526 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 64 



side help that were clearly going to be necessary, but in 1957 we started 

 large-scale regular excavation. Now, in 1963, we have a house inside 

 the cave, mouth and a large base camp organization on the river 2 

 miles away, with a connecting hardwood plank-walk from river to 

 cave. Pennanent staff are on duty all the year round. We average 

 4 to 5 months' field excavation during the year ; and all-the-year-round 

 analysis back in Kuching (where we now have a fine new research 

 building) . 



The simplest fact about the Great Cave west mouth is that what 

 appears to be earth producing a wide pleasant floor is really almost 

 solid human deposit, back at least into the middle Paleolithic. The 

 outer part of the mouth was used primarily for frequentation in the 

 Neolithic — by w-hich time people were making some permanent dwell- 

 ings out in the rain forest; and for regular habitation m the earlier 

 phases of stone age (Paleolithic-Mesolithic). 



In front of the guano belt of darkness, the whole floor is netted with 

 burials, of which we have now more than 100 left exposed in situ, under 

 perspex covers — for later full study. Burials also occur in the habita- 

 tion-f requentation zone, mostly at the deeper levels ; usually the bodies 

 distorted, crouched, or the head alone. The deepest of these so far is a 

 young Homo sajjiens boy which has been fully published by Dr. Broth- 

 well and generally accepted (e.g., at the recent Pacific Science 

 Congress, Hawaii) as corresponding to a carbon-14-dated level of 

 around 38,000 b.c. There is good reason to believe that its date is 

 correct within, at the worst, a few^ thousand years; and it therefore 

 represents much the earliest Homo sapiens ("modern man") found so 

 far East. The further inferences is that Homo sapiens was much more 

 widely distributed considerably earlier than has previously been sup- 

 posed. This is indirectly supported by other archeological indica- 

 tions that human culture advanced early and rapidly in West Borneo. 

 I believe that full excavation elsewhere in Southeast Asia will mi- 

 doubtedly provide similar material in Malaya, Thailand, and Indo- 

 nesia. Dr. Robert Fox (of the National Museum in Manila) and I 

 visited Palawan in the Southern Philippines 2 years ago, on an archeo- 

 logical reconnaissance, and he has since, using similar techniques there, 

 already produced Homo sapiens material wliich is datable to beyond 

 20,000 B.C. from a Palawan cave. 



The Brothwell Niah skull comes from 100 inches level in the West 

 Mouth excavations at a pit we call "Hell" — owing to the heat and dis- 

 comfort of working there . . . The deposit down here is extremely 

 fine and difficult to work. Soon after 100 inches, bone (both human or 

 food remains) and all food shell (of which 20 species occur in quantity 

 higher up) disintegrate completely through the mere process of equa- 

 torial time. For a feature of Niah is that nothing in these deposits 

 has fossilized. Under the peculiar conditions of this great limestone 



