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Cave art depicting a hunting scene has been found in Indonesia dated to 44,000 years old, making it the oldest rock art created by humans. The painting itself is intriguing because it shows a group of figures that represent half-animal, half-human hybrids called therianthropes. The therianthropes are hunting warty pigs and dwarf buffaloes called anoas using spears and ropes. The abstract figures depict a story, which changes our view of early human cognition, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The art could even show the foundation of human spirituality, given the supernatural scene depicted. "To me,...

Tuesday, 18 February, 2003, 16:57 GMT Date for first Australians The Mungo burials have cast doubt on "Out of Africa" A new analysis of Australia's oldest human remains suggests humans arrived on the continent about 50,000 years ago. The evidence is based on a re-examination of the so-called Mungo Man skeleton, unearthed in New South Wales (NSW) in 1974. Scientists say the individual was probably buried about 40,000 years ago, when humans had been living in the area for some 10,000 years. We find no evidence to support claims for human occupation or burials near 60 kyr ago James Bowler...

A 1996 expedition resulted in conclusions that the ancient early human species, Homo erectus, coexisted for a time with modern humans in Indonesia. The most recent expedition suggests otherwise, challenging a widely held hypothesis of human evolution. Homo erectus, an ancient human ancestor that lived 1.8 million - 35,000 years ago, is said by theorists of human evolution to have lived alongside Homo sapiens (modern humans) in Indonesia, surviving most other Homo erectus populations that became extinct in Africa and most of Eurasia by 500,000 B.P. Perhaps not so, according to an international team of researchers, after conducting archaeological investigations...

New age estimates for Homo erectus fossils on the Indonesian island of Java have physical anthropologists scratching their crania. After convincing most of their colleagues that H. erectus may have persisted on the Indonesian island of Java as recently as 30,000 years ago -- late enough to have coexisted in Asia with modern humans for more than 100,000 years -- anthropologists presented new analyses April 14 suggesting the fossils in question may actually predate Homo sapiens by hundreds of thousands of years. It all depends which radiometric method you use to assess the fossils' age, New York University anthropologist Susan...

Old tools shed light on hobbit origins Tiny toolmaker or microcephalic? The 'hobbit' debate continues. Michael Hopkin They may have been tiny, but the hobbits of the Indonesian island of Flores are still the focus of the biggest controversy in anthropology. The latest twist in the tale suggests that these one-metre-tall hominids, with a brain the size of a grapefruit, were the final members of a tool-making tradition stretching back more than 800,000 years. But amid fresh doubts over the species' evolutionary history, the idea that the curious creatures were deformed modern humans refuses to go away. Tools from Liang...

Java Man's First Tools Richard Stone INDO-PACIFIC PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION CONGRESS, 20-26 MARCH 2006, MANILA About 1.7 million years ago, a leggy human ancestor, Homo erectus, began prowling the steamy swamps and uplands of Java. That much is known from the bones of more than 100 individuals dug up on the Indonesian island since 1891. But the culture of early "Java Man" has been a mystery: No artifacts older than 1 million years had been found--until now. At the meeting, archaeologist Harry Widianto of the National Research Centre of Archaeology in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wowed colleagues with slides showing stone tools found...

A routine construction dig has turned up a fossil skull that is giving scientists a better glimpse inside the head of our ancient predecessor, Homo erectus. According to a report published today in the journal Science, the find suggests that the H. erectus population that occupied the island of Java was isolated from other Asian populations and probably made only minimal genetic contributions to the ancestry of modern humans. So far, more than 20 hominid skull fossils have been found at sites in Java. The latest, dubbed Sm 4 (see image), was recovered from the bed of the Solo River...

New Java Man As Controversial As Old Java Man   02/27/2003National Geographic says that a new Homo erectus skull named Sm4 reported from Java raises questions on the human family tree.  Scientists differ where it fits.  Tokyo anthropologist Hisao Baba and team, writing in the Feb. 28 issue of Science, are trying to make it a transitional form between African Homo erectus and modern humans, but others think it has nothing to do with the human lineage.  Ann Gibbons in her Science News of the Week commentary says, ”Modern anatomy in the interior of this skull surprised researchers.” Furthermore, dating of...