Prehistoric Thailand may be traced back as far as 1,000,000 years ago from the fossils and stone tools found in northern and western Thailand. At an archaeological site in Lampang, northern Thailand Homo erectus fossils, Lampang Man, dating back 1,000,000 – 500,000 years, have been discovered. Stone tools have been widely found in Kanchanaburi, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Lopburi. Prehistoric cave paintings have also been found in these regions, dating back 10,000 years. 2,500,000 - 10,000 years ago: Palaeolithic Early Stone Age The Lower Palaeolithic is the earliest subdivision of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago, when the first craft and use of stone tools by hominids appears in the archaeological record, until around 120,000 years ago when important evolutionary and technological changes ushered in the Middle Palaeolithic. Early species The earliest hominids, known as Homo erectus and recognisable as human, appear in the archaeological record between 1,000,000-500,000 years ago. Locally typified by the fossil, Lampang Man. About 1,000,000 years ago, Homo erectus moved to Asia from Africa, where it had originated. Its use and control of fire was an important tool in its hunter-gatherer means of subsistence. Homo erectus's skull was smaller and thicker than that of modern human beings. It lived in the mouth of caves near streams or other water supplies. Its main natural enemies included the giant hyena Hyaena sinesis, the sabre-toothed tiger, the orang-utan, and the giant panda. In 1999, Somsak Pramankit claimed to have found skull fragments of Homo erectus in Ko Kha, Lampang, though most scholars do not recognize these finds as credible. It was comparable to the skull fossils of Sangiran II Man found in Java, (Java man), which is 400,000 - 800,000 years old, as well as Peking Man. Stone artefacts dating to 40,000 years ago have been found at Tham Lod Rockshelter in Mae Hong Son. Relation to modern Thai people Modern Thais are not descendants of Lampang Man. Genetic research supports this assertion. Geneticists have proved that there was no inter-breeding between modern human immigrants to Southeast Asia and Homo erectus, affirming that the Thai descended from Africans in accordance with the Recent single-origin hypothesis. 10,000 - 4,000 years ago: Neolithic New Stone Age The Neolithic or "New" Stone Age was a period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the