Did ancient ‘hobbit' humans create these million-year-old tools?
In 2004, archaeologists discovered a new species of ancient human, Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores. Nicknamed 'the hobbit,' this three-foot-tall hominin lived between about 60,000 and 100,000 years ago. Its discovery kickstarted a broader search across Southeast Asia's islands for fossils and other traces of early human relatives.
On Luzon in the Philippines, scientists later found another small-bodied hominin, Homo luzonensis, the remains of which dated to between 50,000 and 67,000 years ago. Across the region, researchers have also uncovered artifacts that predate the fossils, including flaked stone tools from 1.02 million years ago on Flores and 700,000-year-old stone tools on Luzon, which strongly suggests that hominins have arrived far earlier than evidenced by the oldest known fossils.
Now, on the larger Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a team of researchers has unearthed stone tools dating to between 1.04 and 1.48 million years ago, pushing back the presence of ancient human relatives on the island by hundreds of thousands of years. Previously, the earliest signs of hominin activity on Sulawesi dated to about 194,000 years ago. Excavations at Calio in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia found seven flaked stone tools that were likely made by an ancient hominin. Photograph courtesy of the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (BRIN)
'At least one million years ago, there were tool-producing hominins on Sulawesi,' says Gerrit van den Bergh, a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of Wollongong in Australia, and one of the authors of a paper about the findings that was published Wednesday in Nature.
But a mystery remains: Were these early toolmakers the 'hobbit' Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis, their relatives, or members of a yet-undiscovered species? Hammering for stone tools
The Sulawesi expedition was led by Budianto Hakim, an archaeologist from Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency. Limited Time: Bonus Issue Offer Subscribe now and gift up to 4 bonus issues—starting at $34/year.
The team found seven tools, all embedded in sandstone, at a site called Calio on the south of the island. Hakim found the youngest at the surface, and the oldest was found about two feet deeper down. Based on the approximate age of the surrounding rock and a giant pig jaw buried just above it, the tools are estimated to be at least a million, possibly nearly 1.5 million years old. The youngest stone tools, dating to around 1.04 million years ago, were found embedded near the surface of sandstone. Photograph by Adam Brumm/Griffith University The oldest of the stone tools dated to around 1.48 million years ago and were found two feet below the younger tools. Photograph by Adam Brumm/Griffith University
Though two feet may not sound like much of a dig, 'you have to break up the hard rock with a hammer and a chisel,' says van den Bergh, who previously explored the area in the early 1990s. Underneath, the researchers discovered an ancient riverbed in which the tools had been preserved.
'We don't know what they were doing with these sharp-edged flakes of stone, but most likely they were cutting or scraping implements of some kind,' says Adam Brumm, an archaeologist from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and an author of the study.
Closer investigation revealed the stones were turned around to be struck with another stone at the most promising points to produce useful flakes, showing that whoever made the tools was skilled at it. Some flakes were then struck again to create even sharper tools. Seafaring or swept away?
The stone tool discovery hammers home another point: ancient humans, whoever they were, somehow made it to these islands and found a way to survive.
Brumm does not think they did so by boat, however.
'Most likely, they crossed to Sulawesi from the Asian mainland in the same way rodents and monkeys are suspected to have done—by accident, presumably as castaways on natural 'rafts' of floating vegetation, maybe after a tsunami,' he says.
Flores, where H. floresiensis was found, is hundreds of miles south of Sulawesi. It's also possible hominins from the Philippines—maybe 'hobbits,' maybe not—first made it to Sulawesi, and then ended up on Flores, like how animals did, says van den Bergh.
'If you look at the islands from north to south, the fauna becomes increasingly impoverished,' he says. 'Luzon had rhinos, buffaloes, deer, wild pigs, two kinds of elephants. Sulawesi never had rhinos, but it did have wild pigs and both elephants. Flores had only one of the elephants–and several rat species.' The recent discovery at Calio in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia pushes back the presence of ancient human relatives on the island by hundreds of thousands of years. Photograph courtesy of the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (BRIN)
The further from the Philippines–or the mainland–the fewer animals appear to have made it across.
The relationship between the hominins on Sulawesi and H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis cannot be made without fossil remains. But it's possible they were at least distantly related.
Our own species, Homo sapiens, and our relatives Neandertals and Denisovans did not yet exist, so van den Bergh says the small-bodied hominins most likely descended from Homo erectus, 'which we know was on the mainland at the right place at the right time.'
