| Abstract: |
Northern Vietnam is a unique region in Asia, with a significant quantity of palaeoanthropological material supporting the origin of anatomically modern humans on the eastern margin of continental Asia. Homo sapiens fossils thought to be about 60 ky old, have been found in Нum and Тham Оm caves. Younger, approximately 30 kya, palaeoanthropological finds have been made at Thung Lang and Keo Leng. A large number of Late Pleistocene H. sapiens remains has been recovered from Con Moong and Ðiem caves. Con Moong cave yields both a continuous sedimentary sequence for the last 100 ky, and the first evidence of ancient human occupation of this region. The discovery of several Late Pleistocene Palaeolithic cultures dating to ca. 40–10 kya, including the Nguomian, Sonvian and Hoabinhian, provide evidence of continuous presence of human ancestors in this region. All these cultures exhibit the principal technological and typological attributes typical of the early Palaeolithic in Vietnam, providing evidence of uninterrupted continuity of Palaeolithic industries during the Pleistocene. Archaeological sites investigated in northern Vietnam indicate relatively stable palaeoecological conditions reflected by only minor changes in faunal species composition, whereas contemporaneous sites in Borneo, Thailand and southwest Malaysia (Malacca) evince dramatic changes in local faunas, including extinction or zoogeographic reshuffling of certain species, during the Pleistocene and Early Holocene. During the late Pleistocene, Vietnam and greater eastern Eurasia witnessed an evolutionary development of human technologies, the cultures they represent and associated hominin physical types, regardless of any migration processes from the west, including dispersal of human populations out of Africa.
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