| Abstract: |
<i>Homo sapiens</i> may have colonized the Indonesian archipelagos during the early Upper Pleistocene, but most of the secure early evidence concentrates on its later period, since ca.45 ka. Most of the remains found are archaeological, while human fossils become more numerous around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. Human populations in this region had to cope with drastic temporal changes in climate and geography. Such changes probably caused diversification of human behaviors, a situation that made former attempts to apply European-like chronology unsuccessful. We present here a short review of archaeological records that reflect modern humans' behaviors in Paleolithic Indonesia, which are hypothetically categorized as follows: the spread of human groups over a quite large geographical area
the intensive use of caves and rock shelters, associated with systematic control of fire
the changes observed in lithic and organic material technologies
and the diversification of exploited resources, with correlative adaptation to the changes in their availability. As for symbolic behaviors (e.g., funeral practices and, to a certain extent, sophisticated bone and shell industry), they seem to have developed later, around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. The reviewed data stress the need for an interdisciplinary approach to understand the extension of the geographical occupation, the environments and the related constraints on subsistence and technical behaviors. They highlight the adaptive capacity of human groups, provide clues to understand their cultural diversity over time and space, and help to estimate in the records involved the respective parts of the emergence of local identities and of maintaining certain original cultural traits.
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