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First Hominins

3 Mya – 50,000 yrs ago · Millions of years compressed. Scale is not linear here.

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Homo luzonensis — a human species found only here

67,000 yrs ago – 50,000 yrs ago · Philippines

Fossils from Callao Cave in northern Luzon belong to a previously unknown human species, named in 2019. Homo luzonensis was small-bodied, and its curved toe bones suggest it had not given up climbing. A foot bone found in 2007 and originally labelled simply 'Callao Man' turned out to belong to it. For a stretch of time, a distinct branch of humanity lived on Luzon and nowhere else on Earth.

There was never a land bridge from Taiwan

120,000 yrs ago – 12,000 yrs ago · Philippines

When sea levels dropped during glacial periods, Palawan joined Borneo as part of the exposed shelf known as Sundaland — which is why Palawan shares animals with mainland Southeast Asia. Luzon and Mindanao did not. They stayed islands throughout, separated by deep water that never drained. The popular story of people simply walking to the Philippines is wrong, and the truth is more impressive: everyone who ever arrived here came by sea.

Somebody butchered a rhinoceros in Kalinga

709,000 yrs ago · Philippines

Published in Nature, 2018. The site was declared a National Cultural Treasure in 2023.

In Rizal, Kalinga, archaeologists uncovered a near-complete rhinoceros skeleton surrounded by fifty-seven stone tools. The bones carry cut marks and percussion marks — the animal was deliberately butchered. The site dates to 709,000 years ago, pushing human presence in the islands back more than tenfold from what was previously accepted. Two questions remain wide open: which hominin did this, and how did they cross open ocean to get here? Nobody knows.