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* An adult male named Rakus chewed a plant used by people in Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation, then applied it to an injury on his right cheek * Photographs show the animal’s wound closed within a month without any problems ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rakus, a Sumatran orangutan, is seen two months after he started treating himself with a medicinal plant at a protected rainforest area in Indonesia. Photo:Safruddin/Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour via Reuters AsiaSoutheast Asia Wild orangutan seen using medicinal plant to treat wound, scientists say An adult male named Rakus chewed a plant used by people...

The death toll from a volcano eruption in Indonesia has risen to 22 after nine more bodies were discovered, a search and rescue agency official said Tuesday. Mount Marapi on the island of Sumatra spewed an ash tower 9,800 feet — taller than the volcano itself — into the sky on Sunday. Hundreds of rescuers have worked for days to find missing hikers, which numbered 10 on Tuesday before the local rescue agency's announcement that most had been found, bringing the days-long search closer to an end. "Nine of 10 missing victims were found dead this afternoon and at the...

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesia’s Marapi volcano in the West Sumatra province erupted on Sunday, sending a thick plume of toxic ash and smoke nearly 10,000 feet into the air and was accompanied by a deafening roar that could be heard for miles, according to the country’s disaster management agency. Indonesia’s National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure (BNPB) said in a news release that the nearly 9,500-foot volcano began erupting just before 3 p.m. local time Sunday, and volcanic ash rain from the eruption was reported to have occurred in the Nagari Lasi area of the Canduang District in West Sumatra’s Agam...

The silent ceramic objects that survive from medieval Indian Ocean trade carry incredible stories of a time when South Asia had the upper hand over China...In the 830s CE, a ship tried to make a daring crossing. Navigating treacherous reefs and shoals, it was attempting to move from the South China Sea to the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. After a brief stop there, it intended to catch the monsoon winds to India. This attempt failed, and the ship’s contents — ranging from marvellously carved golden plates to glazed ceramics, from a diplomat’s ink-stone to a small toy dog...

An engineer claims he’s used a computer program to discover flight MH370 was put into a 20-minute holding pattern before vanishing. The doomed jet was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in 2014 when it disappeared with 239 passengers on board, sparking one of the greatest aviation mysteries ever. Richard Godfrey has been tracking the Boeing 777’s flight path using WSPRnet – which uses radio signals – and claims to have made a major breakthrough. He says the plane was put into a holding pattern for around 22 minutes near the coastline of Sumatra, an Indonesian island, reports AirlineRatings.

It was a fabled kingdom known in ancient times as the Island of Gold, a civilisation with untold wealth that explorers tried in vain to find long after its unexplained disappearance from history around the 14th century. The site of Srivijaya may finally have been found – by local fishing crews carrying out night-time dives on the Musi River near Palembang on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Their extraordinary catches are treasures ranging from a lifesize eighth-century Buddhist statue studded with precious gems – worth millions of pounds – to jewels worthy of kings....

The tussle between the US and China seeks a formal garb after the AUKUS was formed, and now the US wants more micro engagements in the region The United States is fully engaged in shifting its unsuccessful strategic workshop from Afghanistan to the East. That is what Joe Biden implied in his justification behind the withdrawal of the US forces from Afghanistan during the first week of this month. Followed by this statement, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Southeast Asia, an indication that the US was now permanently seeking serious engagement in the East against rapidly increasing Chinese belligerence. The...

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago... The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks. According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo...

"We found the very first evidence for archaeological assemblages in association with the Toba ash", says Petraglia. "We found Middle Palaeolithic assemblages below and above the ash indicating the technologies being used at the time of the event. When the stone tool assemblages were analyzed from contexts above and below the ash, we found that they were very similar........We therefore concluded that the Middle Palaeolithic hominins survived the eruption and there was population continuity. This is not what would have been expected based on general theories that the Toba super-eruption decimated populations." Moreover, similar findings published by Christine Lane, et...

...a team of archaeologists excavating in India then claimed to have found evidence that modern humans were there before the eruption possibly as early as 120,000 years ago, much earlier than Europe or the Near East were colonised. These findings, based on the discovery of stone tools below a layer of Toba ash, were published in Science in 2007. Now Professor Richards working principally with the archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, with a team including Huddersfield University s Dr Martin Carr and colleagues from York and Porto has published his...

