Fa Hien Cave

'''Fa Hien Cave''' is a [[cave]] in the district of [[Kalutara District|Kalutara]], [[Western Province, Sri Lanka|Western Province]], [[Sri Lanka]], named after the [[Buddhism|Buddhist]] monk [[Faxian]] ([[Wade-Giles]]: Fa Hien). The cave is important for the [[Late Pleistocene]] [[human]] [[skeletal]] remains discovered there in the 1960s and 1980s. The first human [[burial]]s in the cave were uncovered in 1968 by Dr [[S. U. Deraniyagala|Siran U. Deraniyagala]] (the Sri Lankan government department of archaeology), and he returned with an assistant, W. H. Wijepala, in 1988. The main finds consisted of [[microlith]]s, the remains of ancient fires, and the remains of plants and human beings. [[Radiocarbon dating]] indicated that the cave had been occipied from about 33,000 to 4,750 years ago — from the Late Pleistocene to the [[Holocene|Middle Holocene]]. The human remains from the different levels were taken to the Human [[Biology]] [[Laboratory]] at [[Cornell University]], where they were studied by Dr [[Kenneth A. R. Kennedy]] and one of his graduate students, [[Joanne L. Zahorsky]]. The oldest fragments of human bone came from a young child, two older children, a juvenile, and two adults, and showed evidence of being secondary [[burial]]s: that is, after death, the bodies were exposed, and after [[decomposition]] and the predations of [[scavengers]], the bones were placed in graves. The later remains included those of a young child, about 6,850 years old, and a young woman (nicknamed Kalu-Menika by the archaeologists), about 5,400 years old. Both were also secondary burials. The discoveries were important to [[archaeologists]] and [[palaeontologists]] because the earliest of the people buried in Fa Hien Cave lived at the same time as [[Europe]]an [[Cro-Magnon man]] and other [[Hominidae|hominid]]s of the Late [[Pleistocene]] around the world. Studies of the teeth found in the cave indicate that the population of [[Sri Lanka]] ground nuts, seeds, and grains in stone [[quern-stone|querns]] in the preparation of food, and that they continued to live as [[hunter-gatherer]]s until about the 8th century BCE. [[Sri Lanka]] has yielded the earliest known microliths, which didn't appear in [[Europe]] until the Early Holocene. Other important Sri Lankan prehistoric sites at which human remains have been found include two other caves – [[Batadombalena]] (about 28,500 years old) and [[Belilena]] [[Kitulgala]] (about 12,000 years old) – and an open-air site, Bellanbandi Palassa (about 6,000 years old). ==Sources== *Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, "Fa Hien Cave", in ''[[Encyclopedia of Anthropology]]'' ed. [[H. James Birx]] (2006, SAGE Publications; ISBN 0-7619-3029-9) *[http://www.lankalibrary.com/geo/dera1.html "Pre- and Protohistoric settlement in Sri Lanka"] — S. U. Deraniyagala, Director-General of Archaeology, Sri Lanka *Kenneth A. R. Kennedy and Siran U. Deraniyagala, ''Fossil remains of 28,000-year old hominids from Sri Lanka,'' Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 3. (Jun., 1989), pp. 394-399. *Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, T. Disotell, W. J. Roertgen, J. Chiment and J. Sherry, ''Biological anthropology of upper Pleistocene hominids from Sri Lanka: Batadomba Lena and Beli Lena caves'', Ancient Ceylon 6: 165-265. *Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, Siran U. Deraniyagala, W. J. Roertgen, J. Chiment and T. Disotell, ''Upper Pleistocene fossil hominids from Sri Lanka'', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 72: 441-461, 1987. ==External links== * [http://lakdiva.org/books/fahsin/contents.html The Travels of Fa-Hien] * [http://www.lankalibrary.com/geo/dera1.html Pre-and Protohistoric Settlement in Sri Lanka] * [http://www.lankalibrary.com/geo/prehistory.htm Prehistoric basis for the rise of civilisation in Sri Lanka and southern India] {{coord missing|Sri Lanka}}