PEOPLING × ENVIRONMENT
Ngandong, the Last Homo erectus
~117,000 to 108,000 years ago
Palaeolithic · Middle Stone Age · Last glacial
Ngandong is a bone bed in a river terrace of the Solo, in central Java, about 20 metres above the water, from which twelve Homo erectus skull caps and two shin bones were taken between 1931 and 1933. They belong to the youngest and most derived form of a species that had reached Java more than 1.5 million years earlier. How old they were stayed in dispute for decades. A 2020 study modelled 52 radiometric ages to rebuild the history of the valley: the Solo laid down its terrace sequence between 316,000 and 31,000 years ago and the Ngandong terrace between about 140,000 and 92,000, while uranium series and electron spin resonance dating of animal bones from a fresh excavation gave the bone bed itself a modelled age of 117,000 to 108,000 years. The bed accumulated in flood conditions.
Why it matters
Java held the last known population of Homo erectus, a species that had lasted more than a million and a half years on the island. Measurements published in 1996 had given the bone bed an age of 27,000 to 53,000 years and raised the possibility that Homo erectus overlapped with Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia; the 2020 chronology removes that possibility by moving the bed back by tens of thousands of years. The region that Homo sapiens later entered was one that another human species had only recently left.
Dating & uncertainty
Three chronologies have been proposed for this bone bed, none overlapping. Electron spin resonance and uranium series on bovid teeth gave 27,000 to 53,000 years in 1996. A 2011 study returned argon ages averaging 546,000 years for the terrace against a resonance estimate of 143,000, and found the two to exclude one another. The 2020 study, modelling 52 ages across the valley, returned 117,000 to 108,000 years. A 2005 objection concerns what is dated: twelve crania with almost no other bones are unlikely to share the burial history of the other mammals, hence possibly not their age.
Sources
- Rizal et al. (2020), Nature · Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000-108,000 years agodoi:10.1038/s41586-019-1863-2
- Swisher et al. (1996), Science · Latest Homo erectus of Java: Potential Contemporaneity with Homo sapiens in Southeast Asiadoi:10.1126/science.274.5294.1870
- Indriati et al. (2011), PLOS ONE · The Age of the 20 Meter Solo River Terrace, Java, Indonesia and the Survival of Homo erectus in Asiadoi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021562
- Dennell (2005), Archaeology in Oceania · The Solo (Ngandong) Homo erectus assemblage: a taphonomic assessmentdoi:10.1002/j.1834-4453.2005.tb00594.x
Our species’ history as one day
15:28:008 h 32 min before midnight
if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day