Early Pleistocene route to Sangiran opened to Javanese Homo erectus
- 1ISTerre, CNRS, Université-Grenoble-Alpes, France (laurent.husson@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr)
- 2CEREGE, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS-IRD-Collège de France, Technopôle de l’Environnement Arbois-Méditerrannée, BP80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence, France
- 3Balai Arkeologi Provinsi D.I. Yogyakarta, Jl. Gedongkuning 174, Yogyakarta 55171, Indonesia
- 4Research Center for Geotechnology, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Bandung, Indonesia
The chronology of the arrival of Homo erectus on the island of Java is a cornerstone of paleoanthropology. Understanding the dispersal routes of Homo erectus, but also of other hominin lineages in Asia and across Southeast Asia, depends on this timing. Their dispersal across Sundaland, in particular, is challenged by an extremely transient climatic and geological environment during Early Pleistocene. Furthermore, ages of first appearance of Javanese H. erectus remain controversial. New age constraints based on cosmogenic nuclides 10Be and 26Al produced in situ indicate that H. erectus reached Java and dwelled at Sangiran at least ~1.4 Ma ago and more probably around 1.8 Ma. During this period, Java was just emerging from the sea while the adjacent Sundaland was a vast and continuous expanse of climatically and environmentally hospitable land connecting Java to mainland Asia, which facilitated the prior dispersal of hominins and terrestrial faunas to the edge of Java. This ancient age makes H. erectus the contemporary of the earliest members of the genus Homo in Africa and Asia, and rejuvenates the question of dispersal and evolutionary pathways across Eurasia and Sundaland.
How to cite: Husson, L., Lebatard, A.-E., Zerathe, S., Braucher, R., Noerwidi, S., Aribowo, S., Carcaillet, J., Natawidjaja, D. H., Bourlès, D. L., and Team, A.: Early Pleistocene route to Sangiran opened to Javanese Homo erectus, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-7177, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-7177, 2022.