Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Audrey Azoulay praised Vietnam as a responsible member and one of the pioneering countries in carrying out UNESCO programmes and activities during a recent meeting with Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son in Paris.
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Archaeologists in the guano layer at Con Moong Cave in North Vietnam. Conor McAdams, Author provided
Many caves are filled with sediments containing the excrement of birds and bats. This forms phosphate-enriched deposits known as guano essentially, piles of ancient poo.
At Con Moong Cave in northern Vietnam, we wanted to discover more about the first modern humans (
Homo sapiens) to arrive in Southeast Asia. The cave was full of surprises, including a thick layer of soaking wet guano.
We designed a laboratory experiment to better understand whether waterlogged guano destroys bones, stones, charcoal and other organic remains. This has helped us interpret the material we dig out of archaeological sites and to reconstruct what those sites were like in the past.