Evidence of Ancient Human Ancestors Found Underwater
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
Fragments of a Homo erectus skull were among deposits of vertebrate fossils found when the Indonesian seafloor was being dredged for a construction project
This is the first time fossils of this species have been found on the seafloor between the islands of Indonesia, and further investigation found that land bridges once connected the islands.
Evidence of Homo erectus hunting bovine ancestors and extracting bone marrow was also discovered.
During the glacial period that chilled the Earth 140,000 years ago, sea levels in the Indonesian region of Sundaland were low enough for present-day islands to tower like mountain ranges with a lowland savannah stretching between them. It was an expanse of mostly dry grasslands with strips of forest edging the rivers, and animals like crocodiles, river sharks, elephants, hippos, rhinos, and carnivorous lizards flourished in the region.
Sundaland was also a paradise for early humans. Long thought to have been isolated on the island of Java, two fossil fragments of a Homo erectus skull—which surfaced with recent ocean dredging in preparation for the construction of an artificial island—revealed that this hominin species migrated and spread throughout the islands when they could still walk over bridges of land.
Homo erectus was first discovered in Java (and was known as 'Java Man' until the species was officially renamed), but sossilized remains had never before been found on the seafloor between what are now the islands of Java, Bali, Sumatra and Borneo. Now that examples have been dredged up, however, Harold Berghuis—an archaeologist from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, who led the investigation —thinks Homo erectus took advantage of the now-drowned land, and likely settled near the riverbanks in the region.
'Under the relatively dry Middle Pleistocene climate of eastern Java, herds of herbivores and groups of hominins on the lowland plains were probably dependent on large perennial rivers, providing drinking water and terrestrial as well as aquatic food sources,' Berghuis said in a study recently published in Quaternary Environments and Humans.
These human ancestors would have had plenty to take advantage of near these ancient rivers. Trees bore fruit all year, and the ancient hominins would have been able to gather edible plants in addition to catching fish and shellfish. They may have even used mussel shells as tools—the oldest known evidence of them being used for that purpose—and engraved some of them (the most ancient human engravings have been found on shells that previously turned up in Java). The new findings show that they also hunted river turtles and terrestrial animals. Bones of river turtles and bovine ancestors showed cut marks and breakages that suggested the consumption of both meat and bone marrow.
More modern human species on the Asian mainland (such as Denisovans and Neanderthals) were already known to have hunted bovids, and while no evidence for this had been found on Java, the presence of these seafloor fossils could mean that hunting methods were transferred from one species to the other. There may have even been interbreeding. Land exposed by diminished sea levels also meant that animal species from the mainland—like the extinct Asian hippo and the endangered (but still-extant) Komodo dragon—could spread to the Indonesian islands.
Homo erectus marked a significant shift in human evolution—they were the earliest hominids to bear more of a resemblance to modern humans, with larger bodies, longer legs, and shorter arms relative to their torso. More muscle mass meant that they could walk and run faster than earlier hominins, and were likely more adept hunters. An increase in body size is also associated with an increase in brain size, and skulls tell us that their brains were over 50% larger than those of early Australopithecus species (though the human brain would eventually evolve to be 40% larger than that by the time Homo sapiens appeared).
'The late Middle Pleistocene age of the site is of great interest in terms of hominin evolution, as this period is characterized by a great morphological diversity and mobility of hominin populations in the region,' Berghuis and his team said.
When sea levels rose, the land bridges between the islands of Sundaland were submerged, but this dredging has given us an unprecedented window into the life of Homo erectus in Indonesia.
You Might Also Like
Can Apple Cider Vinegar Lead to Weight Loss?
