More digging for team that found proof of early humans in PHL

Field work continues in June for the archaeologists who have since 2014 been unearthing evidence that early humans might have been hunting or scavenging in the Philippines more than 700,000 years ago.

The international team of scientists that spent sweltering Kalinga days hoping to find significant proof of ancient life at the bottom of a gully ended their first field season four years ago with a "surreal" moment, when they found a single rhinoceros tooth in a one meter-deep excavation site.

"It's not everyday that archaeologists find something — and something of that importance... at the time, we haven't really realized the impact of what we found," Ph.D. student Kathryn Manalo said in a media briefing on Thursday.

National Museum showcases excavated rhinoceros bones (with cut marks), tooth, stone tools that point to hominin activity in the Philippines 709,000 years ago. @gmanews pic.twitter.com/xlimCN5A4q

— Nicole-Anne Lagrimas (@nclagrimas) May 10, 2018

In February 2014, Manalo turned over the finding of a running research project that has yielded "sure" indications of early human activity in Luzon far older than the 67,000-year-old foot bone found in Callao Cave in 2007.

Upon finding the tooth, the team alerted veteran paleontologist John De Vos. The scientist rushed over and identified the tooth. "Rhino," he correctly said, recalls Mylene Lising from the anthropology department of Ateneo De Manila University.

By way of celebration, the archaeologists drank warm beer, she said.

Apart from the tooth, scientists discovered in succeeding field seasons 13 bones from the long-extinct Philippine rhinoceros bearing cut marks and 57 stone tools from a 16-square meter site in Rizal town, Kalinga in northern Luzon. 

For the archaeologists, this is indirect evidence that hominins, or ancient humans who preceded the current human species homo sapiens, moved about in the region now known as the Philippines 10 times earlier than previously believed.

Other findings from the fossil layer include fragments of deer, tortoise, lizard, and stegodon, a relative of the elephant species.

Their findings from years of analysis, including the use of different dating techniques, have been published in the scientific journal Nature.

"We have a better understanding of the land which our country sits on," Lising said.

"While it has nothing to do with our species, it has something to do with the species that existed before us, and it tells us about their technology and how they interacted with their environment."

Future studies might lead to knowledge about where the hominins and the rhinoceros originated, but certain for now is that prehistoric humans co-existed with the ancient mammal, whose bones scientists found to have been cut and defleshed using primitive tools.

No ancient human fossilized bones have been found in the excavation site so far.

"This time we are sure that these fossils and these tools are of the same date and they used these stone tools to butcher the rhino. That's the most significant...in the past we cold not establish that," said the National Museum's Clyde Jago-on, one of the project's leads.

The study was undertaken by several prehistorians led by Dr. Thomas Ingico from the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle in France, and Jago-on and Marian Reyes from the Philippine National Museum and assisted by hired hands from Kalinga communities.

Jeremy Barns, director of the National Museum, recognized the significance of the research finding. In his eight years as museum chief, this is the first time he has been able to make such an announcement, he said.

"This is part of our heritage...this is part of our patrimony and the fact that this discovery...has contributed to advancing scientific knowledge globally, which is why there's been so much international interest in this paper, is something that should make every Filipino proud," he said.

"These things take effort, luck, and a lot of time," he added.

Lising, for her part, said archaeological projects could take generations.

The project's finds will be "permanently exhibited" at the National Museum of Anthropology and at the National Museum of Natural History in Manila, which opens May 18.

"This is just the beginning, the research work continues from here," said Lising. —JST, GMA News