Tracing the steps of early migration

"But another fascinating part of this research is the location of the cave — it's not a coastal location, it's not on an island, but right in the middle of mainland Southeast Asia at least 300 kilometers from the sea.

"It is also in an upland region and would have been heavily forested."

Westaway added: "We know that hominids (the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors) tended to move along river valleys inland, but this location confirms our suspicions that early Homo sapiens had the capacity to adapt and disperse through upland forested regions much earlier than anticipated."

"Surviving in forested regions requires a very different skills set than coastal living and the fact that they had acquired these skills by such an early time is surprising and significant," she said.

Another geochronologist, Renaud Joannes-Boyau from Australia's Southern Cross University, has spent the best part of 10 years working with colleagues from around the world at the site.

"The cave is really quite beautiful," he told China Daily.

"It is painstaking work. When you look around the cave there are various levels where fossil fragments have been found over the years.

"You spend so much time brushing away sediment that has been laid down for thousands of years to eventually uncover a fragment of bone, but it is an incredible moment in time," he said.

He believes Homo sapiens started leaving Africa as early as 200,000 years ago.

"The Tam Pa Ling fossils suggest an earlier presence of modern humans in Asia, but further research is needed to establish their specific relationship to the migration into Australia."