Stone tools discovered on Sulawesi, Indonesia, rewrite what experts were thinking about the evolution of humans in the area. This tool dates approximately 1 million to 1.5 million years ago. This suggests that Sulawesi was occupied by unknown human relatives long before our species evolved.
“These are simple, sharply rimmed stone flakes,” said Adam Blum, a co-author of the study, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Australia.
In a study published in Nature on Wednesday (August 6), the researchers analyzed a series of stone tools representing the oldest evidence of human relatives in Wallacea, a vast expanse of the island between the Asian and Australian continental shelf.
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During excavations between 2019 and 2022, the team discovered seven stone artifacts in Calio, a region of Sulawesi. The artifacts were made from charts, which are hard, fine sedimentary rocks, and were created using percussion flaking techniques. There, Core Lock was hit with a hammerstone to create a sharp flake tool. One of the tools was retouched. This includes trimming and sharpening the edges of the flake tool.
Using a combination of dating methods, researchers dated sediments where the tool was discovered between 104 million and 1.48 million years ago. This is chronologically consistent with Homoerectus, which reached Java, Indonesia about 1.6 million years ago after its first evolution in Africa. However, Sulawesi does not have a fossil record as extensive as Java.
“To date, the oldest human skeletal element ubiquitous on this island [Sulawesi] The upper jaw of modern humans [upper jaw] Brumm said. Sulawesi is also home to the world’s oldest story cave art, dating back to at least 51,200 years. In addition to new discoveries, the oldest stone tool found in Sulawesi is a 194,000-year-old researcher, the researchers said.
Related: 140,000-year-old bones of our ancient ancestors found at the seabed reveal the secrets of an extinct human species
The discovery of this new stone tool reveals that human relatives occupy Sulawesi much earlier than previously assumed. And this means that the Sulawesi mystery group could be ancestors of Homo Luzonensis or Homo Floresensis, both of which are “hobbit” sized human relatives.
Researchers are not yet sure which species created the tool.
“Until we found the archaic fossils of human minins in Sulawesi, Blum said, “It’s too early to assign hominins to tool makers.”
However, the most likely scenario is that given the date range, the tool was created by species similar to H. erectus or H. floresiensis, Brumm said. “I think Flores Hut Hominin originally came from Sulawesi.”
It is also unclear why Hitominin is using it.
“Humanity could have been used for tasks associated with direct sourcing of food,” Brumm said. But so far, none of the animal bones the team has discovered have cut marks or other signs of butcher.
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