New skeleton from 18kyr Sahul

[Daryl Habel]

From the Sydney Morning Herald website:

Our own Amazon princess
December 10, 2003
 
Back when Indonesia was part of Australia, a young woman left treasure in a cave. Deborah Smith reports.

SHE was tall and strong and in her late 20s when she died about 18,000 years ago. Her teeth were not worn down, so she had probably enjoyed a diet of wallaby and other animals rather than chewing on tough plants. And from the unusual holes in some of her bones, it is possible that cancerous growths contributed to her early demise.

Named after the limestone cave where she was found, Lemdubu Woman and her burial site provide a unique insight into life in the north of the continent during the last glacial maximum, when Australia was much colder and drier.

Her skeleton has now been studied in more detail than any other remains from this period.

Today, Lemdubu Cave sits amid the dense rainforest of the Aru islands in Indonesia. But at the time the young woman died, sea levels were at their lowest because the ice sheets were at their greatest extent, and the Aru islands were part of a bigger Australian land mass, called Sahulland, that included New Guinea and Tasmania.

The entire article, located:

CLICK HERE FOR THE URL

Enjoy,
Dar

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Dar,

Thanks for passing this on. Here is some additional info dealing with th Lemdubu find/study.

The Late Glacial Maximum, Tropical Sahulland Woman from Lemdubu Cave, Aru, Indonesia

David Bulbeck (1), Sue O’Connor (1), Matthew Spriggs (1) and Peter Veth (2)

(1) Australian National University, (2) AIATSIS

Abstract:

Rainer Grün’s circa 18,000 year old ESR determination on the human skeleton excavated by O’Connor, Spriggs and Veth in Lemdubu Cave dates the burial to the time when the Aru Islands were still connected to New Guinea and Australia by land. The discovery is very important as one of the very few Pleistocene burials known from tropical Sahulland, and because Bulbeck’s description (submitted for publication) is the most exhaustive for any Pleistocene Sahulland skeleton. Details of the pelvis reveal a female status despite the robust skull development and large teeth. Limb-bone measurements indicate the person had been a tall woman (stature around 166 cm) of linear build and with elongated distal limbs. Extremely thick cortical bone on the femur and humerus reflects great physical strength; however, cranial bone is thin. Cranial size is average by the standards of other ancient Sahulland females (e.g., Kow Swamp 4 and 8). The cranial contour is strongly angulated, but without any trace of fronto-occipital deformation. Fordisc 2.0 linear discriminant analysis identifies Tasmanians as the skull’s nearest neighbour. This is not surprising as Tasmanians are also the most common nearest neighbour for ancient southeast Australian skulls (13/50 comparisons). The Lemdubu discovery suggests that, by the Late Glacial Maximum, the inhabitants of Sahulland were already characterized by a distinctive suite of “Australoid” features. These are not as marked as on Willandra Lakes 50, which chronologically is probably closer to Lemdubu than any other dated Sahulland human remains. Given Lemdubu’s tropical location, the distinctions may reflect adaptation to different Pleistocene climates.

By the way, the above is taken from the program of  Australian Archaeological Association annual Conference which was held just a few days ago.  Available as a PDF, the program can be found HERE

Jacques