Bobbi Brown Shares Her Top Face-Transforming Makeup Tips for Women Over 50
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
38 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
‘A huge loss.' In remote Nagasaki islands, a rare version of Christianity heads toward extinction
IKITSUKI, Japan (AP) — On this small island in rural Nagasaki, Japan's Hidden Christians gather to worship what they call the Closet God. In a special room about the size of a tatami mat is a scroll painting of a kimono-clad Asian woman. She looks like a Buddhist Bodhisattva holding a baby, but for the faithful, this is a concealed version of Mary and the baby Jesus. Another scroll shows a man wearing a kimono covered with camellias, an allusion to John the Baptist's beheading and martyrdom. There are other objects of worship from the days when Japan's Christians had to hide from vicious persecution, including a ceramic bottle of holy water from Nakaenoshima, an island where Hidden Christians were martyred in the 1620s. Little about the icons in the tiny, easy-to-miss room can be linked directly to Christianity — and that's the point. After emerging from cloistered isolation in 1865, following more than 200 years of violent harassment by Japan's insular warlord rulers, many of the formerly underground Christians converted to mainstream Catholicism. Some, however, continued to practice not the religion that 16th century foreign missionaries originally taught them, but the idiosyncratic, difficult to detect version they'd nurtured during centuries of clandestine cat-and-mouse with a brutal regime. On Ikitsuki and other remote sections of Nagasaki prefecture, Hidden Christians still pray to these disguised objects. They still chant in a Latin that hasn't been widely used in centuries. And they still cherish a religion that directly links them to a time of samurai, shoguns and martyred missionaries and believers. Now, though, the Hidden Christians are dying out, and there is growing certainty that their unique version of Christianity will die with them. Almost all are now elderly, and as the young move away to cities or turn their backs on the faith, those remaining are desperate to preserve evidence of this offshoot of Christianity — and convey to the world what its loss will mean. 'At this point, I'm afraid we are going to be the last ones,' said Masatsugu Tanimoto, 68, one of the few who can still recite the Latin chants that his ancestors learned 400 years ago. 'It is sad to see this tradition end with our generation.' Hidden Christians cling to a unique version of the religion Christianity spread rapidly in 16th century Japan when Jesuit priests had spectacular success converting warlords and peasants alike, most especially on the southern main island of Kyushu, where the foreigners established trading ports in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, embraced the religion. That changed after the shoguns began to see Christianity as a threat. The crackdown that followed in the early 17th century was fierce, with thousands killed and the remaining believers chased underground. As Japan opened up to foreign influence, a dozen Hidden Christians clad in kimono cautiously declared their faith, and their remarkable perseverance, to a French Catholic priest in March 1865 in Nagasaki city. Many became Catholics after Japan formally lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873. But others chose to stay Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians), continuing to practice what their ancestors preserved during their days underground. Their rituals provide a direct link to a vanished Japan In interviews with The Associated Press, Hidden Christians spoke of a deep communal bond stemming from a time when a lapse could doom a practitioner or their neighbors. Hidden Christians were forced to hide all visible signs of their religion after the 1614 ban on Christianity and the expulsion of foreign missionaries. Households took turns hiding precious ritual objects and hosting the secret services that celebrated both faith and persistence. This still happens today, with the observance of rituals unchanged since the 16th century. The group leader in the Ikitsuki area is called Oji, which means father or elderly man in Japanese. Members take turns in the role, presiding over baptisms, funerals and ceremonies for New Year, Christmas and local festivals. Different communities worship different icons and have different ways of performing the rituals. In Sotome, for instance, people prayed to a statue of what they called Maria Kannon, a genderless Bodhisattva of mercy, as a substitute for Mary. In Ibaragi, where about 18,000 residents embraced Christianity in the 1580s, a lacquer bowl with a cross painted on it, a statue of the crucified Christ and an ivory statue of Mary were found hidden in what was called 'a box not to be opened.' Their worship revolves around reverence for ancestors Many Hidden Christians rejected Catholicism after the persecution ended because Catholic priests refused to recognize them as real Christians unless they agreed to be rebaptized and abandon the Buddhist altars that their ancestors used. 'They are very proud of what they and their ancestors have believed in' for hundreds of years, even at the risk of their lives, said Emi Mase-Hasegawa, a religion studies professor at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo. Tanimoto believes his ancestors continued the Hidden Christian traditions because becoming Catholic meant rejecting the Buddhism and Shintoism that had become a strong part of their daily lives underground. 