Early Hominin presence in Sulawesi

An article published one month ago (Burhan B, Hakim B, Sumantri I, Suryatman, Saiful AM, Oktaviana AA, et al. (2025). A near-continuous archaeological record of Pleistocene human occupation at Leang Bulu Bettue, Sulawesi, Indonesia. PLoS One 20(12): e0337993. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337993. Dec. 23, 2025), reported that there was an archaic kind of hominin living in Sulawesi long before the arrival of modern humans to the island, and may have even coexisted there until they disappeared.

The study reported the presence of stone tools as old as 208,000 years ago, and surprisingly some of them were of a kind of tool known as "picks", which have appeared in some older sites in the region suggesting the presence of a well established culture of archaic hominins in this part of Asia long before H. sapiens arrived.

Below are some quotes from the paper

"Prior research has indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was host to archaic hominins of unknown taxonomic affinity from at least 1.04 million years ago (Ma), while members of our own species (Homo sapiens) were probably established on this Wallacean landmass from at least 51.2 thousand years ago (ka), and possibly as early as 65 ka.
... Here, we report the results of multiple seasons of deep-trench excavations at Leang Bulu Bettue, a limestone cave rock-shelter complex in the Maros-Pangkep karst region of South Sulawesi.
... Notably, there is evidence for animal butchery and stone artefact production including a stone ‘pick’ at around 132.3–208.4 ka followed by a major shift in human cultural activity during the Late Pleistocene. By around 40 ka, an earlier occupation phase (Phase I) characterised by a straightforward cobble-based core and flake technology ... had been replaced by an entirely new occupation phase (Phase II) with a markedly distinct archaeological signature, including the first evidence for artistic expression and symbolic culture. We consider the implications of this behavioural disconformity for our understanding of the history of humans on Sulawesi, including the possibility it reflects the replacement of archaic hominins by modern humans."

So the Phase I "cobble-based" core flake stone knapping technique and the "pick" cultural tradition vanished 40 ky ago, surely due to the replacement of the archaic people by modern humans.

The paper notes that stone tools were recently discovered in Sulawesi, not far from this site, at Talepyu (over 194 ky old) and at Calio (over 1 Million years old). They state that these archaic hominins are "of a yet unknwon taxonomy." These dates and those of this Leang Bulu Bettue site (132-208 ky ago) show that they were not made by modern humans.

The authors propose two scenarios to explain what took place here on Sulawesi:

1. "The entirety of Phase I reflects the last period of a long history of occupation by a group of archaic hominins–as already noted, likely those responsible for the early lithic artefacts recovered from the Walanae Basin (Talepu and Calio) ~80 km to the northeast – that was replaced by an incoming group of modern humans around 40ka, with the arrival of the latter being the cause of the change in the LBB record (i.e., the onset of Phase II). The archaic hominins, based on the present state of knowledge from the wider region, could have been H. erectus and/or a taxon closely related to H. floresiensis, Denisovans, or an as-yet undocumented hominin species that is now extinct."
2. ""The earliest H. sapiens in the region produced lithic technologies that more closely resembled the technology of the archaic hominins of the Walanae basin at least 200 ka to 1.04 Ma than those made by later H. sapiens, and that the technological disconnect cannot be described by a species-level replacement. The apparent technological continuity may be the result of contact between two groups, or simply a convergent response to the same resources and conditions. This situation is in keeping with the evidence for the behavioural flexibility of early modern humans as they spread out of Africa and began to colonise unfamiliar environments. The technological and faunal shift at around 40 ka, resulting in Phase II and the lithic Upper Industry, would therefore reflect an unknown local trigger, spontaneous innovation, and/or the arrival of a second wave of H. sapiens."

The Calio stone tools (Paper here, published in Aug. 2025) were dated to 1.04 million years, and "and possibly up to 1.48 Ma" this makes them as old, or even older than the stone tools found on Flores Island at Wolo Sege, which are 1.02 Ma. These are the oldest ones yet discovered in this region, and they mark a very early date for the presence of ancient hominins in this area. Much older than the previous date from Talepyu (paper here).

