Homo luzonensis

Homo luzonensis

Homo luzonensis, also called Callao Man and locally "Ubag", was an extinct kind of early human from a long time ago. It lived during the Late Pleistocene on Luzon, in the Philippines.

Scientists found bones, like teeth and fingers, in a cave called Callao Cave. These bones are older than 50,000 years. At first, people thought they were from modern humans, but later they decided they were from a whole new kind of human. This was because the bones looked a mix of modern humans, Australopithecus, and early Homo.

In 2023, scientists found that these bones are about 134,000 years old, much older than they first thought. The ancestors of Homo luzonensis may have come from groups like H. erectus and had to travel across water to get to the island.

People lived on Luzon as early as 771,000 to 631,000 years ago. In the cave, they mostly ate Philippine deer and used tools to cut the meat.

Taxonomy

The first bone of this ancient human was found in 2007 inside Callao Cave in northern Luzon, Philippines. At first, scientists thought it belonged to modern humans. But later, they found more bones and saw it had a mix of features like modern humans and older human relatives. Because of this, they named it Homo luzonensis.

These bones include teeth, finger bones, and toe bones from at least three individuals. They are kept at the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila. Scientists aren't sure exactly where this species fits in the family tree of humans. They think it may have come from an early human group that spread across Southeast Asia a very long time ago. The bones are from before 50,000 years ago. Signs of human activity on the island go back even further, to between 771,000 and 631,000 years ago.

Anatomy

Like other animals that live only on Luzon island, Homo luzonensis might have been smaller than other humans because of living on an island. But we need more complete bones to know for sure.

The teeth of Homo luzonensis are small. Their molars are smaller than those of another small human species, Homo floresiensis. Like us, the molars get smaller toward the back of the mouth. The finger bones are long, narrow, and curved, similar to some early humans and some modern humans. The foot bones are unique compared to other early humans. Because we only have small pieces of bones, it is hard to know exactly how tall they were, but they might have been about as tall as some modern people from the Philippines.

Culture

The island of Luzon is surrounded by water, so the ancestors of H. luzonensis probably crossed a large body of water to get there.

Most of the bone pieces found in Callao Cave come from Philippine deer. This suggests that people brought deer into the cave sometimes. The Philippines did not have big meat-eating animals at that time, so these bones were likely left by humans. Other animals found there include the Philippine warty pig and an extinct type of bovid. There are marks on a deer bone that show it was cut, but no stone tools were found in the cave. This might mean people used tools made from wood or bone, or they processed meat somewhere else.

At the Rizal Archaeological Site in Rizal, Kalinga, Philippines, scientists found the almost complete skeleton of an extinct rhino that had been cut up by early humans about 709,000 years ago. Along with the rhino bones, they found early stone tools, including cores, flakes, and hammerstones, as well as bones from Stegodon (a relative of elephants), deer, turtles, and monitor lizards. Some of the stone tools looked similar to those found at another site called Arubo 1 in central Luzon.