A drowned landscape held clues to the lives of ancient human relatives

The remains of extinct Homo erectus dredged from the seabed off Java, along with thousands of animal fossils, are revealing a long-lost ecosystem.

Jul 7, 2025 - 23:30
 0  8
A drowned landscape held clues to the lives of ancient human relatives

Bigger than 6,000 animal — plus two Homo erectus — fossils came from the seafloor off Java

This image displays three rows of fossilized bones on a black background, including ones that came from worn elephant-delight in and hippo-delight in creatures.

Geologist Harold Berghuis smooth higher than 6,300 animal fossils from an synthetic island within the Madura Strait. The fossils, including some proven here from elephant-delight in and hippopotamus-delight in creatures, are serving to to re-make what a landscape now drowned by the sea as soon as regarded delight in.

Harold Berghuis

A construction venture in Southeast Asia dredged up the stays of the extinct human relative Homo erectus from the seabed. The invention, described in four compare within the June Quaternary Environments and Humans, displays a lost landscape, long since submerged, the set apart hominids lived by a river and hunted buffalo and turtles.

The first hominids identified to fill left Africa, about 1.8 million years ago, H. erectus traveled east to what's on the present time the island of Java, Indonesia, and survived there except per chance 108,000 years ago. Though archaeologists fill made discoveries from submerged lands in other locations, here's the first time hominid stays were recovered from this discipline’s seabeds.

Right here's “one among the most attention-grabbing unknowns within the arena fable,” says archaeologist Geoff Bailey on the University of York in England, who became no longer fervent within the work. The discipline became home to H. erectus for a total bunch of hundreds of years. Later it'll were home to Denisovans or varied hominids. “It became also the stepping-off point for human movement into Australia and New Guinea,” Bailey says. “Right here's a space the set apart we must be focusing the kind of underwater investigation.”

This plot of the Malaysian Peninsula displays the set apart the seabed became dredged to make an articial island (space label in a black box over a part of Java). The dredged field matter incorporated hundreds of fossils.
Thousands of years ago when sea ranges were lower, a huge expanse of territory referred to as Sundaland became exposed in Southeast Asia, connecting islands delight in Java to the mainland. The space within the box denotes the fundamental space the set apart field matter became dredged from the Madura Strait seafloor to make an synthetic island. That field matter contained hundreds of fossils, including from Homo erectus, serving to researchers start filling within the worn history of the discipline.H.W.K Berghuis et al/Quaternary Environments and Humans, 2025Thousands of years ago when sea ranges were lower, a huge expanse of territory referred to as Sundaland became exposed in Southeast Asia, connecting islands delight in Java to the mainland. The space within the box denotes the fundamental space the set apart field matter became dredged from the Madura Strait seafloor to make an synthetic island. That field matter contained hundreds of fossils, including from Homo erectus, serving to researchers start filling within the worn history of the discipline.H.W.K Berghuis et al/Quaternary Environments and Humans, 2025

Harold Berghuis, a geologist now at Leiden University within the Netherlands, had motive to deem the seabed may preserve secrets. He has consulted for years on dredging initiatives shut to a essential port metropolis on Java. From 2014 to 2015, he became fervent in a venture to make an synthetic island with sand dredged from the Madura Strait, which divides Java from neighboring Madura.

“I knew beforehand there's per chance fossil field matter,” Berghuis says. Over the final million years, sea level adjustments fill at cases exposed enormous areas of land within the discipline: essential of Indonesia became linked to mainland Asia, a part of a lost discipline referred to as Sundaland. The Madura Strait, Berghuis knew, became as soon as dry land.

A researcher in jeans, a plaid long-sleeve shirt and sunhat kneels on sandy, rocky soil, conserving instruments to search the ground for fossils.
Harold Berghuis explored the synthetic island within the Madura Strait on his hands and knees to hunt for fossils. “I became always alone on the placement,” he says. “Most effective as soon as did a security officer reach to look whether or no longer I became accumulated alive and I asked him to take hold of a characterize of me.”Harold Berghuis

From 2015 to 2018, Berghuis scoured the synthetic island’s one sq. kilometer of start sand. “It’s such as you’re within the Sahara,” he says. He explored alone, on his hands and knees, gathering 6,372 fossils. After originally storing these in his office, Berghuis gave them to the Bandung Geological Museum on Java. Curator Unggul Prasetyo Wibowo calls the invention “fortunate” and says the museum plans to label the collection.

Geologic recordsdata smooth for the interval of construction campaigns, including cores drilled into the Madura Strait seabed, enabled Berghuis to computationally reconstruct the submerged landscape, revealing a undeniable with a river running through it.

He teamed up with researchers at a couple of universities to explore the finds. They dated the fossils and surrounding sediments to between 131,000 and 146,000 years ago with a technique that displays the final time they were exposed to daylight.

Amongst the fossils were two fragments of hominid skull, both no longer up to 50 millimeters across. In accordance with comparisons with varied fossils, Berghuis and his colleagues concluded that they belonged to H. erectus.

This image displays a bone fragment on the left and a three-D reconstruction of a skull with a box indicating the set apart the bone would were positioned.
Right here's one among the 2 fragments of Homo erectus bone recovered. The three-D new model of an unrelated H. erectus skull illustrates that the bone comes from above the gape socket.H.W.K Berghuis et al/Quaternary Environments and Humans, 2025Right here's one among the 2 fragments of Homo erectus bone recovered. The three-D new model of an unrelated H. erectus skull illustrates that the bone comes from above the gape socket.H.W.K Berghuis et al/Quaternary Environments and Humans, 2025

The animal fossils revealed a thriving ecosystem in and spherical the river, including turtles, pythons and sharks. Tall mammals including buffalo, hippopotamus-delight in Hexaprotodon and elephant-delight in Stegodon roamed the lowlands.

Some of the crucial turtle and mammal bones fill within the reduction of marks or fractures, respectively, suggesting H. erectus hunted them, and within the mammals’ case extracted bone marrow. In the period in-between, cow-delight in stays are dominated by young and wholesome adults, suggesting the hominids were focusing on those folk.

Loads of unknowns live. The animal fossils indicate this discipline’s H. erectus had extra developed looking talents than those living in other locations — either developed independently, or per chance realized from varied Asian hominids such as Denisovans, if H. erectus met them.

It’s well-known that Berghuis didn’t salvage recognizable stone instruments, says Silvia Bello at London’s Natural Historical past Museum, who edited the papers and coauthored an introduction to them. This would suggest H. erectus old substitute instruments, “per chance bamboo or shells, which didn't abet,” Bello says.

These mysteries highlight the importance of exploring the submerged landscapes of Sundaland, Bailey says.

More Tales from Science Files on Anthropology

What's Your Reaction?

like

dislike

love

funny

angry

sad

wow