These ancient and now extinct hominins navigated open sea to cross the Wallace Line (an imaginary boundary that runs through the Lombok Strait in the Indonesian archipelago) and reach Sulawesi. Even during glacial maximums, with low sea levels, the shortest distance between Sulawesi and the closest continental Asian landmass was at least 50 km (31 miles).

An interesting paper modelled how these hominins could have crossed the sea: "Results indicate that crossings are facilitated by low sea level, but the possibility of crossings at high sea level cannot be discarded. All of the three analyzed departure areas could be considered feasible sources for arrivals at Sulawesi but, Borneo is by far the most likely source area and Mindanao departures more likely to arrive in Sulawesi than those from the Banda Arc. The shortest simulated period voyagers would have to survive at sea are 3–8 days, 14–19 days and 12–20 days for Borneo, Mindanao and Band Arc departures respectively...Our results suggest that Sulawesi could have been reached by accidental drift voyages and offer direct support to previous studies that inferred drift-based arrival at the island based on spatial distribution of fauna and hominin subsistence strategies over Wallacea. While successful drifts could have started from any of the three evaluated source areas, arrivals from Borneo are more likely than those from Mindanao and trips from Banda Arc."

So, these people drifted on a mat of vegetation from Borneo to Sulawesi, the same way that animals are supposed to have crossed the Wallace Line. They managed to survive the crossing which lasted between 3 and 14 days by chance and settled in Sulawesi.

We should consider the option that they made rafts, or canoes and carried their kits or gear with them, to fish or move along the coast. Perhaps they drifted to Sulawesi on these boats.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Bark Beaters: Polynesia, Mexico and British Columbia

This is the third post of a series dedicated to the possibile prehistoric links between Polynesians and the Native Americans of Alaska and Britih Columbia, on the NW coast of North America.

My previous post mentioned a text published in 1894 on the similarities between both groups of people.

The first post was an introduction to the subject, mentioning some Hawaiian lore about an Alaskan origin, and online sources.

Beaten Bark

This post will look into a product known as "beaten bark", it is obtained by pounding tree bark (hence its name) into fiber which is then used either as a textile (barkcloth) or, as a product similar to paper. Beaten bark is found in China, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and among some Native American groups in Mexico and NW North America. This suggests the possibilitiy of trans-pacific sharing of know-how in ancient times.

The tools: Bark beaters

Bark is processed by beating the tough fibers and breaking them apart, special tools known as "beaters" are used for this purpose.

An article published in 1900, by Frederick Starr (Mexican Paper, The American Antiquarian, Vol XXII Sept & Oct 1900, No. 5, p. 307) mentions a baton used to hammer bark to make paper. It compares the pre-Hispanic Mexican beater with the Polynesian tapa, notes that beaten bark was used to make cloth or paper in different parts of America. It also mentions the bark beater used by the Tinglit Indians of Alaska, and recognizing that they are also used in other places like "New Guinea and Africa they are usually quite different from these in sectional form and in the mode of grooving. Personally we are inclined to see a significance in the the similarity of the Polynesian - Tlingit - Mexican beaters. Were there no other evidence pointing to relationship or contact between the three populations the argument would be indeed weak; as it is, however this similarity presents evidence which reinforces an argument already made."

Below are some images from this article, comparing Mexican, Alaskan, and Polynesian beaters:

The Aztecs of Mexico beat Maguey (the plant said to give Fusang its name, also used to make paper!), for paper on which they wrote their symbols. They also used bark from different plants for this purpose. This paper was ceremonial.

This similarity in bark beaters was also noted more recently, and a post titled "Indigenous Bark Beaters in Coastal British Columbia" by Grant Keddie, 2024, (online here, with photographs), the similarity between Polynesian and British Columbian (B.C.) beaters is amazing. However, the author is cautious: "There is not enough information, at present, to indicate that bark beaters represent a transfer of an artifact type from Polynesia to the coast of B.C. If the latter were true, one might expect that they would be part of an assemblage of other kinds of artifacts that appeared near the same time. There are a number of candidates for the later that are in need of further examination."

