Although the chronostratigraphy of early human remains in Southeast Asia is still very much open to dispute, archaeological arguments are already available for the presence of human ecosystems east of India at least 1.5 million years ago (My). They are deducted from the traceable differences of technical traditions of stone tool production. There are even chances that the first toolmakers in South and East Asia are still older. It is also still possible that earlier roots of proto-human

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... n are present and could be found in Asia itself. After the critical evaluation of the mitochondrial DNA studies by C. Oxnard (1997; from whose article I took the title of this lecture) it seems quite possible that all regional populations of hominids and the early species of the genus Homo made their own ways of genetic evolutions up to the level of early Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans). They are evidently following a general worldwide genetic trend of (at least later mainly) frontal brain evolution as a result of steadily increasing information processing and connected enlarging technical feedback as exclusive human factors. But depending on the different climatic and topographic conditions controlling the basal productivity available for use by protohumans and humans, and the technologies developed and applied by them, the speed of changes had to be different. Those changes are also evidently related to the range of available choices that add new experiences and more complex interactions to the ecosystem established as cultural tradition.