Thailand’s oldest human skeleton found in Sam Roi Yot National Park

A pre-historic human skeleton from the Palaeolithic period, believed to be more than 29,000 years old, was recently found in a limestone cave, about 125m above mean sea level, in the Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park in Sam Roi Yot district of Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

Phanombootra Chantarachot, director-general of Fine Arts Department, and Chidchanok Sukmongkol, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, told the media that, in addition to the skeleton, several pre-historic paintings were found on the cave walls.

The ancient paintings were first found on the Bueng Bua mountain face in the national park in 2017, by a team of archaeologists from the Fine Arts Department.

Six more sites of archaeological interest were found, including the one in a limestone cave, which contains five chambers, three of which were found to contain wall paintings.

Further excavations were conducted in the third chamber, where ancient shells, plant seeds and animal bones were found, suggesting that the cave was a human settlement.

Later, a set of human remains, believed to be those of a boy aged between 6 and 8, was uncovered at the depth of about two metres below the cave floor.

A tooth found among the human bones suggests that the remains are those of a male, said the two senior officials. Five specimens of the shells and bones were sent to Beta Analytic Inc. in the United States, for accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) testing, which determined that the cave was inhabited by humans about 29,000 years ago.

The two officials said that, if the human bones are over 29,000 years old, the skeleton would be the oldest ever found in Thailand, adding that the Gulf of Thailand, during the Palaeolithic period, could have been a large tract of land extending to Indonesia, allowing humans to travel overland to this part of the region.