Newly discovered stone tools on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi suggest that ancient human relatives arrived there between 1 million and 1.5 million years ago. The findings, published in Nature, push back the timeline for hominid occupation of Sulawesi by hundreds of thousands of years.
The discovery includes seven stone artifacts found at a site called Calio, which show signs of proficient toolmaking. The tools, some of which are as long as an adult human thumb, were used for cutting and scraping tasks. Archaeologists believe that the ancient Sulawesi hominids belonged to a Homo species, possibly direct or distant ancestors of modern humans.
The age of the tools was determined by measuring reversals of Earth’s magnetic field in sediment layers and calculating decay rates of radioactive forms of uranium in two teeth from a pig jaw found near the stone tools. The findings suggest that ancient hominids crossed short stretches of ocean to reach Sulawesi, likely as accidental castaways or navigators.
This discovery challenges previous knowledge of human migration and occupation on Sulawesi, which was previously thought to be around 194,000 years old. It also raises questions about how early human ancestors initially arrived on the island and whether their population was short-lived.
Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/stone-tools-hominids-indonesia-hobbit