The dispersion of archaic homes beyond southeast Asia of the continent (sunda) represents the first evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated masses. Previously, the oldest indication of homes in Wallacea, the area of the ocean island east of Sunday, included flocked stone artifacts deposited at least 1.02 million years ago on the Wolo Sege site on the island of Flores. On Sulawesi, the largest island in Wallacean, the previous excavations revealed stone artifacts with a minimum of 194,000 years on the open site of Talepu. Now, archaeologists from the University of Griffith show that stone artifacts also occur on the neighboring site of Calio in fossiliferous layers dating from at least 1.04 million years and perhaps up to 1.48 million years. This discovery suggests that Sulawesi was populated by the homesy at the same time as Flores, if not earlier.
Archaic hominines. Image credit: Ninara / CC by 2.0.
The Professor of Griffith University, Adam Brumm and his colleagues, excavated a total of seven stone artifacts from the sedimentary layers of the Calio site.
At the start of the Pleistocene, this would have been the site for making hominin tools and other activities such as hunting, near a river channel.
Calio artefacts are made up of small fragments of stretching stones (flakes) that the first manufacturers of human tools struck larger pebbles which had probably been obtained from nearby river beds.
“This discovery adds to our understanding of the human movement extinct through the Wallace line, a transitional area beyond which unique and often quite specific animal species have evolved in isolation,” said Professor Brumm.
Reconstruction of Homo Floresiensis. Image credit: Elisabeth Daynes.
Archaeologists used the paleomagnetic dating of sandstone itself and the direct dating of an excavated pork fossil, to confirm an age of at least 1.04 million years for the Calio artefacts.
Previously, they had revealed evidence of the occupation of hominines in Wallacea at least 1.02 million years ago, on the basis of the presence of stone tools in Wolo Sege on the island of Flores, and about 194,000 years ago in Talepu on Sulawesi.
The island of Luzon in the Philippines, north of Wallacea, also gave proof of hominines about 700,000 years ago.
“It is an important piece of the puzzle, but Calio’s site has not yet given hominin fossils,” said Professor Brumm.
“So, even if we now know that there were tool manufacturers on Sulawesi a million years ago, their identity remains a mystery.”
Stone artifacts of the Calio site, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Image credit: Hakim and al., Two: 10.1038 / S41586-025-09348-6.
The original discovery of Homo Floresiensis And the subsequent 700,000 -year -old fossils of a similar hominin in small bodies on Flores have suggested that it could have been Man alert Who violated the formidable naval barrier between continental southeast Asia to live in this small Wallacean island and, more than hundreds of thousands of years, suffered a dwarf island.
“The discovery on Sulawesi led us to ask us what could have happened Man alert On an island more than 12 times the size of Flores? Professor Brumm said.
“Sulawesi is a joker – it’s like a mini -continent in itself.”
“If the hominins were cut on this enormous and ecologically rich island for a million years, would they have undergone the same evolutionary changes as the Flora Hobbits?”
“Or would have completely different have happened?”
The study was published yesterday in the journal Nature.
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B. Judge and al. Hominines on Sulawesi at the start of the Pleistocene. Naturepublished online on August 7, 2025; DOI: 10.1038 / S41586-025-09348-6
