With Philippines having more than 7,000 islands, it is considered as one in a million

discoveries for archaeologists to find a cache of carved rhino bones and hundreds of
stone tools on the largest island in the Philippines, Luzon. This is the Callao Man also
known as ‘Homo Luzonensis’, known as the second dwarf human. Homo Luzonensis
were the only hominids that inhabited Luzon Island. While exploring the rocky floor and
the cold caves of Callao Cave on Luzon Island, researchers uncovered a number of
fossils from what might be an ancient human species that have never been discovered
before. Archaeologists are curious who exactly these ancient people were and how they
crossed the deep seas that covered the island and others in South East Asia.

Homo luzonensis, this species inhabited Luzon more than 50,000 years ago. They lived
at the same time with the more advanced species the Homo neanderthalensis and the
Homo sapiens, or modern humans. These early humans also lived at the same time as
the “Hobbit” species, Homo floresiensis a species found in Indonesia, but their tooth and
foot shape, along with other traits, mark them as a distinct species all their own. Back in
2007, archaeologists in Luzon discovered a single foot bone (or metatarsal) in Callao
Cave, which they dated to 67,000 years ago. Analysis of that fossil suggested it
belonged to a member of the genus Homo, but they didn’t know which species. The
fossils found in the cave—including several foot and hand bones, a partial femur and
teeth—shared some with more primitive hominin species such as Australopithecus and
Homo erectus, as well as more advanced ones, including Homo sapiens and Homo
floresiensis. The fossils found in the cave included several foot and hand bones, partial
femur and teeth. What really got me interested was the teeth, as there are no other
species that have the same traits as the Homo Luzonensis. The foot bones they dug up
is different from the bones that you’d see today, the bones had features which would’ve
made climbing trees easier and while still walking on two legs upright.

Discovering and finding our pasts feels really satisfying, it is like being able to move one
more step towards completely understanding who we really are. This discovery is a
great stepping stone for us to gain understanding about how the Filipino race developed
and give us a background study of how our ancestors live in the past. We should
investigate and study our pasts and see how different or how similar they lived to us
modern humans. Through learning more about our past we can all develop the same
sense of appreciation towards how our ancestors continued to prolong and develop our
species. Without them we would probably be stuck in a more primitive era of humans.