Unit II Essay - Doyongan, Charisse Aleli; Edubos, Mouriette; Moreno,

Michelle; Pabelonio, Dil Nicole

Homo Sapiens Dispersal Out of Africa

● Homo sapiens are the earliest representation of our species more than
300 thousand years ago.
● Eurasia had Archaic hominins.
○ Neanderthal range - before 300 thousand years ago, disappeared
around 39 thousand years ago.
○ Denisovans - exist in East Asia and possibly in Southeast Asia.
○ Late surviving Homo erectus - exist in Southeast Asia.
● Homo sapiens out of Africa - between 70 & 50 thousand years before the
present.
● Modern humans reached Australia - as early as 50 thousand years ago.
● Northern parts of East Asia & Europe - 45 thousand years ago.
● Earlier migration of wave out of Africa shreds of evidence:
○ Near East - sites of Skhul & Qaizah, between 130 & 100 thousand
years before present.
● Paleogenetic evidence of breeding between Neanderthals & early Modern
Humans - before 200 thousand years before the present.
● The “Levant” - contact zone of Neanderthals and modern human
encounters and possibly an exchange of genetic material.
● Apidima cave complex site
○ Two human fossil crania
■ founded in late 1970 & 1980 by the University of Athens
Medical School.
■ discovered in a block of rock (filled with breccia rock) at the
ceiling of one of the caves.
■ named as Apidima 1 & Apidima 2
● Apidima 1
■ less preserved because a lot of its cranial parts
are missing.
■ an adult.
■ combination of ancestral and unique modern
human features.
■ Homo sapiens are based on classifications
because of the rounded aspects of its skull,
rounded skull only for modern humans.
■ more than 90% of modern humans.
■ approx. 210 thousand years ago.
● Apidima 2
■ more preserved, almost complete parts.
■ suffered from distortion.
■ an adult.
■ has Neanderthal or pre-Neanderthal features.
■ approx. 150 thousand years before the
present.
 ■ the shape of its skull is a cluster of
Neanderthals or bet. Neanderthals and
Pre-Neanderthals.
■ more than 90% of Neanderthal.
■ approx. 170 thousand years before the
present.
■ Both are living in Southern Greece in the middle Pleistocene.
■ Early Homo sapiens group approx. 210 thousand years
before the present followed by the Neanderthal group at
least 170 thousand years ago.
● All of the evidence that is shown is similar to the Levant.
○ where early modern humans appeared to have spread early.
● Early modern humans have not survived for a period of longer-term.
● The early spreading of Homo sapiens out of Africa occurred earlier and
further than reaching Europe by 150 thousand years before earlier than
the expected years.
DNA Genesis: The Children of Adam (National Geographic)
● Y-chromosomes are the very beginning of our ancestors. Our imprints
from one generation to another.
● Y-chromosomes can confirm the links to our ultimate ancestor.
● The mutation appears from one man to their child that marks all the
descendants.
● Y-chromosomes adam the patrilineal common ancestor and the
mitochondrial eve the matrilineal common ancestor.
● Both common ancestry can be multiplied, spread, and eventually replaced
by other lineage merging from time to time.
● Billions of people can be related by the lineage of our ultimate ancestor.
● The ancestors we have do not only settle in one place. Some stayed,
some vanished and some migrated to the other parts of the land.
● The remains of the settlers at the cave only meant that global climate
change had made them vanish and migrate to other places.
● A drop in temperature in an area can cause a change in the survival of
some people.
● As our ancestors left Africa because of drought where they were pushed
to move out of the Middle East, which made them to India, to China, and
other lands near the areas.
● The journey of Ancient Europe as the first caveman who is artistic where
caves have paintings to the ancient world journey, the journey to the ice
age.
● Our physical body can adapt to the temperature changes in the places
that make us survive. As people are isolated because of the ice age they
have developed new physical features.
● The weather is one of the reasons why our ancestors migrated and can
survive as the body adapts to the temperature of their current occupation.
 ● The temperature fell new landmass (Beringia) has been exposed beneath
the Bering sea that connects land.
● Where exploration and migration happen again and mankind found a new
home.
The First Humans in Southeast Asia - Dr. Art Bettis
● Java is a really interesting place, because it all started there as far as
human fossils. Eugène Dubois, discovered what he called the
Pithecanthropus Erectus, which has since been called Homo erectus
along Solo river in Central Java at a place called tournelle in 1891, and
Dubois was an ardent follower of Darwin.
● Large group of people thought that Asia was the cradle of human
evolution. Dubois found this site at Chanel, where he had some cranial
remains culottes, as well as some long bones and a few other remains
that were obviously human. And in 1931 to 33, the geological survey
Dutch East Indies, had an expedition, mostly a fossil expedition focused
on vertebrate fossils. But in the process of doing this, they discovered a
large deposit of Homo erectus or express Erectus at a site called Nan
Dong in Central Java too.
● In the 50s, and 60s, Richard Leakey and his colleagues working in Africa
and the Rift Valley, found some earlier hominids, eventually humans and
then subsequently Homo erectus has been found in the Rift Valley.
● A climatic environmental barrier for hominids early on to move out of
Africa.
● Because they're digging through and fossils are worth a lot of money. In
Indonesia, there's a big market in human fossils. And one decent jaw
piece of a jaw of Homo erectus basically sets one of these rural people for
life.
● And what that kind of outcrop pattern of rocks tells a geologist is that that's
what's called a dome. We find the Homo Erectus fossils in the upper part
of this unit, the Sangha run, and throughout this yellow of a palm.
● Fossils are found often when farmers extend their fields into the edges of
these outcrops, or they try to go up a hill and they'll find them as they're
digging through.
● Well, the reason we're interested in pumice is because these little black
spots and these are hornblende dark minerals, it's in the plumbeous and
at hornblende. You can apply a dating technique called argon dating. We
can actually figure out how old this pumice is. And if we find that pumice in
