| Abstract: |
This chapter discusses elements of the natural environment of Island Southeast Asia as it is today. It examines variations in climate, land-sea distributions, land bridges, floras, and faunas during the Pleistocene epoch. Concerning overall chronology, the boundary between the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs has been dated in the past according to three criteria: the onset of mid-latitude glaciation, changes in marine faunas, and changes in terrestrial faunas. The Late Pleistocene thus contained the penultimate interglacial and final glacial periods, a time of massive change in global environments in which anatomically and behaviorally modern Homo sapiens left Africa, was propelled into prominence, and other more archaic hominin species finally succumbed to extinction. Humans migrated as changing environments opened passages for them and impacted upon those new environments in turn as they entered and began to exploit them.
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