Neolithic Human Remains Discovered in Central Vietnam

HÀ NÔI, VIETNAM—Viet Nam News reports that additional 7,000-year-old human remains were discovered in the Krông Nô volcanic cave system in Vietnam’s central highlands. The bones of two adults and one child, who was about four years old at the time of death, had been surrounded by bones from ten other bodies. Pieces of ceramics, stone tools, and animal bones were also recovered. “This finding is the first of its kind in the area,” said Nguyên Trung Minh of Vietnam’s National Museum of Nature. According to Nguyên Lân Cu’ò’ng of the Viet Nam Archaeology Association, human remains are not well preserved in the region’s red basalt soil. “It seems the early people who lived in this cave system ate snails and mussels, the shells of which contain a lot of calcium that has changed the makeup of the environment inside the caves,” he explained. For more on archaeology in Southeast Asia, go to “Angkor Urban Sprawl.”