Modern Humans Arrive — Speck in Time Archive

50,000 yrs ago – 12,000 yrs ago · Tens of thousands of years compressed. Scale is not linear here.

The deepest archaic ancestry on Earth

40,000 yrs ago · Philippines

Larena et al., Current Biology, 12 August 2021. The date shown is approximate for earliest modern human settlement, not for the study.

A 2021 study surveying more than a thousand people across 118 Philippine ethnic groups found that the Ayta Magbukon carry the highest proportion of Denisovan ancestry measured anywhere in the world — roughly a third more than Australians or Papuans. The reason is partly about what did not happen: most Negrito groups later mixed with incoming East Asian populations who carried little Denisovan ancestry, diluting the signal. The Ayta Magbukon mixed least, and so kept most.

Tabon Man is three people, not one

47,000 yrs ago – 17,000 yrs ago · Philippines

Three specimens, three dates: tibia 47,000 ± 11,000 · mandible 31,000 +8,000/−7,000 · skullcap 16,500 ± 2,000.

Robert Fox of the National Museum found human remains in the Tabon Caves of Palawan on 28 May 1962 — the earliest Homo sapiens yet known from the Philippines. 'Tabon Man' is a single name covering remains separated by tens of thousands of years: a tibia fragment at roughly 47,000 years, a mandible near 31,000, and the famous skullcap at about 16,500. They are routinely conflated into one person of one age. They should not be.