Keddie then quotes Paul Tolstoy, who researched the matter extensively. Tolstoy's work, has a very revealing title:"Paper route: Were the Manufacture and Use of Bark Paper Introduced into Mesoamerica from Asia?" 1991, Natural History, vol. 100, no. 6, pp. 6-8, 10, 12-14. Below is Keddie's quote from Tolstoy:

" My own survey of hundreds of specimens of the club and racquet types [of bark beaters] shows further correspondences in the construction of Mesoamerican and Indonesian examples... My research also reveals a pattern of dates for the archaeological examples. In Mesoamerica, the earliest bark beaters are from the Maya area and its periphery, particularly the Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala and El Salvador, where they appear some 2,500 years ago.
The dating of artifacts from the islands of Southeast Asia is less secure, but both forms [of bark beaters, i.e. club-shaped, and racquet-type] almost certainly go back several hundred years earlier than they do in Mesoamerica. In Taiwan they probably go back one or two thousand years still earlier.
Surveying the manufacturing technologies of bark cloth and early true paper worldwide, I have identified some 300 variable features in the steps that go into producing these materials. They include such elements as the cultivation or care of trees used for their bark; ways of getting at the desired bast layer... [a long list of such features follows here]
In addition, I have recorded some 140 uses of the product, such as mats, blankets, bags, various items of clothing, shrouds, banners, and of course, writing paper. – Finally, there are some 100 specific details of the design of bark beaters, which may be combined in various ways, and a mass of relevant botanical and linguistic information.
Finally, the shared features and innovations suggest a family tree for these industries with a history of common inheritance and local differentiation. In it, Mesoamerican paper technology evolves from a prototype shared with Sulawesi bark cloth and moves toward the threshold of the true papermaking. Evidence from China suggests that this threshold was crossed sometime between 2,500 and 2,000 years ago, possibly in southern China or Indochina. Mesoamerica, however, acquired a version of the technology as it existed just prior to this event, probably from the area that includes Indochina, Taiwan, and the Philippine Islands, where the two beater forms occur together archaeologically."

I have seen several online posts mention that Max Uhle was the first to suggest a similarity between Sulawesi beaten bark (in those days the area was known as the Celebes), and Mayan beaten bark paper. The source given is his work in German: Kultur und Industrie südamerikanischer Völker: nach dem im Besitze des Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig befindlichen Sammlungen, in 2 volumes. I wasn't able to find any mention by Uhler of beaten bark or the Celebes+Sulawesi. If you can find it, I'd appreciate it.

There is an excellent article about the Barkcloth production in Central Sulawesi (Lloraine V. Aragon. Expedition, Vol. 32, No. 1, p.33). And this gallery with descriptions shows sarongs, shirts, vests, hankys, headbands and paintings with dyed designs that are amazing even nowadays. One image is shown below

Tolstoy's books from 1991 and 1963 ("Cultural Parallels between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica in the Manufacture of Bark Cloth." Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, Vol. 25, No. 6: 646–662. New York.) are behind paywalls, but those who have quoted him¹ say that "Tolstoy (1963, 1991), who rejects any notion that the tapa of Polynesia provides a credible link between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica, and he argues instead that bark-cloth technology was introduced into Mesoamerica, not island to island, but in a single voyage sailing north of Hawaii along an island-less route to Mesoamerica."

¹Trans-oceanic transfer of bark-cloth technology from South China-Southeast Asia to Mesoamerica? Judith Cameron, 2008, in Islands of inquiry: colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes (Terra Australis 29). Editors, Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach & Sue O'Connor, PublisherANU ePress, pp.203-210. Vol 1.

Independent, convergent discovery?

Judith Cameron suggests that the natives of Central America (Mesoamerica) developed the technique on their own, independently, and discovered details like groves on the beaters, on their own, below is her positiion¹:

"Notwithstanding the above-mentioned parallels, there is also the possibility that the Meso-american archaeological bark-cloth beaters belong to an independent cultural tradition that has no links with Southeast China or Southeast Asia. Although the Southern Chinese and Southeast Asian beaters suggest interaction, parallels are neither necessarily nor exclusively resultant from interaction. An alternative explanation is that prehistoric groups in Mesoamerica independently developed stone bark-cloth beaters. In manufacturing material culture, there is a limited range of raw materials and there could be geological reasons, such as an abundance of river-smoothed pebbles of appropriate size and weight in both regions. The diagnostic features of the beaters in the typology might also be purely functional, rather than stylistic. Grooves on the faces of beaters enhance the maceration of bark fibres and prehistoric groups in Mesoamerica could have realised this quite independently. In the same way, prehistoric groups with hafted beaters on the two continents could have invented hafting independently, as groups in other parts of the world have done. "

