| Abstract: |
This chapter examines hominin and human affairs through about 1.5 million years of time, paying attention to the three successive species who have appeared in the record ‐ Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, and Homo sapiens. It focuses on some of the major developments that occurred during the long prehistoric record of Island Southeast Asia. Neolithic cultures, and the languages and societies associated with them, imposed considerable levels of homogeneity over large areas of both the mainland and islands of Southeast Asia at the start of the Neolithic. In the case of Island Southeast Asia this Neolithic population movement, attested through craniometrics and genetics as well as the archaeological record, led to the concurrent spread of the Austronesian language family, the greatest in extent anywhere in the world before 1500 CE. Island Southeast Asia was still Neolithic, with an independent focus to the east of early food‐producing activity without Neolithic technology in the New Guinea Highlands.
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