Pithecantrhopus
In 1891 anthropologists found the upper part of a large skull near the village of Trinil on the Solo River in central Java. Though the fossil was not that of a ‘homo sapien,’ it was a hominid and represented a step towards modern human beings. This early resident was named Pithecanthropus, or Java Man, and probably lived in the area about 1,500,000 years ago. Approximately 40,000 years ago Homo Sapiens reached Southeast Asia.
Environmental Change
The environment in which these early inhabitants lived consisted of low, watery plains, often called Sundaland. About 7,000 BC this area began to change with the merging of the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific Ocean. Sea levels began to rise and Sundaland disappeared. (1) The effect of these changes was a divergence in the development of the very early peoples living in Southeast Asia. Though some cultural changes may have reached early Southeast Asian people from outside, the Online Encyclopedia Britannica article History of Southeast Asia, maintains that it is more likely that cultural modifications came about by the movement of peoples and evolutionary adjustments within the region.
Early Populations
The rising sea levels and the mountainous valleys of Southeast Asia isolated many populations within the region. The now nearly extinct Vedda People of Sri Lanka are part of a larger group within Southeast Asia, collectively named “Veddoids.” These tiny groups of people live in isolated pockets within the peninsula and on the islands and lead a very basic and primitive life. Though there is some evidence that there is a connection between the Veddoid groups and Negrito groups, there has been little work accomplished to prove the link. However, on the Malay Peninsula the two groups do live as neighbours, and there is a clear line running through Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Tasmania separating the vestige populations.
The Veddoids may have been the ancestor of more modern groups of Southeast Asians such as Indonesian, Filipino, and some mainland groups. Some researchers believe that the rising sea levels isolated Veddoid groups, leaving them cut off in their remote locations. Recent discoveries of prehistoric stone tools lend credence to this argument as the level of technology of these finds is comparable to the existing stone tool technology of the Veddoid and Andamanese groups.
Controversy also surrounds the spread of a third ancient human group in Southeast Asia, the Austronesians. This name also refers to the similar languages spoken by Malayo-Polynesians and Taiwan aborigines, and, due to this linguistic tie, some scholars promulgated the idea that all the Malayo-Polynesian groups originated from Taiwan. This theory has been contested by ethnologists, linguists, geneticists, and archeologists, and recent evidence has shown that Eastern Austronesians are genetically different from the Western Austronesians of Island Southeast Asia and Taiwan. In their paper Paternal Genetic Affinity Between Western Austronesians and Diac Populations, authors Hui Li, Bo Wen, et.al. show a genetic difference between the two groups, with Polynesians having not only experienced genetic drift, but also a greater degree of natural selection. http://www.oceanography.dal.ca/publications/files/Pelejero_et_al_1999_EPSL.pdf Genetic structure of Western Austronesians, especially in the island nations of Bali and Sumba, suggests that these populations have been present since Palaeolithic times.
Sources:
1 The Flooding of Sundaland During the Last Deglaciation: Imprints in Hemipelagic Sediments from the Southern South China Sea, Carles Pelejero, Markus Kienast, Luejiang Wang, Joan O.Grimalt.
