Archaeologist Makes History After Two Decades of Digging

Filipino archaeologist, Armand Salvador Mijares has finally made history after nearly two decades of digging deep into the wonders of Luzon. Mijares, with his team of researchers, have discovered a new species of ancient humans, Homo luzonensis, in the Philippines.

Researchers said its physical features are a mixture of those found in very ancient human ancestors and in more recent people. This means that primitive human relatives left Africa and made it to South-East Asia. The latest finding reveals that human evolution in the region may have been highly complicated.

Mijares believes the Homo luzonensis lived on the island of Luzon around 50,000 to 67,000 years ago. The new species has some physical similarities to recent humans, but in other features hark back to the australopithecines, upright walking, ape-like creatures that lived in Africa between two and four million years ago. In 2007, the associate professor at the University of Philippines, Mijares had led a multinational team to discover the earliest fossil evidence of humans in Southeast Asia dubbed ‘Callao Man’.