| Abstract: |
Early Homo sapiens foragers had dispersed into South East Asia by at least 50,000 years ago. Homo sapiens sites dated to between 45,000 and 10,000 years ago have been documented throughout South East Asia, from Vietnam in the north to Burma in the west, and from Sumatra in the south-west to Luzon and East Timor in the north-east and south-east respectively. The initial habitat preferences may have been coastal, including small remote islands by 35,000 cal. years ago, and hinterland savannah locations. Sophisticated adaptations to South East Asia's tropical rainforest are in evidence by the end of the Pleistocene, associated with a subsistence shift to a broad-spectrum diet and, across much of the mainland, the appearance of Hoabinhian stone tool assemblages based on flaked and utilized river cobbles.
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