September/October 2016 Issue

MALAYSIA: The “Deep Skull,” found in 1958, is still the earliest known remnant of a modern human in island Southeast Asia, at 37,000 years old. It had been thought that the skull, from Borneo, came from someone related to indigenous Australians, and that the islands were settled in two waves—first by ancestors to Australians and then by immigrants from Asia who became Borneo’s modern indigenous people. A new analysis, however, found that the skull appears to be more Asian than Australian in origin, suggesting there was just one major migration. —Samir S. Patel

CHINA: Broomcorn, millet, barley, Job’s tears, tubers—this ancient Chinese beer recipe probably produced an interesting bouquet. The ingredients were identified from residues found in a variety of clay vessels, including a funnel, that may have comprised a “beer-making toolkit” from a 5,000-year-old site in Shaanxi. The find is also the earliest known identification of barley in the country, suggesting the grain was introduced for beer production rather than as food. —Samir S. Patel

MADAGASCAR: This island nation is 300 miles from the coast of Africa and 3,700 miles from Southeast Asia, but the people there speak Malagasy, an Austronesian language related to Malay and Hawaiian. This suggests that the island was colonized around 1,200 years ago from across the Indian Ocean, but until now there was no physical evidence to back up the linguistic and genetic data. Recently excavated botanical remains have provided the first tangible link—the remains of Asian crops, including rice and cotton—at sites there and on the Comoros islands closer to the African mainland. —Samir S. Patel