25/04/2026
Dear friends,
The below article was shared by PAMA friend Dr. Prabhakar, neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist from CMC Vellore, along with his reflection. Thank you, dear Prabha.
We share this scientific article at a time when our “WhatsApp cosmos” rarely allows us even a passing glance. Hence this brief reflection.
The study shows that human ancestors (Homo erectus) were already present in East Asia around 1.77 million years ago—much earlier than previously confirmed. This suggests that early humans moved across vast landscapes faster and more widely than we once imagined. They were adaptable, exploratory, and closely connected to changing environments.
In simple terms:
Human history is older, wider, and more interconnected than we thought.
Second, we bring this insight closer to our own ground.
If we look at Pattanam, about 2,000 years ago, we see another moment of human connectivity—this time across oceans. A place where cultures met, exchanged, and lived with a certain balance. What we describe as Sramana priorities—humility, inner truth, universal affection, and critical reasoning (AUPP)—may not have been abstract ideals, but lived practices within such interconnected worlds.
Between 2016 and 2026, Pattanam—this rare research into a connected past—remained largely frozen. Not by natural causes, but through probably unilateral decisions and inattention.
For KN, who stood for intellectual autonomy and the balancing of Sramana values it was his darkest decade in life. He genuinely at times only regretted on his decision to shift to Kerala.
With AUPP,
PAMA
A R C H A E O L O G Y
The oldest in situ Homo erectus crania in eastern Asia:
The Yunxian site dates to ~1.77 Ma
Hua Tu1,2, Xiaobo Feng3, Lan Luo4, Zhongping Lai1,5*, Darryl Granger6*,
Christopher Bae7,1*, Guanjun Shen2,1*
With the discovery of three almost complete Homo erectus crania, Yunxian is one of the most important early Pleistocene
hominin sites in eastern Asia. Yet, the age of the Yunxian fossils has remained debated because of the lack
of reliable numerical dating results. Here, we apply the well- established isochron 26Al/10Be burial dating to quartz
gravels from two sediment layers of the site. The age results push the Yunxian crania back to 1.77 ± 0.08 million
years ago (±1σ internal error), representing the oldest H. erectus fossils discovered in situ in eastern Asia. A much
older age assignment to Yunxian supports the model of rapid dispersal and widespread distribution of early H.
erectus and contributes to narrowing the chronological gap between the earliest archaeology and hominin pale-
ontology in eastern Asia.
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INTRODUCTION
The oldest Homo erectus fossils in Asia now date to 1.78 to 1.85 million
years (Ma) at Dmanisi in Georgia. However, east of Georgia, the age
of the oldest H. erectus fossils in eastern Asia continues to be de-
bated (1, 2). For instance, given questions about context, the early
H. erectus fossils from the Sangiran Dome in Indonesia have long
been contested with ages ranging from 1.66 Ma to >1.51 Ma and
then to ~1.3 Ma (3–5). Dates for proposed “early” sites in China have
also been debated. Traditionally, there have been two sites considered
to have the oldest H. erectus fossils: Yuanmou and Gongwangling.
Now, Yuanmou is considered slightly older with recently proposed
dates based on 26Al/10Be burial dating analysis, placing the deposits
at 1.72 Ma (6). A thorn in the side of the Yuanmou site, however, is
the fact that the two H. erectus upper incisors were apparently surface
collected (1, 2, 7–9). This lack of context of the Yuanmou fossils is
problematic given that the recent dating reconstruction is, otherwise,
considered robust. Fortunately, the Gongwangling H. erectus crani-
um does not suffer from this problem as it was discovered in situ. In
the case of Gongwangling, the fossil was initially dated to ~1.15 Ma
(10) and more recently to ~1.63 Ma by studying the paleomagnetism
of the loess- paleosol sequence (11). This more recent age was sup-
ported by 26Al/10Be burial dating (12) and is the now accepted age for
the Gongwangling H. erectus fossil.
Nevertheless, the age of the oldest hominin fossils in eastern Asia
remains a point of major debate, particularly given that a number of
Early Pleistocene hominin fossil sites exist. Further, the earliest ar-
chaeological traces, as represented by Xihoudu [~2.4 Ma; (13)] and
1Institute of Marine Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Di-
saster Prediction and Prevention, Shantou University, Shantou 515063, China. 2Col-
lege of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
3School of History and Culture, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China. 4Depart-
ment of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, in 47907, USA. 5Alpine Paleoecology and Human
Adaptation Group (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System,
Environment and Resources, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Acade-
my of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. 6Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and
Planetary Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, in 47907, USA. 7Department
of Anthropology, University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, 2424 Maile Way, 346 Saunders
Hall, Honolulu, hi 96825, USA.
*Corresponding author. Email: zhongping_lai@ stu. edu. cn (Z.L.); dgranger@ purdue.
edu (D.G.); cjbae@ hawaii. edu (C.B.); gjshen@ njnu. edu. cn (G.S.)
Tu et al., Sci. Adv. 12, eady2270 (2026) 18 February 2026
Shangchen [~2.1 Ma; (14)], actually predate the Gongwangling dates
by some 800,000 years. Identifying and reliably dating additional
in situ hominin fossils may help close this chronological gap. Here,
we present an isochron 26Al/10Be burial dating analysis of the Yunxian
H. erectus site and conclude that the artifact and hominin fossil–
bearing layer can be securely dated to ~1.77 Ma. This age for Yunxian
is particularly important given that there are no questions about the
context of the site and fossils unlike the well- known case of Yuanmou,
but yet it is clearly older than Gongwangling.
Yunxian is well- known for the in situ discovery of three fairly intact
H. erectus crania. Because of the severe deformation of two of them
(EV9001 and EV9002) due to sediment compaction, it has been diffi-
cult to determine the full extent of their morphological variation
(Fig. 1C) (15–17). A number of studies have suggested that they dif-
fer markedly from the Zhoukoudian Locality 1 H. erectus crania
(15, 16, 18–20). Renewed recent fieldwork at the site has resulted in the
discovery of a third fairly intact hominin cranium, ~33 to 35 m away
from the first two crania (21–23). We await a detailed morphometric
analysis of this fossil that is reported to be better preserved and more
intact than EV9001 and EV9002 and to come from the same sediment
layer as the two previous ones (22, 23). More than 500 artifacts, typical
of the Early Paleolithic (cores, choppers, and flakes produced on lo-
cally available quartzite), were excavated from the site (15, 22, 23).
The associated mammalian fossils from Yunxian are typical
Stegodon-
Ailuropoda taxa from southern China (24). The absence of
clear Early Pleistocene (or older) taxa (e.g., Gomphotherium and
Hyaena licenti) suggested to the initial researchers that the Yunxian
site dates to the Middle Pleistocene, while the presence of the Early-Middle
Pleistocene Sus xiaozhu implied an early Middle Pleistocene
biochronological age (15). However, D**g (25) more recently sug-
gested that there were a number of similarities between the Yunxian
and Gongwangling faunas, which would push the former site clearly
back into the Early Pleistocene.
The first attempt to secure a narrower age range for Yunxian was
a paleomagnetic study that indicated that the main fossil/archaeology
layer antedates the Brunhes/Matuyama Boundary, with a suggested
age of 870 to 830 thousand years (ka) (26). The first attempt at radio-
metric dating was an electron spin resonance (ESR) dating analysis
of nine associated mammalian teeth that yielded a mean age of ~600 ka
(27). Later, on the basis of paleomagnetic analysis of samples taken
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