Niah Caves, Borneo

Niah Cave, website of great archaeologic proof regarding prehistoric man’s existence in geographical region, placed on the island of Kalimantan, district, ten miles (16 km) inland  from the South China ocean. The Niah Cave provides samples of early epoch man’s home ground in territorial dominion and was the positioning of virtually continuous human domicile till the nineteenth century. The cave was 1st represented to Westerners in 1864 by Alfred Russel Wallace, the conceiver, along side Charles Darwin, of the speculation of activity. though a territorial dominion official visited the cave seven years later, solely within the twentieth century, following its purchase by the territorial dominion deposit, was the importance of the positioning unconcealed.

The Niah Cave itself is huge, with 5 openings, or mouths. the most cave is named the painted cave due to red iron ore wall and ceiling paintings. Its mouth is concerning three hundred feet (90 m) high by 600 feet (180 m) wide. whereas alternative sections of the cave area unit dark, moist, and owner-occupied by countless loopy and swiftlets, the painted cave is dry, well lit, and favourable for human domicile. the primary archaeologic dig, by Tom Harrisson in 1954, uncovered tidy proof of past human habitations. The earliest flakes and chopper tools initiate concerning forty,000 bc. the foremost necessary discovery at Niah was the remains of a skeleton of a young adult male, about 38,000 bc, the earliest human being remains found within the Far East to it time; these bones area unit of specific interest as a result of this individual lived at a similar time as Homo soloensis of Java, the Rhodesioids of continent, and also the classic Neanderthals of Europe—all human being, however of so much less fashionable trying and willowy (slender) kind.

History 
The ground space of the cave has been calculated at nearly ten hectares and in places the cave roof rises an imposing seventy five metres higher than the rubble-strewn floor. it's been the positioning of around forty,000 years of human occupation.
The earliest section of cave occupation is brought up because the Palaeolithic (old stone age) and happens within the late epoch. The epoch ends with the start of Recent epoch around ten,000 years agone. throughout the epoch there have been several exciting changes within the means humans occupied a large vary of environments across the world.
 At a similar time, there's proof for the utilization of pottery as ceremonial occasion gifts and conjointly as burial jars, with abundant later proof for the deposition of foreign metals, ceramics and glass.
The Great West Mouth at Niah Cave
Looking out of the good West Mouth at Niah Cave. Our dig website is simply visible on the so much right, underneath the massive roof.
The excavations were admirable for his or her time, notably given the tidy supplying difficulties that had to be overcome due to the isolation of the positioning and also the difficulties of operating in tropical environments.