'I'm not a Christian,' Tanimoto said. Even though some of their Latin chants focus on the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, their prayers are also meant to 'ask our ancestors to protect us, to protect our daily lives,' he said. 'We are not doing this to worship Jesus or Mary. … Our responsibility is to faithfully carry on the way our ancestors had practiced.' Archaic Latin chants are an important part of the religion Hidden Christians' ceremonies often include the recitation of Latin chants, called Orasho. The Orasho comes from the original Latin or Portuguese prayers brought to Japan by 16th century missionaries. Recently on Ikitsuki, three men performed a rare Orasho. All wore dark formal kimonos and solemnly made the sign of the cross in front of their faces before starting their prayers — a mix of archaic Japanese and Latin. Tanimoto, a farmer, is the youngest of only four men who can recite Orasho in his community. As a child, he regularly saw men performing Orasho on tatami mats before an altar when neighbors gathered for funerals and memorials. About 40 years ago, in his mid-20s, he took Orasho lessons from his uncle so he could pray to the Closet God that his family has kept for generations. Tanimoto recently showed the AP a weathered copy of a prayer his grandfather wrote with a brush and ink, like the ones his ancestors had diligently copied from older generations. As he carefully turned the pages of the Orasho book, Tanimoto said he mostly understands the Japanese but not the Latin. It's difficult, he said, but 'we just memorize the whole thing.' Today, because funerals are no longer held at homes and younger people are leaving the island, Orasho is only performed two or three times a year. Researchers and believers acknowledge the tradition is dying There are few studies of Hidden Christians so it's not clear how many still exist. There were an estimated 30,000 in Nagasaki, including about 10,000 in Ikitsuki, in the 1940s, according to government figures. But the last confirmed baptism ritual was in 1994, and some estimates say there are less than 100 Hidden Christians left on Ikitsuki. Hidden Christianity is linked to the communal ties that formed when Japan was a largely agricultural society. Those ties crumbled as the country modernized after WWII, with recent developments revolutionizing people's lives, even in rural Japan. The accompanying decline in the population of farmers and young people, along with women increasingly working outside of the home, has made it difficult to maintain the tight networks that nurtured Hidden Christianity. 'In a society of growing individualism, it is difficult to keep Hidden Christianity as it is,' said Shigeo Nakazono, the head of a local folklore museum who has researched and interviewed Hidden Christians for 30 years. Hidden Christianity has a structural weakness, he said, because there are no professional religious leaders tasked with teaching doctrine and adapting the religion to environmental changes. Nakazono has started collecting artifacts and archiving video interviews he's done with Hidden Christians since the 1990s, seeking to preserve a record of the endangered religion. Mase-Hasegawa agreed that Hidden Christianity is on its way to extinction. 'As a researcher, it will be a huge loss,' she said. Masashi Funabara, 63, a retired town hall official, said most of the nearby groups have disbanded over the last two decades. His group, which now has only two families, is the only one left, down from nine in his district. They meet only a few times a year. 'The amount of time we are responsible for these holy icons is only about 20 to 30 years, compared to the long history when our ancestors kept their faith in fear of persecution. When I imagined their suffering, I felt that I should not easily give up,' Funabara said. Just as his father did when memorizing the Orasho, Funabara has written down passages in notebooks; he hopes his son, who works for the local government, will one day agree to be his successor. Tanimoto also wants his son to keep the tradition alive. 'Hidden Christianity itself will go extinct sooner or later, and that is inevitable, but I hope it will go on at least in my family,' he said. 'That's my tiny glimmer of hope.' ___ Tokyo photographer Eugene Hoshiko contributed to this story. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'A huge loss.' In remote Nagasaki islands, a rare version of Christianity heads toward extinction
IKITSUKI, Japan (AP) — On this small island in rural Nagasaki, Japan's Hidden Christians gather to worship what they call the Closet God. In a special room about the size of a tatami mat is a scroll painting of a kimono-clad Asian woman. She looks like a Buddhist Bodhisattva holding a baby, but for the faithful, this is a concealed version of Mary and the baby Jesus. Another scroll shows a man wearing a kimono covered with camellias, an allusion to John the Baptist's beheading and martyrdom. There are other objects of worship from the days when Japan's Christians had to hide from vicious persecution, including a ceramic bottle of holy water from Nakaenoshima, an island where Hidden Christians were martyred in the 1620s. Little about the icons in the tiny, easy-to-miss room can be linked directly to Christianity — and that's the point. After emerging from cloistered isolation in 1865, following more than 200 years of violent harassment by Japan's insular warlord rulers, many of the formerly underground Christians converted to mainstream Catholicism. Some, however, continued to practice not the religion that 16th century foreign missionaries originally taught them, but the idiosyncratic, difficult to detect version they'd nurtured during centuries of clandestine cat-and-mouse with a brutal regime. On Ikitsuki and other remote sections of Nagasaki prefecture, Hidden Christians still pray to these disguised objects. They still chant in a Latin that hasn't been widely used in centuries. And they still cherish a religion that directly links them to a time of samurai, shoguns and martyred missionaries and believers. Now, though, the Hidden Christians are dying out, and there is growing certainty that their unique version of Christianity will die with them. Almost all are now elderly, and as the young move away to cities or turn their backs on the faith, those remaining are desperate to preserve evidence of this offshoot of Christianity — and convey to the world what its loss will mean. 