Minatogawa Man
Minatogawa 1 (Japanese港 川 人1号, Minatogawa -jin 1- gō or港 川 人, Minatogawa -jin, literally " Minatogawa Man" ) is the archive name for the nearly complete remains of the skeleton of modern man (Homo sapiens) which was discovered in 1970 in the Minatogawa limestone quarry on the city area of today Yaese on the Japanese island of Okinawa by businessman Seiho Ōyama. Together with three somewhat less well-preserved female skeletons are these findings to the oldest securely dated evidence for the presence of Homo sapiens in East Asia. Total skeletal remains were found that could have come from five to nine individuals.
The Nansei Islands, including Okinawa and the Ryukyu islands lying south-west, were in the Upper Pleistocene - that is, during the ice ages - due to the then low water level of the oceans among themselves and with Taiwan connected by land bridges. Fossil occupies the Okinawa since the 1930s, including by finds of elephant, deer, and rat fossils. 1962 were also discovered in the Katabaru - cave on the island Iejima first fossil human bones and suspected stone tools. It was then searched in different places specifically for early archaeological and paleoanthropological traces.
Fündig was one in 1970, among other things some 10 kilometers southeast of Naha in Minatogawa quarry in a fund- layer with different methods at 18,250 ± 650 years BP and 16,600 ± 300 years B.P. was dated.
The skeleton Minatogawa 1 was recovered almost intact from a rock column. His bones were found in nearly anatomically normal position, but standing on its head; the skeletal remains of other individuals, however, were scattered over a larger area. Minatogawa 1 belonged to a relatively small man whose size was estimated to be 1.53 meters, also the skull is having an internal volume of 1390 cm ³ correspondingly small. The face was relatively wide and flat and resembles the Liujiang fossil from Guangxi, People's Republic of China; However, many facial bones are broken, so that the reconstruction is uncertain. Overall, the shape of the skull, the thickness of the cranial bones and the size of the teeth differ significantly from the characteristics of today's East Asians. This confirms a well-known also from other sites trend that among other things, the less bulky bone structure and musculature was reduced in the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene.
The unusual Auffindeposition of Minatogawa 1 ( upside down ) and a number of broken bones in the other skeletons could loud Hisashi Suzuki, the author of the first detailed description of the findings ( Chapter 2), suggestive of cannibalism; According to this interpretation of the victim's body had been thrown headlong into a column of limestone formation.