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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Archaeologists Discover Stone Tools Crafted by Unknown Species
Archaeologists determined that seven stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi date back to somewhere between 1.04–1.48 million years ago and belonged to an ancient human species yet to be identified by researchers. The bombshell discoveries were recently published in the journal Nature. The seven tools were originally excavated between 2019 and 2022 in a cornfield in the city of Calio. They were crafted with hard-hammer percussion techniques in which large pebbles cultivated from riverbeds were struck to form sharp-edged flakes, which would assist with cutting and scraping. Professor Adam Brumm, of Griffith University's Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, co-led the international research team and described the tools as "simple, sharp-edged flakes of stone that would have been useful as general-purpose cutting and scraping implements." After determining the age of the tools to be somewhere between 1.04–1.48 million years old, scientists found that the timeline directly corresponds with the arrival of Homo erectus on the neighboring island of Java, where fossils dating back 1.6 million years have been discovered. This newest find introduces more questions than it provides answers regarding the archaeological history of Sulawesi, where previously the oldest discovered fossil was an upper jaw fragment belonging to modern Homo sapiens, dating to just 25,000–16,000 years ago. Researchers say that the tools' discovery raises tantalizing questions about hominin travel across Southeast Asia. The find would seem to indicate multiple waves of occupation by different species and populations rather than a linear migration. The tools themselves show a nuanced and detailed understanding of stonesmanship, which could only have been passed down through several generations. "Sulawesi is a wild card—it's like a mini-continent in itself,' Brumm said. 'If hominins were cut off on this huge and ecologically rich island for a million years, would they have undergone the same evolutionary changes as the Flores hobbits? Or would something totally different have happened?"Archaeologists Discover Stone Tools Crafted by Unknown Species first appeared on Men's Journal on Aug 11, 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- Science
- South China Morning Post
1.5 million-year-old stone tools found in Indonesia rewrite human history
Scientists have found a series of stone tools on Indonesia 's Sulawesi island they say may be evidence of humans living 1.5 million years ago on islands between Asia and Australia, the earliest known humans in the Wallacea region. Archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia found the small, chipped tools, used to cut little animals and carve rocks, under the soil in the region of Soppeng in South Sulawesi. Radioactive tracing of these tools and the teeth of animals found around the site was dated at up to 1.48 million years ago. The findings could transform theories of early human migrations, according to an article the archaeologists published in the journal Nature this month. Excavations at Calio in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Photo: BRIN/Handout The earliest Wallacean humans, prehistoric persons known as Homo erectus, were thought to have only settled in Indonesia's Flores island and the Philippines ' Luzon island around 1.02 million years ago, as they were thought to be incapable of distant sea travel, proving the significance of the Sulawesi findings in theories of migration. 'These were artefacts made by ancient humans who lived on the earth long before the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens,' said Adam Brumm, lead archaeologist from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. 'We think Homo erectus somehow got from the Asian mainland across a significant ocean gap to this island, Sulawesi, at least 1 million years ago.' Wallacea is a region in Eastern Indonesia, including several islands such as Sulawesi, Lombok, Flores, Timor and Sumbawa that lie between Borneo and Java and Australia and New Guinea. The region is named for the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who studied the fauna and flora of the area.
