Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia; Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional, Jakarta 12510, Indonesia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia.
Department of Anthropology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario P7B 5E1, Canada; Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 20013, USA; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia.
J Hum Evol. 2018 Nov;124:52-74. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2018.07.001. Epub 2018 Aug 31.
Liang Bua, the type site of Homo floresiensis, is a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores with sedimentary deposits currently known to range in age from about 190 thousand years (ka) ago to the present. Recent revision of the stratigraphy and chronology of this depositional sequence suggests that skeletal remains of H. floresiensis are between ∼100 and 60 ka old, while cultural evidence of this taxon occurs until ∼50 ka ago. Here we examine the compositions of the faunal communities and stone artifacts, by broad taxonomic groups and raw materials, throughout the ∼190 ka time interval preserved in the sequence. Major shifts are observed in both the faunal and stone artifact assemblages that reflect marked changes in paleoecology and hominin behavior, respectively. Our results suggest that H. floresiensis and Stegodon florensis insularis, along with giant marabou stork (Leptoptilos robustus) and vulture (Trigonoceps sp.), were likely extinct by ∼50 ka ago. Moreover, an abrupt and statistically significant shift in raw material preference due to an increased use of chert occurs ∼46 thousand calibrated radiocarbon (C) years before present (ka cal. BP), a pattern that continues through the subsequent stratigraphic sequence. If an increased preference for chert does, in fact, characterize Homo sapiens assemblages at Liang Bua, as previous studies have suggested (e.g., Moore et al., 2009), then the shift observed here suggests that modern humans arrived on Flores by ∼46 ka cal. BP, which would be the earliest cultural evidence of modern humans in Indonesia.
梁布亚是弗洛勒斯人（ Homo floresiensis ）的模式地点，是印度尼西亚弗洛勒斯岛上的一个石灰岩洞，其沉积物的年代目前已知从大约 19 万年前（ka）到现在。对该沉积序列地层学和年代学的最新修订表明，弗洛勒斯人（ Homo floresiensis ）的骨骼遗骸的年龄在 100 到 60 ka 之间，而该分类群的文化证据一直持续到大约 50 ka 前。在这里，我们通过广泛的分类群和原材料检查了保存在该序列中约 190 ka 时间间隔内的动物群和石器的组成。在动物群和石器组合中都观察到了主要的变化，分别反映了古生态学和人类行为的显著变化。我们的结果表明，弗洛勒斯人（ Homo floresiensis ）和弗洛勒斯岛蹄兔（ Stegodon florensis insularis ），以及大型秃鹳（ Leptoptilos robustus ）和秃鹫（ Trigonoceps sp. ），可能在大约 5 万年前就已经灭绝。此外，由于对硅质岩的使用增加，原材料偏好发生了突然且具有统计学意义的变化，这种模式在距今约 4.6 万年前（距今 cal. BP）就出现了，这种模式一直持续到随后的地层序列中。如果正如先前的研究（例如 Moore 等人，2009 年）所表明的那样，对硅质岩的偏好确实是梁布亚人类（ Homo sapiens ）组合的特征，那么这里观察到的转变表明现代人大约在距今 4.6 万年前到达了弗洛勒斯岛，这将是印度尼西亚最早的现代人文化证据。