Thomas Ingicco, a paleoanthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, and a National Geographic Explorer, agrees Homo erectus is the most likely ancestor of the hominins on South-East Asian islands in this period. Ingicco led a 2018 study documenting the earliest known stone tools and evidence of animal butchery in the Philippines but was not involved in this study.
He warns, though, that even though it's 'tempting to think that hominins may have arrived on Sulawesi first, more findings might come out from Luzon and Flores,' and it would therefore be too early, he says, 'to hypothesize too fast about migration paths.'
So, were these stone tool-making ancient hominins on Sulawesi 'hobbits,' Homo luzonensis, Homo erectus, or something else? Without any fossils, the answer remains unknown, at least for now.
'I can assure you that in Sulawesi,' van den Bergh says, 'the hunt for hominins will start soon.'
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Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Buzz Feed
15 Dark Historical Facts You Didn't Know About
It's no secret to anyone who's read my content on the internet: I've been obsessed with history lately. And recently, I was scrolling through the depths of the internet when I stumbled upon some dark historical facts that I seriously can't shake. It's been days, and I'm still thinking about them. There's something so shocking and fascinating about an eerie historical event that few people actually know about. So we're gonna learn about some of those today! I'll warn you: Some of these are really intense, so if you're sensitive to stories about dark topics, I'd proceed with caution. The Dancing Plague of 1518 is one of history's weirdest and scariest events. It happened in Strasbourg, now in France, and it's exactly what it sounds like: hundreds of people began dancing and supposedly couldn't stop. They were dancing consistently for days on end. The odd plague eventually went away a couple months later, and people went back to their normal lives, but some people "died from their exertions." No one knows why this happened, but theories range from stress-induced mass hysteria, to food poisoning from fungi found in bread. The summer of 1816 should've been just a normal summer, but umm…let's just say my worst fear happened. For some parts of the United States, Canada, and Europe, that summer actually felt like a full-blown winter (snow, wind, cold temperatures, the whole shebang). Of course, the "year without summer" had catastrophic effects on farming, and people's overall wellbeing. So why did this happen? It turns out it was the result of an Indonesian volcanic eruption that happened the year before. A couple decades after Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the glow-in-the-dark radioactive element of radium in 1898, something absolutely catastrophic happened. People (wrongfully) thought radium was safe for humans to handle because it had worked in some cancer treatments, so female factory workers started putting it in everyday products like makeup and even toothpaste in the early 20th century. The radium they were handling made their skin literally glow, and they were assured it wasn't dangerous…but of course, it was. The workers slowly began developing terrible illnesses and later dying of radium poisoning — and they're now called the "Radium Girls." Before the atomic bomb was made, one of the largest explosions was a ship accident in Halifax, Canada in 1917. Two ships crashed into each other in the harbour, which wasn't unheard of — but the problem was that one of the ships was full of explosives that were intended to be used for battle in World War I. So when the ships hit each other, it caused a literal tsunami. The ship's explosion and resulting tsunami killed 2,000 people and left 9,000 more with permanent injuries. Plus, part of the city of Halifax was totally "wiped out" as a result, leaving thousands more without shelter. If you've got a weak tummy, I'd skip this one…because "The Great Stink of 1858" is enough to give me nightmares. It happened in London, and was caused by intense heat along with all the sewage people poured into the River Thames. And by the way, when I say the lake was full of sewage, that also includes household garbage, and even a few dead bodies. This led to virus outbreaks and death, along with horrendous living conditions for, well, everyone. Time for something a bit lighter. The Great Emu War of 1932 happened in Australia, and it was humbling, to say the least. It started when Australian soldiers were instructed to kill 20,000 emus — there were just too many of them, and they were killing crops. Seemed like a simple task, but the emus were just too strong and too numerous. The soldiers only managed to kill less than a thousand in a couple months, and the emus were eventually declared the winners of the war. The species is now protected by the government! So there you go, happy endings! In the mid-19th century, around 81 American pioneers (including children) were on their way to California when a snowstorm began. The conditions left them completely stranded. At that point, around half of the survivors allegedly (and unwillingly) engaged in cannibalism, eating the bodies of the people who'd already died, just to stay alive once their food supply was empty. The terrifying incident is now called the "Donner party," named after one of the families on the trip. Only around half of the original group survived. Similarly, in 1820, a whaling ship was travelling across the Pacific Ocean when a whale punctured and sank the ship. The 20 survivors loaded into small boats to travel to the closest land — which was more than 1,300 miles away. Within a few months, 12 more people had died, and some were eaten by surviving passengers as a last resort. But a few of the castaways had better stories: Five were rescued by ships along the way. The most interesting part of this story, though, is that it was part of the inspiration for the book Moby-Dick. Japanese military officer Hiroo Onoda was on a small island in the Philippines towards the end of World War II in 1944 when the US army attacked the area. Many soldiers escaped the attack by hiding in the jungle. But the unique part of Hiroo's story is he stayed hidden for 30 years, and was declared dead in 1959. Eventually, we learned he spent those years serving a "secret mission" there on the island, but at the time, nobody knew where he was. And for those 30 years, Hiroo thought the war was still going on. He came back home to Japan in 1974 to a "hero's welcome," and even published a bestselling book about his experience. In 1876 in Kentucky, the unthinkable happened: chunks of meat started falling from the sky, out of nowhere. Locals were all baffled, and couldn't think of an explanation as to how it could've happened (which makes sense, yanno, because meat literally started RAINING from the sky). The grossest part? Some people actually tasted the sky-meat. Finally, a scientist figured it out: The "meat shower" was actually just "vulture vomit," birds spitting out their food up above. We're all aware many people were hanged for committing crimes until about the mid-20th century (depending on where you live). These executions were pretty straightforward and didn't typically have any major roadblocks. Well, in 1885, a man named John "Babbacombe" Lee was convicted of murdering a woman named Emma Anne Whitehead Keyse…but he actually survived his hanging. Here's what supposedly happened: The executioner tried to drop the trap door to complete the hanging, but it got stuck — not once, not twice, but THREE times. John was sentenced to a lifetime in prison after that, and now he's known as "The Man They Couldn't Hang." You know when people talk about asteroids hitting the Earth and you convince yourself that it'd never really happen? Well, it actually did. In 1908, the Tunguska Asteroid hit Earth, falling right through the atmosphere (that's where most asteroids break down…but this one stayed intact). The asteroid "exploded in the skies all over Siberia," and caused tons of damage including "forest fires, and trees blown over for miles," according to NASA. Because so few people lived there, it didn't make much news, but it sure was rare — and pretty freaky, if you ask me. The US's first documented serial killer is called H.H. Holmes, and he was active in the late 19th century. He owned a lot in Chicago where he built his "Murder Castle," which is exactly as horrifying as it sounds. The building was reportedly full of "booby traps," including "soundproof rooms," "secret passageways," "trapdoors," and allegedly a "crematorium." We're not totally sure what was in there, or even how many victims he had, because the initial reports were supposedly exaggerated…but that just makes it scarier in my eyes. H.H. Holmes was eventually hanged, and the Murder Castle was burned, then later torn down. The Italian Hall Disaster of 1913 happened in Michigan on Christmas Eve. At the time, in a village called Calumet, copper miners were striking. The miners and their families were celebrating Christmas Eve together when someone allegedly yelled "Fire!" — and this led to a rush of people trying to exit the hall. That's when tragedy struck. The stampede of people led to 73 deaths from suffocation, with the majority of them being children. It's still unclear how exactly it all went down, but the event is still memorialized every year in the town. In 1814, London experienced (dare I say, the world's first and only) "beer tsunami," which killed eight people. Yes, beer. So how did it happen? I'll explain. You could call it a freak accident: A tank at a brewery exploded, crashed through the building's walls and into the streets. And it sure wasn't small — we're talking about 320,000 gallons of beer here, in a giant uncontrollable wave. Now, what's a dark historical fact that others probably wouldn't know about? Tell me in this quick form, or in the comments below! And check out BuzzFeed Canada on TikTok and Instagram for more fascinating stuff! 🧠
Yahoo
07-08-2025
- Yahoo
1.5 million-year-old stone tools from mystery human relative discovered in Indonesia — they reached the region before our species even existed
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Stone tools discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are rewriting what experts thought they knew about human evolution in this region. The tools date to about 1 million to 1.5 million years ago, which suggests that Sulawesi was occupied by an unknown human relative long before our species evolved. "These are simple, sharp-edged flakes of stone that would have been useful as general-purpose cutting and scraping implements," study co-author Adam Brumm, professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science in an email. In a study published Wednesday (Aug. 6) in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed a set of stone tools that represent the oldest evidence of human relatives in Wallacea, a vast expanse of islands that lie between the Asian and Australian continental shelves. During excavations between 2019 and 2022, the team discovered seven stone artifacts at Calio, a locality on Sulawesi. The artifacts were made from chert, a hard and fine-grained sedimentary rock, and were created using a percussion