A team of researchers has discovered a set of stone tools on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that date back an astonishing 1 million to 1.5 million years. The findings have rewritten what experts thought they knew about human evolution in the region, suggesting that Sulawesi was inhabited by an unknown human relative before our species evolved.
The tools, made from chert, are simple and sharp-edged flake pieces that would have been useful for general-purpose cutting and scraping tasks. They were created using a percussion flaking technique, where a core rock is struck with a hammer stone to produce sharp flake tools. One of the tools was even retouched to make it sharper.
The researchers used various dating methods to determine the age of the sediments in which the tools were found, and the results matched up chronologically with Homo erectus, which reached Java around 1.6 million years ago. However, Sulawesi has a more limited fossil record than Java, making this discovery significant.
This find suggests that human relatives occupied Sulawesi much earlier than previously thought, likely before reaching Luzon to the north and Flores to the south. The tools could be made by H. erectus or a species similar to H. floresiensis, also known as “hobbit”-size human relatives.
The researchers are uncertain about which species created the tools, as no fossils have been found yet. However, they believe that the Flores hominins may have originated from Sulawesi. The purpose of the tools remains unknown, but it is possible that they were used for food procurement or crafting wood and other plant materials.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/1-5-million-year-old-stone-tools-from-mystery-human-relative-discovered-in-indonesia-they-reached-the-region-before-our-species-even-existed