KUCHING: The Sarawak Museum Department, in collaboration with an Australian university, is conducting a joint research on the “Deep Skull”, believed to have belonged to a middle aged woman who died and was buried in the west mouth of the Niah Caves complex around 35,000 years ago.
An associate professor from University of New South Wales in Sydney, Dr Dareen Curnoe said the Deep Skull lady is the most complete skeleton of an early modern human found anywhere in Southeast Asia, making the Niah Caves a key location globally in prehistory.
“This year, the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Deep Skull that we first discovered the first fragments of Pleistocene human remains from the Niah Caves since 1958,” he said at the talk entitled “Next Chapter in the history of Niah Caves” here today.
He said the Trader’s Cave, one of the many rock formations, has opened up an exciting new chapter in the history of the Niah Caves, Sarawak and Southeast Asia by extending human prehistory back to 65,000 years ago.
The ongoing research is a joint project by Sarawak Museum Department and University of New South Wales at the Niah Caves.
– Bernama