'At this point, I'm afraid we are going to be the last ones,' said Masatsugu Tanimoto, 68, one of the few who can still recite the Latin chants that his ancestors learned 400 years ago. 'It is sad to see this tradition end with our generation.' Hidden Christians cling to a unique version of the religion Christianity spread rapidly in 16th century Japan when Jesuit priests had spectacular success converting warlords and peasants alike, most especially on the southern main island of Kyushu, where the foreigners established trading ports in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, embraced the religion. That changed after the shoguns began to see Christianity as a threat. The crackdown that followed in the early 17th century was fierce, with thousands killed and the remaining believers chased underground. As Japan opened up to foreign influence, a dozen Hidden Christians clad in kimono cautiously declared their faith, and their remarkable perseverance, to a French Catholic priest in March 1865 in Nagasaki city. Many became Catholics after Japan formally lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873. But others chose to stay Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians), continuing to practice what their ancestors preserved during their days underground. Their rituals provide a direct link to a vanished Japan In interviews with The Associated Press, Hidden Christians spoke of a deep communal bond stemming from a time when a lapse could doom a practitioner or their neighbors. Hidden Christians were forced to hide all visible signs of their religion after the 1614 ban on Christianity and the expulsion of foreign missionaries. Households took turns hiding precious ritual objects and hosting the secret services that celebrated both faith and persistence. This still happens today, with the observance of rituals unchanged since the 16th century. The group leader in the Ikitsuki area is called Oji, which means father or elderly man in Japanese. Members take turns in the role, presiding over baptisms, funerals and ceremonies for New Year, Christmas and local festivals. Different communities worship different icons and have different ways of performing the rituals. In Sotome, for instance, people prayed to a statue of what they called Maria Kannon, a genderless Bodhisattva of mercy, as a substitute for Mary. In Ibaragi, where about 18,000 residents embraced Christianity in the 1580s, a lacquer bowl with a cross painted on it, a statue of the crucified Christ and an ivory statue of Mary were found hidden in what was called 'a box not to be opened.' Their worship revolves around reverence for ancestors Many Hidden Christians rejected Catholicism after the persecution ended because Catholic priests refused to recognize them as real Christians unless they agreed to be rebaptized and abandon the Buddhist altars that their ancestors used. 'They are very proud of what they and their ancestors have believed in' for hundreds of years, even at the risk of their lives, said Emi Mase-Hasegawa, a religion studies professor at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo. Tanimoto believes his ancestors continued the Hidden Christian traditions because becoming Catholic meant rejecting the Buddhism and Shintoism that had become a strong part of their daily lives underground. 'I'm not a Christian,' Tanimoto said. Even though some of their Latin chants focus on the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, their prayers are also meant to "ask our ancestors to protect us, to protect our daily lives,' he said. 'We are not doing this to worship Jesus or Mary. … Our responsibility is to faithfully carry on the way our ancestors had practiced.' Archaic Latin chants are an important part of the religion Hidden Christians' ceremonies often include the recitation of Latin chants, called Orasho. The Orasho comes from the original Latin or Portuguese prayers brought to Japan by 16th century missionaries. Recently on Ikitsuki, three men performed a rare Orasho. All wore dark formal kimonos and solemnly made the sign of the cross in front of their faces before starting their prayers — a mix of archaic Japanese and Latin. Tanimoto, a farmer, is the youngest of only four men who can recite Orasho in his community. As a child, he regularly saw men performing Orasho on tatami mats before an altar when neighbors gathered for funerals and memorials. About 40 years ago, in his mid-20s, he took Orasho lessons from his uncle so he could pray to the Closet God that his family has kept for generations. Tanimoto recently showed the AP a weathered copy of a prayer his grandfather wrote with a brush and ink, like the ones his ancestors had diligently copied from older generations. As he carefully turned the pages of the Orasho book, Tanimoto said he mostly understands the