Julien Louys
Julien Louys is Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University. His research has focused on examining the mammal fossil record at several scales, from phenotypes, whole organisms, to entire communities to provide the most holistic understanding of the interaction between species, including humans, and their environments. He recently completed an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship on Sumatra’s role in ancient human movements and evolution.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7539-0689
Quaternary Palaeontology and Archaeology of Sumatra »
Publication date: April 2024
“The Indonesian island of Sumatra is part of a chain of islands making up Sunda and the Malay Archipelago. Sumatra is one of the largest islands in the world, housing unique and globally important tropical rainforests, a diverse array of rare plants and magnificent animals, and a population of 60 million who speak a range of Austronesian languages. As beautifully exemplified in this volume, Sumatra is a place which preserves a distinct and long-term human history, studies of which began in earnest with Eugene Dubois’s explorations in the 1880s to find our ancestral ‘missing link’. Archaeological investigation of megaliths and historic empires carry on to this day. A range of topics are explored here, including palaeontological study of fossil mammals and their environments, the routes that Homo erectus took during their wanderings across Indonesia, and the growth and development of societies and empires in more recent periods. This exemplary volume presents a revised view of the history of palaeontological and archaeological research as well as new ground-breaking field research, laying the foundation for future research on the biological and cultural evolution of one of the most majestic islands of the world.”
— Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University