vietnam, and peninsular Thailand, forming a 3,000-km-diameter halo around the southern and eastern coastlines of the South China Sea. Other Taiwan nephrite artifacts, especially beads and bracelets, were distributed earlier during Neolithic times throughout Taiwan and from Taiwan into the Philippines

Homo luzonensis : principales caractéristiques et implications pour l’histoire évolutionnaire du genre

La nouvelle espèce Homo luzonensis a été décrite en 2019 à partir d’un assemblage constitué de treize éléments fossiles découverts dans la grotte de Callao (île de Luzon, Philippines) en 2007, 2011 et 2015. La datation directe de deux de ces fossiles par les séries de l’uranium indique des âges minimums respectifs de 50 000 et 67 000 ans. Dans cette présentation, nous montrons que ces spécimens présentent une combinaison de caractéristiques morphologiques primitives (i.e. ressemblant à Austra..