News: 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.
About Wallacean Hominids
- Wallacean hominids refer to prehistoric human populations that inhabited the islands of Wallacea in eastern Indonesia.
- Findings of new discovery
- Archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia found small, chipped tools, used to cut little animals and carve rocks, under the soil in the region of Soppeng in South Sulawesi.
- Timings: Radioactive tracing of these tools and the teeth of animals found around the site were dated at up to 1.48 million years ago.
- Significance: The findings could transform theories of early human migrations.
- The earliest Wallacean humans, prehistoric persons known as Homo erectus, were thought to have only settled in Indonesia’s Flores island and Philippines’ Luzon island around 1.02 million years ago, proving the significance of the Sulawesi findings in theories of migration.
- Abaout Wallacea
- It is a region in Eastern Indonesia including several islands such as Sulawesi, Lombok, Flores, Timor, Sumbawa.
- The region lies between Borneo and Java and Australia and New Guinea.
- Named after: The region is named for the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace who studied the fauna and flora of the area.
