These discoveries offer unusual insight into ancient human existence and the now-lost Sundaland territory, therefore illuminating the behaviors and adaptations of early human groups in reaction to environmental changes.
Maritime sand miners found the fossils in 2011; experts just recently determined their age and species, therefore marking a significant event in paleoanthropology.
‘Great morphological variation and mobility of hominin populations in the region define this age,’ said Harold Berghuis, an archaeologist from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands who oversaw the study.
Melting glaciers between 14,000 and 7,000 years raised sea levels more than 120 meters, hence burying Sundaland’s low-lying lowlands.
Discovery started in marine sand mining in the Madura Strait, when dredging unearthed extinct relics.
Workers at a reclamation site close to Surabaya discovered two human skull fragments together with nearly 6,000 vertebrate fossils.