flaking technique, where a core rock is struck with a hammer stone to create sharp flake tools. One of the tools was even retouched, which involves trimming the edges of a flake tool to make it sharper. Using a combination of dating methods, the researchers dated the sediments in which the tools were found to between 1.04 million and 1.48 million years ago. This matches up chronologically with Homo erectus, which reached the Indonesian island of Java around 1.6 million years ago after first evolving in Africa. But Sulawesi does not have as extensive a fossil record as Java. "So far, the oldest human skeletal element found anywhere on this island [Sulawesi] is a modern human maxilla [upper jaw] fragment that is around 25,000 to 16,000 years old," Brumm said. Sulawesi is also home to the world's oldest narrative cave art, which dates to at least 51,200 years ago. And the oldest stone tool found on Sulawesi, besides the new finds, is about 194,000 years old, the researchers noted in the study. Related: 140,000 year old bones of our ancient ancestors found on sea floor, revealing secrets of extinct human species This new stone tool discovery reveals that human relatives occupied Sulawesi much earlier than previously assumed, likely before they made it to the island of Luzon to the north and the island of Flores to the south. And this means that the mystery group on Sulawesi could be the ancestors of Homo luzonensis or Homo floresiensis, both of which were "hobbit"-size human relatives. The researchers aren't yet sure which species made the tools. "Until we have found fossils of archaic hominins on Sulawesi," Brumm said, "it would be premature to assign a hominin species to the tool-makers." RELATED STORIES —Human 'hobbit' ancestor may be hiding in Indonesia, new controversial book claims —Ancient remains found in Indonesia belong to a vanished human lineage —World's oldest cave art, including famous hand stencils, being erased by climate change But the most likely scenario, given the date range, is that the tools were made by H. erectus or a species similar to H. floresiensis, Brumm said. "We think the Flores hominins came from Sulawesi originally." It is also still unclear what the hominins were using the tools for. "Hominins could have used them for tasks involved in the direct procurement of food," Brumm said, "or to fashion tools from wood or other perishable plant materials." So far, though, none of the animal bones that the team has found have cut marks or other signs of butchery. Human evolution quiz: What do you know about Homo sapiens?
CNN
07-08-2025
- CNN
Stone tool discovery could offer new clue in mystery of ancient ‘hobbit' humans
Archaeologists have uncovered primitive sharp-edged stone tools on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, adding another piece to an evolutionary puzzle involving mysterious ancient humans who lived in a region known as Wallacea. Located beyond mainland Southeast Asia, Wallacea includes a group of islands between Asia and Australia, among which Sulawesi is the largest. Previously, researchers have found evidence that an unusual, small-bodied human species dubbed Homo floresiensis — also called 'hobbits' due to comparisons with the diminutive characters in fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien's books — lived on the nearby island of Flores from 700,000 years ago until about 50,000 years ago. The newly discovered flaked stone tools, which date back between 1.04 million to 1.48 million years ago, represent the oldest evidence for human habitation of Sulawesi and suggest the island might have been inhabited by early human ancestors, or hominins, at the same time — or possibly earlier — than Flores. Researchers reported the findings in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Researchers are still trying to answer key questions about these Wallacea island hominins — namely when and how they arrived on the islands, which would have required an ocean crossing. Flaked stone tools were earlier uncovered on Flores and dated to about 1.02 million years ago. The latest find suggests there might have been a link between the populations on Flores and Sulawesi — and that perhaps Sulawesi was a stepping stone for the hobbits on Flores, according to the authors of the new research, who have studied sites on Flores. 'We have long suspected that the Homo floresiensis lineage of Flores, which probably represents a dwarfed variant of early Asian Homo erectus, came originally from Sulawesi to the north, so the discovery of this very old stone technology on Sulawesi adds further weight to this possibility,' said co-lead study author Dr. Adam Brumm, professor of archaeology at Griffith University's Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution. Excavations conducted by co-lead study author Budianto Hakim, senior archaeologist at the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia, began on Sulawesi in 2019 after a stone artifact was spotted protruding from a sandstone outcrop in an area known as the Calio site in a modern cornfield. The site — in the vicinity of a river channel — would have been where hominins made their tools and hunted 1 million years ago, according to the archaeologists, who also found animal fossils in the area. Among the finds was a jawbone of the now-extinct Celebochoerus, a type of pig with unusually large upper tusks. At the conclusion of excavations in 2022, the team uncovered seven stone tools. Dating of the sandstone and fossils resulted in an age estimate for the tools of at least 1.04 million years old to potentially 1.48 million years old. Hominin-related artifacts previously found on Sulawesi had been dated to 194,000 years ago. The small, sharp stone fragments used as tools were likely fashioned from larger pebbles in nearby riverbeds, and they were probably used for cutting or scraping, Brumm said. The tools are similar to early human stone technology discoveries made before on Sulawesi and other Indonesian islands as well as early hominin sites in Africa, he added. 