A Multi-proxy palaeo-environmental investigation of Middle Pleistocene Vietnam: Implications for hominin adaptation, distribution, and mobility

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The complexity of human evolution in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) remains poorly understood; yet fossil and genetic analyses suggest it was a key area of Middle to Late Pleistocene adaptation, speciation and admixture, widely thought to be linked to environmental conditions. This project will employ multiple methods to examine the hominin-environment relationship, with a focus on archaeological, geological, and faunal data from Northern Vietnam - an area under-represented in these debates. Specifically, it will evaluate the assertion that tropical forests and fauna presented barriers to hominins and were major drivers of regional evolution.Hominin evolution in MSEA is set against a backdrop of environmental changes, and significant spatial and temporal variation is evident in the character of the archaeological record of the region. It is generally thought that the vast tropical forests and the proposed Stegodon-Ailuropoda faunal complex (a collection of faunal species appearing to have inhabited these tropical forests throughout the Middle to Late Pleistocene), acted as an ecological barrier which restricted and shaped hominin environments prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens (Ciochon 2010). A detailed review, however, questions such an assertion on at least two fronts: Middle Pleistocene artefacts and hominin dentition have been confidently identified in association with forest-typical faunal remains (e.g. Liu et al. 2013); and the Stegodon-Ailuropoda faunal complex - discussed as a single entity - often consists of species from distinct environs (e.g. Dennell 2009). To resolve this issue, my aim is to evaluate the extent to which environmental conditions shaped hominin mobility and adaptation in Middle Pleistocene MSEA, by focusing on northern Vietnam as a limited case study. This region has several confirmed and potential hominin sites as well as yielding several hominid fossils of indeterminate species; yet it remains neglected compared to a successful Middle Pleistocene research in neighbouring southern China. By comprehensively studying and comparing the archaeological, geological and faunal records in detail, and further comparing the data with other sites around MSEA, the project aims to identify and study variables in the ecotopes which exhibit strong associations with hominin sites, and model changes in these over time. From this, it will be possible to produce a geographical vignette of temporal ecological change and examine the intersections with identified hominin activity. Identifying these variables and understanding their interaction will advance our understanding of the ecological limitations of hominins in MSEA in a meaningful and testable way. Indeed, two important tests will come through the model's capacity to enhance prediction for hominin sites, and the potential to identify drivers of allopatric speciation (divergence by geographic separation) and areas of admixture (successful interbreeding between distinct lineages).