Late pleistocene subsistence strategies in Island Southeast Asia and their implications for understanding the development of modern human behaviour

In 1958 the discovery of the Deep Skull in the West Mouth of the Niah Caves, Sarawak, represented, for that time, the earliest radiometrically dated evidence of anatomically modern humans anywhere in the world (Harrisson 1959c; Hunt & Barker, this volume). After almost half a century as the subject of considerable debate in terms of its authenticity, now lately resolved and coni rmed (Barker et al. 2007), the Deep Skull and other subsequently discovered early modern human remains (e.g., Demeter et al., 2012; D é troit et al. 2004; Pawlik et al., this volume) attest to the presence of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia for at least the last 45,000 years (all dates herein are calibrated), and possibly as long as 60–70 ka if the Callao human remains from northern Luzon, Philippines, are coni rmed to be those of an anatomically modern human. Less well known is the fact that the hominin fossils at Niah were excavated (meticulously for the time) from within rich cultural deposits of similar antiquity. Examination of the artefacts and biological remains from Niah suggests that human inhabitants of the cave were already eminently capable of exploiting tropical environments. It is unlikely that this evidence came from people who were new arrivals in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA); nor were their cultural practices or subsistence strategies directly drawn or directly comparable to the Palaeolithic record as it appears in western Eurasia – the traditional point of comparison. The data emerging from Southeast Asia during the past decade echoes that which is appearing in Greater Australia (see, e.g., papers by Balme & O’Connor; Cosgrove, Pike-Tay & Roebroeks; Summerhayes & Ford; and Davidson, all in this volume), elsewhere in Asia (e.g., Brantingham et al. 2004) and in Africa, starting with McBrearty and Brooks (2000), who questioned the evolutionary signii cance of changes seen in the European Palaeolithic and whether these can legitimately continue to be seen as a model of our species’ modern character. In this chapter we summarise the Late Pleistocene (dei ned as 126–11.7 ka) environmental history of Southeast Asia and review the current state of knowledge about early tropical forager subsistence here. We consider in what ways the development of hunter-gatherer adaptations were inl uenced by the structure and composition of the l ora and fauna of this region, and the challenges of living in the diverse ecological settings that existed in Southeast Asia. We conclude with the contention that there is need for more regionalised explanations for the emergence of complex human behaviours.