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...First, the human fossils cannot be directly dated, since the site is a world heritage area and the fossils are protected by Laotian laws.Second, there are very few animal bones and no suitable cave decorations, either of which might be used for dating.And third, the entrance of the site is wide and steep. This means any charcoal found in the cave, which is useful for dating, may well have come from outside—so it has little relation to the age of the sediment inside.This means the backbone of the timeline must be established by the dating of the sediment itself using...

The remains of some of the earliest modern humans to enter Asia have been discovered in a Laos cave, according to a study published Tuesday.Excavations in the Tam Pa Ling cave over the past seven years revealed bone fragments belonging to early modern humans who inhabited the region some 86,000 years ago, and may have lived in the mountainous area for at least 68,000 years, according to Nature. The discovery pushes back the previous timeline on the exploration of humans, as these remains may be from some of the first humans to enter southeast Asia after leaving Africa...A small piece...