The skull of the woman from Tam Pa Ling was discovered in a sheltered cave high above the Annamite Mountains of present-day Laos in the country’s northern region.
She's also precious because human remains this old rarely become fossils in the tropics—the climate can be too hot, too wet, and too humid to preserve bone. The fact that her skull survived for 63,000 years was almost certainly due to the cool, dry conditions within the cave.
Present-day Laos has a tropical monsoon climate, with a rainy monsoon season that runs from May through October.
Most of that rain falls in the southwest, making the north the driest part of Laos.
The northern mountains are also the coolest region of Laos: average temperatures there dip to 5°C (41°F) in January, while peaking in the south at 40°C (104°F) along the Mekong River from March to April.
