Abstract

In the Pleistocene, Homo sapiens and other members of our genus dispersed across the globe into novel and challenging environments. How these hominins came to populate one particularly challenging ecology, island rainforests, can tell us a great deal about the dynamics of human behavioural flexibility in the deep past. This seminar will present new field and laboratory data pertinent to this topic from the archaeologically enigmatic Raja Ampat Islands, which lie at the interface of Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea. It was in these equatorial islands that different human populations first came to adapt to small island rainforests as they crossed narrow water gaps, and major biogeographic divides, between the Eurasia and Oceania.

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