'They reflect a so-called 'least-effort' approach to reducing stones into useful, sharp-edged tools; these are uncomplicated implements, but it requires a certain level of skill and experience to make these tools — they result from precise and controlled flaking of stone, not randomly bashing rocks together,' Brumm said. But who was responsible for making these tools in the first place? 'It's a significant piece of the puzzle, but the Calio site has yet to yield any hominin fossils,' Brumm said. 'So while we now know there were tool-makers on Sulawesi a million years ago, their identity remains a mystery.' The fossil record on Sulawesi is sparse, and ancient DNA degrades more rapidly in the region's tropical climate. Brumm and his colleagues retrieved DNA a few years back from the bones of a female teenage hunter-gatherer who died more than 7,000 years ago on Sulawesi, revealing evidence of a previously unknown group of humans, but such finds are incredibly rare. Another roadblock to unraveling the enigma has been the lack of systematic and sustained field research in a region of hundreds of separate islands, some of which archaeologists have never properly investigated, Brumm said. The researchers do have a theory about the identity of this unidentified ancient hominin, who might represent the earliest evidence of ancient humans crossing oceans to reach islands. 'Our working hypothesis is that the stone tools from Calio were made by Homo erectus or an isolated group of this early Asian hominin (e.g., a creature akin to Homo floresiensis of Flores),' Brumm wrote in an email. In addition to fossils and stone tools on Flores and the tools now found on Sulawesi, researchers have also previously discovered stone tools dating to around 709,000 years ago on the isolated island of Luzon in the Philippines, to the north of Wallacea, suggesting ancient humans were living on multiple islands. Exactly how our early ancestors could have reached the islands to begin with remains unknown. 'Getting to Sulawesi from the adjacent Asian mainland would not have been easy for a non-flying land mammal like us, but it's clear that early hominins were doing it somehow,' Brumm wrote. 'Almost certainly they lacked the cognitive capacity to invent boats that could be used for planned ocean voyages. Most probably they made overwater dispersals completely by accident, in the same way rodents and monkeys are suspected to have done it, by 'rafting' (i.e., floating haplessly) on natural vegetation mats.' John Shea, a professor in the anthropology department at Stony Brook University in New York, said he believes that the new study, while not a game changer, is important and has far-reaching implications for understanding how humans established a global presence. Shea was not involved in the new research. Homo sapiens, or modern humans, are the only species for which there is clear, unequivocal evidence of watercraft use, and if Homo erectus or earlier hominins crossed the ocean to the Wallacean islands, they would have needed something to travel on, Shea said. The waters separating the Wallacean islands are home to sharks and crocodiles and have rapid currents, so swimming wouldn't have been possible, he added. 'If you have ever paddled a canoe or crewed in a sailboat, then you know that putting more than one person in a boat and navigating it successfully requires spoken language, a capacity paleoanthropologists think pre-Homo sapiens hominins did not possess,' Shea said. 'On the other hand, just because some earlier hominins made it to these Wallacean islands does not mean they were successful.' By success, Shea means long-term survival. 'They might have survived a while after arriving, left behind indestructible stone tools, and then became extinct,' Shea said via email. 'After all, the only hominin that is not extinct is us.' Brumm and his colleagues are continuing their investigative work at Calio and other sites across Sulawesi to search for fossils of early humans. There is also a growing body of evidence to suggest that tiny Homo floresiensis was the result of a dramatic reduction in body size over the course of around 300,000 years after Homo erectus became isolated on Flores about 1 million years ago. Animals can scale down in size when living on remote islands due to limited resources, according to previous research. Finding fossils might help researchers understand the evolutionary fate of Homo erectus, if it is the human ancestor who made it to Sulawesi. The world's 11th-largest island and an area more than 12 times the size of Flores, Sulawesi is known for its rich, varied ecological habitats, Brumm said. 'Sulawesi is a bit of a wild card. It is essentially like a mini-continent in of itself,' Brumm noted. 'If Homo erectus became isolated on this island it might not necessarily have evolved into something like the strange new form found on the much smaller Wallacean island of Flores to the south.' Alternatively, Sulawesi could have once been a series of smaller islands, resulting in dwarfism in multiple places across the region, he said. 'I really hope hominin fossils are eventually found on Sulawesi,' Brumm said, 'because I think there's a truly fascinating story waiting to be told on that island.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
