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 Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of stone tools at
least 118,000 years old at a site called Talepu on the island of
Sulawesi, indicating a human presence. The scientists said no
fossils of these individuals were found in conjunction with the
tools, leaving the toolmakers' identity a mystery.
"We now have direct evidence that when modern humans arrived on
Sulawesi, supposedly between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago and aided
by watercraft, they must have encountered an archaic group of humans
that was already present on the island long before," said
archaeologist Gerrit van den Bergh of University of Wollongong in
Australia.
The 2004 announcement of the discovery in a Flores cave of fossils
of Homo floresiensis, a species about 3 feet 6 inches (1.1 meter)
tall that made tools and hunted little elephants, jolted the
scientific community.
 "Like on Flores, where Homo floresiensis evolved under isolated
conditions over a period of almost 1 million years, Sulawesi could
also have harbored an isolated human lineage. And the search for
fossil remains of the Talepu toolmaker is now open," van den Bergh
said.
Scientists have been eager to unravel the region's history of human
habitation. Sulawesi may have served as a stepping stone for the
first people to reach Australia roughly 50,000 years ago.
"Major islands such as Flores, Sulawesi, Luzon, and perhaps others
as well, could have served as natural experiments in human
evolution, and could throw new light on human evolution in general,"
van den Bergh added.
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The species that made the tools may have reached Sulawesi by
drifting over the ocean on tsunami debris, he said.
The researchers described 311 stone tools, most made of a very hard
limestone. Archaeologist Adam Brumm of Australia's Griffith
University said they were produced by humans striking one stone with
another, fashioning smaller pieces with knife-like sharpness.
"They mostly comprise simple sharp-edged flakes of stone that no
doubt would have been useful for basic tasks like cutting up meat,
shaping wooden implements, and so on," Brumm said.
Found nearby were fossils of an extinct elephant relative and
extinct giant pig with warthog-like tusks.
The research was published in the journal Nature.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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