Japanese but not the Latin. It's difficult, he said, but 'we just memorize the whole thing.' Today, because funerals are no longer held at homes and younger people are leaving the island, Orasho is only performed two or three times a year. Researchers and believers acknowledge the tradition is dying There are few studies of Hidden Christians so it's not clear how many still exist. There were an estimated 30,000 in Nagasaki, including about 10,000 in Ikitsuki, in the 1940s, according to government figures. But the last confirmed baptism ritual was in 1994, and some estimates say there are less than 100 Hidden Christians left on Ikitsuki. Hidden Christianity is linked to the communal ties that formed when Japan was a largely agricultural society. Those ties crumbled as the country modernized after WWII, with recent developments revolutionizing people's lives, even in rural Japan. The accompanying decline in the population of farmers and young people, along with women increasingly working outside of the home, has made it difficult to maintain the tight networks that nurtured Hidden Christianity. 'In a society of growing individualism, it is difficult to keep Hidden Christianity as it is,' said Shigeo Nakazono, the head of a local folklore museum who has researched and interviewed Hidden Christians for 30 years. Hidden Christianity has a structural weakness, he said, because there are no professional religious leaders tasked with teaching doctrine and adapting the religion to environmental changes. Nakazono has started collecting artifacts and archiving video interviews he's done with Hidden Christians since the 1990s, seeking to preserve a record of the endangered religion. Mase-Hasegawa agreed that Hidden Christianity is on its way to extinction. 'As a researcher, it will be a huge loss,' she said. Masashi Funabara, 63, a retired town hall official, said most of the nearby groups have disbanded over the last two decades. His group, which now has only two families, is the only one left, down from nine in his district. They meet only a few times a year. 'The amount of time we are responsible for these holy icons is only about 20 to 30 years, compared to the long history when our ancestors kept their faith in fear of persecution. When I imagined their suffering, I felt that I should not easily give up,' Funabara said. Just as his father did when memorizing the Orasho, Funabara has written down passages in notebooks; he hopes his son, who works for the local government, will one day agree to be his successor. Tanimoto also wants his son to keep the tradition alive. 'Hidden Christianity itself will go extinct sooner or later, and that is inevitable, but I hope it will go on at least in my family,' he said. 'That's my tiny glimmer of hope.' ___ Tokyo photographer Eugene Hoshiko contributed to this story. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
New 'Final Destination' film sparks misrepresented visuals
"Anyone knows this news? The ceiling of a movie theatre in the Philippines collapsed during the screening of the Final Destination 6 movie. That's really the ultimate experience," says an Indonesian-language Facebook post on May 26, 2025. It includes a two-minute clip of a crowd in distress as water starts to leak from a cinema's ceiling, with some parts starting to fall off. A similar post written in Burmese surfaced on the same day with an image showing the damaged interior of a movie house. "The ceiling collapsed while screening Final Destination," the caption reads. "Final Destination: Bloodlines", the latest instalment in the horror franchise, topped the North American box office following its release in mid-May (archived link). Similar claims about a theatre collapsing during the film's screening also surfaced on X, Instagram and TikTok and were shared in other languages, including Hindi, English, and Tagalog. While such an incident was reported in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires in May, the circulating visuals are unrelated (archived link). A reverse image search using keyframes found multiple news reports shared the clip in June 2015, including from ABC7 News (archived link). "Six people were reported hurt Monday night in Cebu, Philippines when parts of the ceiling of an Ayala Center Cebu cinema room collapsed after intense water leakage," part of the report reads, referring to a city in central Philippines. It goes to say that 350 people were in the room for a brand relaunch event. A similar clip of the event taken from another angle has appeared in reports from Philippine media organisations Sunstar and Rappler (archived here and here). Another reverse search of the photo showing the destroyed theatre found it in an NBC News article published February 28, 2025 -- months before the release of "Final Destination: Bloodlines" (archived link). "Movie theater ceiling collapses during screening of 'Captain America: Brave New World'," reads the report's headline. "The historic Liberty Theater in Wenatchee, Wash. Two people were in the theater during the incident, but no injuries were reported," says the caption to the picture. The photo is credited to Wenatchee Valley Fire Department, which uploaded an Instagram post about the same event on February 26, 2025 (archived here and here). "At approximately 8 PM, Wenatchee Valley firefighters responded to a reported ceiling collapse at Liberty Cinema. Two people were inside the theater at the time, but fortunately, no injuries were reported. The cause of the collapse remains under investigation," the post states. AFP previously debunked misinformation related to blockbuster movies here, here and here.
