Response: The elusive insular Lower Palaeolithic and the problem of intentionality

Thomas P. Leppard Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 27.2 (2014), 275-278

From the introduction

I am writing this response while sitting in Guam, the largest island in Micronesia. Bathed in sunlight for half the year, drenched by rain the other, surrounded by shallow, productive seas, and tropically verdant, Guam should, accordingly, have been an ideal environment for hominins during Quaternary interstadials. Such species were present in neighboring east Asia: HOMO ERECTUS remains from Java (with a very similar ecological configuration to Micronesia) date to 1.8 mya, and from China to 0.7 mya. Yet despite intensive archaeological study of the island, there is no evidence for archaic hominin colonization of Guam-no colonization by HOMO at all, in fact, until members of our own species arrived only -3.5 kya. This absence is paralleled on the Californian Channel Islands, Diego Garcia, Fiji, Iceland, Kerguelen, Kvitoya, Madagascar, Madeira, and South Georgia. Why? What is it about these places which prevented their colonization or seasonal exploitation by archaic HOMO?