RECENT PHD AND MA THESES

1. FABRICE DEMETER 2000. The Human Peopling History of Far-Eastern Asia from the Late Upper Pleistocene Period. PhD Thesis, College de France, Chaire de Prehistoire et paleoanthropologie 3, rue d'Ulm 75005 Paris-FRANCE.

Summary: This thesis deals with the modern human peopling of Far-Eastern Asia, since Late Upper Pleistocene, from 65 000 years ago. We propose here a model of human settlement of the area from the study of fossils skulls. We should underline that some of these fossils are new for the scientific community (eg, some fossils are preserved at the Biological Anthropology Laboratory of the National Natural History Museum of Paris). The results of the 14C dating show that some fossils which had been considered as belonging to the modern times, belong in fact to the UpperPleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene. Moreover, when the bibliographical data were sufficient, we made an inventory of the lithic industry associated with the human fossils. To conclude our work, we pursued two goals.

The first objective attempted to define the way in which this human settlement occurred, in other words whether it was continuous or not, and from one or several regional centres. With this intention, we took for reference a group of 100 modern humans from Far-Eastern Asia, preserved at the Biological Anthropology Laboratory of the Mus้e de l'Homme of Paris, and considered 118 variables of the calvarium. Then, after having considered the same variables on the fossil human corpus, composed of 86 individuals, we in addition, have highlighted their morphological and biometric characteristics by the multivariate analysis of the calvarium of 45 individuals by the way of the Hierarchical Cluster Analysis method. The qualitative analysis of the fossils allowed us to show the existence, with certain fossils from the Tam Hang site in Laos, of the avulsion of the upper lateral incisors. The five fossils concerned attest that this practice, probably cultural, which is only found around 7 000 years BC in certain populations of Far-Eastern Asia and Oceania, existed already at least 15,000 years ago in Laos.

The second objective of this work consisted in analysing the particular environmental conditions that humans met in this area. The last great glaciation of the Pleistocene period, knew several paroxysms, once around 60,000 years BC, once around 30,000 years BC and still another time around 18,000 years BC. It was during these periods of great cold that a fall of the sea level of at least 125 m, compared to the current level, uncovered new grounds.During the last great glaciation, the north of Far-Eastern Asia, the Japan archipelagos, the Taiwan island and, in the insular southern Far-Eastern Asia, the Malaysia, a part of the Philippines and the Sonde archipelagos, all were connected to the Eurasiatic continent. It was then possible to go from Japan to Indonesia "by foot". This climatic change had, moreover, some strong effects on the biotope of the plants. Indeed, the palynological analyses show that the coolness was accompanied by a progressive replacement, and this in direction of the south, of the vegetable species by other species better adapted to the coldness and the arid climate. The progressive arrival of the cold can thus be considered a determining element in the history of the human settlement. It is probably this phenomenon which caused humans to move away from the most northern areas of the Far-Eastern Asia towards the south, where the climate was more lenient. These humans followed the Eurasiatic coast until the southern limits of theSunda plate, represented today by the Indonesian archipelago and in particular by the island of Java.

The results of our research enable us to suggest that a first group of humans arrived in the north of the Eastern Eurasia, which included, during the sea withdrawals, the Japan archipelagos. It was during the last glaciation, approximately 65 000 years ago. These humans would have then reached the Sunda grounds. In addition, our study allowd us to advance the assumption that this same group of humans - characterised by a high, long cranium, broad calva and very broad face, with a cranial bone very thick - met and shared some morphological characteristics in its progression, 30,000 year ago, a second group of humans - characterised by a rather short and fairly high cranium, with a broad calva, a narrow frontal bone, a rather broad face, and a very broad face between the orbit - coming from mainland South-East Asia. In the current state of our research, during the Late Upper Pleistocene period, 65,000 years ago, it would seem that the human peopling of Far-Eastern Asia has remained morphologically homogeneous during at least 35 000 years before becoming morphologically diversified by at least 33 000 years ago. The response by humans to changes in biotope and toan environment becoming inhospitable, would have been to migrate towards recently uncovered grounds.