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View all search resultsAncient stone tools could contain clues to early Sulawesi hominins
A recent study led by a team of BRIN archaeologists suggests that the artifacts found at the Calio site in South Sulawesi's Soppeng regency could actually be stone tools, meaning that prehistoric humans lived in the Wallacea region around 500,000 years earlier than previously known.
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An archaeologist shows one of the ancient stone tools uncovered at the Calio site in Soppeng regency, South Sulawesi, in this undated photo. The tools they found dated back at least 1.04 million years, suggesting that prehistoric humans once lived on Sulawesi. (Courtesy of M. W. Moore/-)
Was Sulawesi, the fourth largest Indonesian island and the 11th largest in the world, inhabited over a million years ago?
The ancient stone tools discovered at an archaeological site in South Sulawesi might provide some clues to the answer, according to a study published on Aug. 6 in Nature.
A team of archaeologists from Indonesia and Australia unearthed at least seven ancient stone tools at the Calio site in Soppeng regency, located in the middle of a cornfield planted by the region’s contemporary residents. They dated the artifacts to around 1 to 1.5 million years ago, leading them to believe that “archaic hominins” lived in the Wallacea oceanic zone between Asia and Australia at the same time.
This suggests that hominins or prehistoric humans could have lived in the region earlier than previously known.
The tools were found in layers of sedimentary sandstone that was “harder than concrete”, according to archaeologist Budianto Hakim of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), the study’s lead author.
“The sandstone was so hard, it broke all of my equipment,” Budianto, who led the team of BRIN archaeologists at the site, said on Tuesday.
The “tools” consisted of small, sharp-edged stone fragments or flakes, he said, likely struck from larger pebbles found in nearby riverbeds, which had marks that could be clearly distinguished from naturally broken rock.
