by Will Dunham
The diminutive prehistoric human species dubbed
the "Hobbit" that inhabited the isle of Flores apparently had company on
other Indonesian islands long before our species, Homo sapiens, arrived
on the scene.
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.
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.
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