here, it gives us a clue about how old the deposit that contains the pumice
might be.
● Homo Erectus is arriving. Java, we know when 1.66 to 1.5, we have
evidence of the bones there. In order to get a landbridge to put somebody
here, we got to go 50 to 60 meters lower in sea level than we are today.
So it has to be during a glacial period, a glacial period that is extensive
enough to drop it at least 60 meters to basically make this connection.
● Saundra formation got poorly drain organic rich settings. And we have
these verta salty soils that shrink and swell which tells us we have a wet
season and the dry season. As we go up into the pond and higher up into
the pond formation, there's a lot moreso carbonate accumulation and it
continues to increase going up through time. That usually indicates some
sort of a drying trend, the drier you get to a point the more carbonate you
get. Root traces become pretty abundant, much more abundant, they get
a lot finer, as you go up into the pond, they also go shallower into the soil,
all suggesting these might be grasses. Some paleosols low in the palm
have properties a modern for sales or close for sale. And paleosols higher
in the section then have properties, modern Savanna sorts of grasses with
some trees, but mostly grasses are increasing upward.
● The environment is diverse. Further along Homo Erectus gets in this
place. Homo Erectus that's coming in here between 1.6 and 1.5. sea
levels and 150 meter are in 60 meters. The sun does shelf out here is
occupied by really extensive tropical grassland low lying areas here.
Savannah, and then there's also open forest so you probably got marshes
around the rivers in the low lying areas. Grasslands, probably rimming that
and then up onto the edge of the higher areas, savannas in between and
then closed woodlands, maybe gallery forests, long rivers. So these
glacial period vegetation, mosaics, this area provided really ideal
conditions for fanling human migration through the area.
● The important thing to remember is that Homo erectus is just part of the
fauna. it's an animal and in with the rest of the animals and it's just sort of
making a living with the rest of the animals and so rather than striving out
and hit its way towards Southeast Asia.
● This is the Rift Valley where, where Homo erectus his ancestors evolved,
and where at least the predecessor to Homo Erectus evolved. This is the
likely conditions that that predecessor and the earliest Homo Erectus were
probably adapted to. And you can see it's a mosaic. It's a Savanna, little
tropical rainforest, but mostly Savanna, woodlands and scrub. Now when
you go into a Glacial Maximum, what happens with Africa, it really dries
out.
● Many of these environments that we're counting, encountering in this early
Middle Pleistocene, Southeast Asia, are not very unlike those in East
Africa. There's savannas, marshy areas, open woodlands, and
grasslands. Asian Hmong Erectus, Homo erectus fossils aren't found just
throughout Asia, throughout East Eastern Asia at all. There is a bipolar
distribution, a group of Homo erectus localities in the north of China. And
there's the Java in Homo Erectus and nothing in between.
● Southeast Asia during the Glacial Period isn't much different in Rift Valley.
There isn't much adaptation change.
● Glacial period provided the chronological conditions in geographic for
populations to move.
Austronesian Migration (Crossing-Civilization)
● 5,000 years ago the Southern Asian ancestor came from Southern China
South toward Taiwan and entered the Philippines for thousands of years.
● Traveled west toward Madagascar in Africa and east toward Eastern
Island near South America, they are called the Austronesian speaking
people.
● They are the speakers that are heard in the Philippines, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and many other islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
● The first Austronesian Filipino arrived about 4,000 years ago by a boat
from Taiwan through Batanes and Northern Luzon.
● The Philippines is the island as their entry into the tropical part of the
world.
● Austronesian
○ they developed their methods of crossing the sea by building
canoes.
○ expert seafarers and boat builders.
○ developed technology to navigate across the open sea to distant
islands.
○ invented the outrigger canoe and the precursor of the catamaran, a
double-hulled sailing canoe.
○ colonized the island of Southeast Asia and Pacific and imposed
their language on their subjects.
● The Philippine early Austronesian used outriggers to sail from island to
island.
● The ancestors of the Filipinos from textbooks believed that they had
crossed through the land bridges to reach the Philippine island but by the
evidence, it shows that they came by a boat from Southern China to
Taiwan.
● The seafaring culture was instrumental in the spread of Austronesian
languages during the Neolithic era.
● 1,200 languages are considered as part of the Austronesian family spoken
by 350 million people.
● A burial jar from the neolithic era is found in the Manunggul cave in
Palawan, it shows that the sea dominated life and death.
● Boats and sea are one of the beliefs of Austronesian speaking people.
● It is shown in their architecture, a traditional home reflects the Southeast
Asian concept of the upper and underworld and earthly wellbeing.
● Filipinos, Indonesian, Malaysian houses have spaces below for their
animals, rooms in the middle for humans, and shrines for ancestral
worships.
● They share other cultural traits that indicate common origin and history
despite the distance between the islands
○ weaving clothes using a backstrap loom.
○ chewing a betelnut quids that some results in the reddening of teeth
● They had boats to travel and carried out their trades from one island to
another.
● Early Austronesian Filipinos brought nephrite and jade artifacts from
Taiwan and spread them through the island. It is believed that the jade
existed for at least 3,000 years ago.
● Lingling-o a common ornament among Southeast Asian people such as
the Igorots of the Cordillera region. It is a pendant or amulet. It is similar to
those found in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
● Austronesian language was the most widespread family of languages
during the 1500s.
● The Philippines played an important role in the spread of Austronesian
languages and showed cultures and commerce that prospered between
the Philippines and its neighbors at least 5 millennia ago.