ABSTRACT

WLH-50 has been dated to about 15,000 to 13,000 years by gamma spectrometric U-series analysis (4) and to about double that time by electron spin resonance on bone (5). The calvarium exhibits many features that closely resemble earlier Indonesian hominids, including the Ngandong fossils of Java (6). WLH-50 is regarded as a modern human in all origins models (6, 7), whereas Ngandong fossils are often assessed as archaic humans or late surviving Homo erectus (8). The other possible ancestral population we tested for this male is the earlier modern human sample from Africa and the Levant of western Asia, which under the replacement theory must represent the only ancestors (Figure 1) of the first modern humans in Australia.