Archaeologists discovered primitive sharp stone tools on Sulawesi, Indonesian island, and added another piece to the evolutionary puzzle, which includes the mysterious ancients who lived in an area known as the Wallacea.
Located across the Southeast Asian mainland, Wallacea includes a group of islands between Asia and Australia, with Sulawesi being the largest. Previously, researchers discovered evidence that, for comparison with the petite characters in the book by fantasy writer JRR Torkien, an unusual, small human species, also known as the “Hobbit,” lived in nearby Flores, from about 50,000 years ago, to about 50,000 years ago.
The newly discovered flake stone tools date back 104 million to 1.48 million years ago, representing the oldest evidence of human inhabitants in Sulawesi, suggesting that the island may be present at the same time, or perhaps at a much earlier time. The researchers reported the findings of a study published in Journal Nature on Wednesday.
Researchers are still trying to answer these important questions about Wallacea Island Hominins. In other words, when and how did you arrive on the island?
The flaked stone tools were previously discovered in Flores and were made about 1.02 million years ago. The most recent findings suggest that there may have been a link between the populations of Flores and Sulawesi. It suggests that Sulawesi was a foothold for Flores’ Hobbit.
“I have long suspected that a homo-flowerous lineage of Flores, which probably represents a variant of the dwarf of early Asian homoerectus, originally came north from Sulawesi.
The excavation survey conducted by research author Budianto Hakim, co-led by senior archaeologist at the Indonesian National Research Innovation Agency, began in Sulawesi in 2019 and was found to protrude from an outcrop of sandstone known as the cariosite of modern corn fields.
The site, located near the river channel, was probably the site where Hominins made tools and hunted one million years ago, according to archaeologists who found animal fossils in the area. Among the discoveries were the jawbone of the now-creative Cerebochoeros, a species of pig with very large upper fangs.
At the end of the excavation in 2022, the team discovered seven stone tools. Sandstone and fossil dating resulted in estimates of the age of the tool, at least 1.04 million years old. The human-related artifacts previously discovered in Sulawesi were dated 194,000 years ago.
The small, sharp stone fragments used as tools were likely made from large pebbles on nearby riverbeds, and were probably used for cutting or scuffing, Brumm said. The tool resembles the discovery of early human stone techniques previously created at Sulawesi and other Indonesian islands, as well as early human sites in Africa, he added.
“They reflect the so-called “minimal” approach to reducing stones to useful and sharp tools. These are not complicated tools, but creating these tools requires a certain level of skill and experience.
But who is responsible for creating these tools in the first place?
“It’s an important part of the puzzle, but the Cario site has not yet produced any human fossils,” Blum said. “So now we know that there was a tool maker in Sulawesi a million years ago, but their identity remains a mystery.”
The Sulawesi fossil record is sparse, and ancient DNA decomposes more rapidly in the tropical climate of the region. Brumm and his colleagues retrieved DNA from the bones of a teenage hunter-gatherer, a female who died in Sulawesi over 7,000 years ago, revealing evidence of a previously unknown group of human beings, but such findings are extremely rare.
Another obstacle to unlocking the mystery is the lack of systematic and sustained field research in areas of hundreds of separate islands, some of which have never been properly investigated, Blum said.
Researchers have a theory about this unidentified ancient human identity that may represent the earliest evidence of ancient people crossing the sea to reach the island.
“Our working hypothesis is that stone tools from Cario were made by Homoerectus or by isolated groups of this early Asian humanity (for example, creatures similar to Flores’ Homoflores Ensis),” Blumum wrote in an email.
In addition to the fossils and stone tools of Flores, as well as tools found in Sulawesi, researchers have previously discovered stone tools that suggest that ancient humans lived on multiple islands on isolated islands of Luzon, north of Wallacea.
The way our early ancestors reached the island from the beginning remains truly unknown.
“When we arrived in Sulawesi from neighboring mainland Asia, it would not have been easy for a mammal in flight like us, but it is clear that early humans were doing it in some way,” Blum wrote.
“Arguably, they lacked the cognitive ability to invent boats that could be used for planned sea voyages. In most cases, rodents and monkeys were suspected of “rafting” (i.e. uncomfortably floating) doing it on a mat of natural vegetation, perhaps by chance. ”
John Shea, a professor in the department of anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York, said that although it is not a game changer, he believes new research is important and has extensive meaning to understand how humans have established global existence. Shea was not involved in the new research.
Homo sapiens, or modern humans, are the only species with clear and clear evidence of the use of ships, and if Homoerectus or early humans crossed the ocean to the walled island, they needed something to move, said Shea.
The water separating the walled islands is home to sharks and crocodiles and has a rapid flow that made swimming impossible, he added.
“If you’ve ever paddled a canoe or boarded a yacht, you know that you need spoken language to put multiple people on a boat and navigate properly. “On the other hand, just because some early humans have reached these mural islands doesn’t mean they’ve succeeded.”
Success means long term survival.
“They may survive for a while after they arrived, leaving behind undestructible stone tools before they were extinct,” Shea said in an email. “After all, we are the only human beings that are not extinct.”
Brumm and his colleagues continue their research activities at Calio and other Sulawesi sites in search of early human fossils.
There is also much evidence to suggest that small homo-floweres ensis is the result of a dramatic decrease in body size in the approximately 300,000 years since homoerectus was isolated in Flores about a million years ago. Previous research shows that animals have limited resources and can reduce their size when they live on remote islands.
Finding fossils may help researchers understand the evolutionary fate of Homoerectus, if it is human ancestors that reached Sulawesi. Sulawesi, the world’s 11th largest island and more than 12 times as much as Flores, is known for its rich and diverse ecological habitat, Bram said.
“Sulawesi is a bit of a wildcard. It’s essentially a mini-continent in itself,” Blum pointed out. “In the case of Homoerectus It has become segregated on this island and has not necessarily evolved into something like the strange new form found on the much smaller walled island of Flores to the south. ”
Alternatively, Sulawesi could have once been a series of small islands, which could lead to dwarfism in multiple locations throughout the region, he said.
“We really hope that the hominin fossils will eventually be discovered in Sulawesi,” Bramum said.
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