The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say. In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals. An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe. It could find none... Researchers estimate some 2,000-3,000 cubic kilometres of rock and ash were thrown from the volcano when it blew its top on what is...

Super-eruption: no problem?Tools found before and after a massive eruption hint at a hardy population. Katharine Sanderson Massive eruptions make it tough for life living under the ash cloud. A stash of ancient tools in India hints that life carried on as usual for humans living in the fall-out of a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues found the stone tools at a site called Jwalapuram, in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, above and below a thick layer of ash from the eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia —...

KARO, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian officials warned on Monday against the prospect of further eruptions from an active volcano on the island of Sumatra after it emitted a huge column of ash, causing panic among residents. Mount Sinabung, which has seen a spike in activity since 2010, erupted for around nine minutes on Sunday, sending clouds of volcanic ash 7 km (4.4 miles) into the sky. Authorities left unchanged the alert level for Sinabung, but urged residents to use face masks and keep indoors to guard against volcanic ashfall. Mount Sinabung, which is 2,460 m (8,071 ft) high, is among...

Researchers from James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, chose the bat poo in their quest to answer to a long-standing question: why is there some much biodiversity on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java, when not so long ago (geologically speaking) they were all part of one vast continent? One theory has been that the former continent (Sundaland) was dissected by a savanna corridor. "That might explain why Sumatra and Borneo each have their own species of orang-utan, even though they were linked by land for millions of years," Dr Chris Wurster said. "The corridor would have divided the...

10 Strange Archaeological Finds Straight Out Of A Horror Story Scattered under the ground beneath our feet are the remains of history. There are little pieces of the lives of people who lived before us that give us little glimpses into who they were—the things they held dear, the homes they lived in, and the bones of their decaying bodies. But life thousands of years ago wasn’t always gentle and easy. Sometimes, when these remains are uncovered, the stories they reveal are brutal and violent—and sometimes, they’re pulled straight out of a horror story. 10 A Pit Of Amputated Arms10b-amputated-arm-bones-from-pit...

About eight hundred years ago, a ship sank in the Java Sea off the coast of the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. There are no written records saying where the ship was going or where it came from -- the only clues are the mostly-disintegrated structure of the vessel and its cargo, which was discovered on the seabed in the 1980s. Since the wreck's recovery in the 1990s, researchers have been piecing together the world that the Java Sea Shipwreck was part of. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, archaeologists have demonstrated a new...

The scale of the dramatic collapse of the Indonesian volcano that led to last Saturday's devastating tsunami in the Sunda Strait is becoming clear. Researchers have examined satellite images of Anak Krakatau to calculate the amount of rock and ash that sheared off into the sea. They say the volcano has lost more than two-thirds of its height and volume during the past week. Much of this missing mass could have slid into the sea in one movement. It would certainly explain the displacement of water and the generation of waves up to 5m high that then inundated the...

Hundreds of people have been killed and injured after a tsunami struck tourist beaches and coastal areas around Indonesia’s Sunda Strait on Saturday night. Officials said at least 222 people were dead and 843 injured after a volcanic eruption thought to have been caused by an underwater landslide sent waves surging towards the coastlines of Java and Sumatra islands. Indonesia’s disaster management agency said 28 people were still missing and warned the death toll could rise further as not all affected areas had been reached. The worst affected area was the Pandeglang region of Banten province in Java, which encompasses...

At least 20 people have been killed and 165 injured after a tsunami hit the coast around Indonesia's Sunda Strait, government officials say. The country's disaster management agency says two people are missing, and dozens of buildings were damaged. It says the possible cause of the tsunami were undersea landslides after the Krakatoa volcano erupted. The Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra connects the Java Sea to the Indian Ocean. The deaths were reported in the Pandeglang, South Lampung and Serang regions. Officials warn that the death toll is likely to rise further. The disaster management agency...

'Krakatoa': The Wrath of the Earth By RICHARD ELLIS The cover of "Krakatoa" by Simon Winchester. When a volcano erupts, it can do terrible damage, as Vesuvius did in A.D. 79, burying the cities and inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But as the tens of thousands of people now living on its slopes can attest, Vesuvius is still there, and so are most of the world's better-known volcanoes, such as Etna, Rainier, Kilauea, Paricutin and Fujiyama (yes, Fuji is a volcano; it last erupted in 1707). Even Mount St. Helens, the top of which blew off in 1980, is (mostly)...