Notes on the Morphology and Age of the Tabon Cave Fossil <i>Homo sapiens</i>

Dizon, Eusebio; Détroit, Florent; Sémah, François; Falguères, Christophe; Hameau, Sébastien; Ronquillo, Wilfredo P.; Cabanis, Emmanuel

doi:10.1086/342432

Cited by 59 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…There is irrefutable evidence for a small-bodied hominin on the island of Flores during the late Pleistocene, but this is widely considered to be another species (Brown et al 2004). Possible evidence for a hominin of short stature in the early paleoanthropological record of the northern Philippines does exist but is limited to a single meta tarsal, whereas later human remains indicate a mosaic of both gracile and robust phenotypes (Dizon et al 2002;Détroit et al this issue).…”

Section: Ancestral Connections: the Physical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Revisiting the “Negrito” Hypothesis: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Human Prehistory in Southeast Asia

Endicott

2013

Human Biology

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The "negrito" hypothesis predicts that a shared phenotype among various contemporary groups of huntergatherers in Southeast Asia -dark skin, short stature, tight curly hair -is due to common descent from a region-wide, pre-Neolithic substrate of humanity. The alternative is that their distinctive phenotype results from convergent evolution. The core issues of the negrito hypothesis are today more relevant than ever to studies of human evolution, including the out-of-Africa migration, admixture with Denisovans, and the effects of environment and ecology on life-history traits. Understanding the current distribution of the negrito phenotype dictates a wide-ranging remit for study, including the articulation of the relationship between foragers and farmers in the present, the development of settled agriculture in the mid-Holocene, and terminal Pleistocene population expansions. The consensus reached by the contributors to this special double issue of Human Biology is that there is not yet conclusive evidence either for or against the negrito hypothesis. Nevertheless, the process of revisiting the problem will benefit the knowledge of the human prehistory of Southeast Asia. Whether the term negrito accurately reflects the all-encompassing nature of the resulting inquiry is in itself questionable, but the publication of this double issue is testament to the enduring ability of this hypothesis to unite disparate academic disciplines in a common purpose.

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Section: Ancestral Connections: the Physical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Revisiting the “Negrito” Hypothesis: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Human Prehistory in Southeast Asia

Endicott

2013

Human Biology

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“…A synthetic publication of the results of the new studies and analyses undertaken in this frame is currently under way. However, several significant results have already been obtained and published: the description and direct dating of several of the human fossils (Dizon et al 2002;Détroit et al 2004;Corny 2008) …”

Section: From 1962 To 2012: a Short History Of Excavations And Researmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study of the human fossils from Tabon Cave was undertaken in two steps, and some of the work is still in progress. The three human remains selected for their potential ancestry by Fox (1970: 40), including the famous Tabon frontal bone, were described in detail for the first time, and two of them were directly dated (Dizon et al 2002). The second step included the analysis of 11 new human bone fragments found during the excavations undertaken by the National Museum from 1999 to 2001, including a direct date obtained for one of the specimens (Détroit et al 2004).…”

Section: Age and Morphological Characteristics Of The Human Fossils Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, we focus exclusively on Philippine negritos through examination of currently available Upper Pleistocene archaeological and paleoanthropological evidence from Palawan and Luzon Islands. Upper Pleistocene human fossils are still very scarce in the Philippine archaeological record, but excavations in Tabon Cave in Palawan and Callao Cave in Luzon have given the oldest human remains known so far from the Philippines (Dizon et al 2002;Détroit et al 2004;Mijares et al 2010). The geographical location of those two archaeological sites (Figure 1) is important because Palawan and Luzon Islands are still inhabited by negrito groups.…”

Section: Introduction: Who Are the "Negritos"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2013

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Abstract"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. Abstract "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 Pleisto...

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“…Several studies in population genetics, including Omoto et al (1981) and Delfin et al (2011), indicate considerable genetic distances between Philippine negrito ethnic groups, implying long separation times. 2 The likelihood that some Philippine negrito groups have been separated for many thousands of years is also supported by archaeological evidence for a pre-Neolithic population that inhabited the Tabon Caves on the island of Palawan beginning as early as 47 kya (Dizon et al 2002). 3 The indigenous population of the Malay Peninsula is conventionally divided into Austronesian-speaking coastal Malays who probably reached the area from southwest Borneo between 2 and 2.5 kya (Blust 1994: 47), and a historically earlier population confined largely to the interior rainforest that is called "Orang Asli" (original people) by the coastal Malays.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Terror from the Sky: Unconventional Linguistic Clues to the Negrito Past

Blust

2013

Human Biology

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Within recorded history. most Southeast Asian peoples have been of "southern Mongoloid" physical type, whether they speak Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Austronesian, Tai-Kadai, or Hmong-Mien languages. However, population distributions suggest that this is a post-Pleistocene phenomenon and that for tens of millennia before the last glaciation ended Greater Mainland Southeast Asia, which included the currently insular world that rests on the Sunda Shelf, was peopled by short, dark-skinned, frizzy-haired foragers whose descendants in the Philippines came to be labeled by the sixteenth-century Spanish colonizers as "negritos," a term that has since been extended to similar groups throughout the region. There are three areas in which these populations survived into the present so as to become part of written history: the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, and the Andaman Islands. All Philippine negritos speak Austronesian languages, and all Malayan negritos speak languages in the nuclear Mon-Khmer branch of Austroasiatic, but the linguistic situation in the Andamans is a world apart. Given prehistoric language shifts among both Philippine and Malayan negritos, the prospects of determining whether disparate negrito populations were once a linguistically or culturally unified community would appear hopeless. Surprisingly, however, some clues to a common negrito past do survive in a most unexpected way.

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Notes on the Morphology and Age of the Tabon Cave Fossil Homo sapiens

Cited by 59 publications

References 4 publications

Introduction: Revisiting the “Negrito” Hypothesis: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Human Prehistory in Southeast Asia

Introduction: Revisiting the “Negrito” Hypothesis: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Human Prehistory in Southeast Asia

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

Terror from the Sky: Unconventional Linguistic Clues to the Negrito Past

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