In Malaysia’s easternmost state of Sabah, which is located on the northern tip of the island of Borneo, archaeologists found more than 1,000 stone tools scattered on the ground while walking to Samang Buat Cave. The tools indicate that humans came to Borneo from the Asia at least 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Conservators at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University are preserving what could be the last Alutiiq kayak  made of sea lion skin stretched over a wooden frame. The kayak was constructed in the early 1860s on Alaska’s Kodiak Island and then brought to the museum in 1869 after the U.S. Army surveyed the region. Several strands of human hair stitched into the surface near the kayak’s double prow indicate that it was a vessel used for hunting and war. “Over 7,000 years of our people’s living knowledge went into construction of this kayak. There is no known kayak of its age today. It’s unique and holds so much information,” said Sven Haakanson, a member of the Alutiiq tribe and director of the Alutiiq Museum. Most kayaks were probably buried with their owners.

Traces of prehistoric buildings have been found on Skomer Island, located off the coast of Wales, during a geophysical survey. It had been thought that the island had only been occupied for about 100 years, but now archaeologists from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Sheffield University think it may have been settled before the arrival of the Romans. “It’s very, very well preserved. This is a place on Wales where we can study prehistoric fields, Iron Age life, a Celtic way of life, in a way that in other parts of Wales has been lost,” said team member Toby Driver.

Additional information suggests that the skeleton discovered by soldiers from Taiwan’s military on Liang Island may provide a link between the people of southern China, the Polynesians, and the Maori of New Zealand. Samples from the bones, which are estimated to be 7,900 years old, have been sent the U.S. and Germany for radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis. “Judging from the way the body was buried, it could be a person from what we now call the Austronesia language family,” said Chen Chung-yu, head of the archaeological team.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, April 10, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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