At the northern tip of the Philippine island of Luzon lies Callao Cave, an expansive, seven-chamber limestone warren. In April, researchers reported in the journal Nature that they’d uncovered the bones of a now-extinct, previously unknown human species near the far end of the first chamber. The discovery adds to growing evidence that human evolution and dispersal out of Africa is much more complicated than scientists once thought — and that we’re just starting to understand Southeast Asia’s role in that story.
“There is no reason why archaeological research in the Philippines couldn’t discover several species of hominin,” Philip Piper, an archaeologist at the Australian National University who coauthored the new research, said in a statement. “It’s probably just a matter of time.”
In 2007, Piper and an international team of researchers discovered a foot bone in Callao Cave that belonged to a member of the genus Homo, though they ...
