Early occupation of southeast asia: Dental-skeletal evidence

Abstract

The evolution of Homo sapiens and their early human diaspora into Southeast Asia were clearly significant events in human prehistory. This chapter presents a brief review of some of the fossil/sub-fossil evidence that has been presented to date in the literature. Much of the evidence that does exist was discovered prior to modern excavation techniques, and thus their dating and context is often inferred rather than directly dated. Modern methods and novel approaches to the growing corpus of skeletal and dental materials in the region promise to raise as many questions as answers with respect to human population history in Southeast Asia.