PARIS, France — Were the early humans roaming east Asia more than half-a-million years ago clever enough to build sea-faring watercraft and curious enough to cross a vast expanse of open sea? The find pushes back the arrival of the first homo species on the island chain ten-fold to 700,000 years ago, they reported in the journal Nature. All told, the Kalinga site in northern Luzon's Cagayan Valley yielded more than 400 bones and several dozen knapped—or chipped—tools, including 49 knife-like flakes and two hammers. "This evidence pushes back the proven period of colonialization of the Philippines by hundreds of thousands of years," the authors concluded. Were early humans living in east Asia more than half-a-million years ago clever enough to build sea-faring watercraft and curious enough to cross a vast expanse of open sea?

Source: Philippine Star May 03, 2018 00:08 UTC