To be continued

My next posts will look into the Mesoamerican amate (the Nahuatl name for barkcloth), and the work of the natives of British Columbia, who employed beaten red cedar bark to make mats and garments.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

Hominins and stone tools in Sunda 1.48 Ma - Implications

A paper published last August in Nature (Hakim, B., Wibowo, U.P., van den Bergh, G.D. et al. Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene. Nature 646, 378–383 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09348-6) reported finding stone tools and flakes older than 1 million years, and possibly up to 1.48 Ma on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.

The oldest tools that had been found in the area were found at Wolo Sege on Flores Island, home of the minute Hobbit Homo floresiensis, that were 1.02 million years old. Some stone tools and bones with man-made cut marks were discovered in Luzon, and island in the Pilippines, dated to 777-631 thousand years ago. These are much older.

The paper states that> "The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses... On Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island, previous excavations revealed stone artefacts with a minimum age of 194 ka at the open site of Talepu in the Walanae Depression, long preceding the earliest known presence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in the region (73–63 ka in Sunda). Here we show that stone artefacts also occur at the nearby site of Calio in fossiliferous layers dated to at least 1.04 Ma and possibly up to 1.48 Ma... The discovery of Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggests that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier."

Primitive Stone "artifacts"

The authors found "seven flaked stone artefacts... All stone artefacts are made of chert, alternately known as silicified limestone in some of the related literature. This source material is abundantly present among the naturally occurring pebbles, but the stone artefacts differ statistically by their larger size compared with unmodified pebble-sized clasts excavated from the same fluvial sandstone deposits... These results suggest that the stone artefacts were produced by hominins outside the Calio site and carried there for use as tools, further underlining the anthropogenic origin of these objects. It is also possible that some or all artefacts could have been eroded out of riverbanks by laterally migrating fluvial channels, and may therefore be older than the layers in which they were found."

They are not Acheulean, a mark of H. erectus, these are stones used simple tool-making techniques that hint at an Oldowan origin. However, the stones were carefully struck, and retouched: "The flakes were struck by the hard-hammer freehand percussion technique and range from 21.9 to 60.1 mm long along the percussion axes... The reduction of large flakes into smaller flakes, which were themselves retouched, suggests that a two-step reduction process was sometimes used to reduce the natural chert cobbles into suitably-sized tools. The evidence for reduction of cores-on-flakes, frequent core rotation and understanding of hard-hammer fracture mechanics attests to expert technical knowledge within the context of a straightforward, ‘least effort’ approach to toolmaking.".

The authors conclude that "it now seems possible that hominin occupation of this large Wallacean island preceded that of Luzon to the north and is at least as old as, and potentially earlier than, the hominin presence on Flores to the south. However, precisely when hominins first crossed to Sulawesi remains an open question, as does the taxonomic affinity of the colonizing population."

These people predate the hominins of Luzon and the hobbits of Flores. Their stool-making techniques suggests that they were not H. erectus, could they have been the easternmost members of the group that reached Georgia (Dmanisi people), a branch of H. georgicus?

Sulawesi stone artifacts (Fig. 2) in Hakim, B., Wibowo, U.P., van den Bergh, G.D. et al. (2025)

A 2024 paper (D. Ma,S. Pei,F. Xie,Z. Ye,F. Wang,J. Xu,C. Deng, & I. de la Torre, Earliest Prepared core technology in Eurasia from Nihewan (China): Implications for early human abilities and dispersals in East Asia, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (11) e2313123121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2313123121, 2024) noted that in Niwehan, in northern China, west of Beijing, stone tools dated to 1.1 million years ago, were Acheulean style (or mode-2 technology - compared to Oldowan or mode-1), despite the lack of the characteristic handaxe that this type of stone knapping produces. They attribute the lack of handaxes to the poor quality of the raw materials used. They find that these tools "at 1.1 Mya now constitutes one of the world’s earliest occurrences of prepared core technologies... This may suggest that mode 2 hominins dispersed into East Asia much earlier than previously thought and, given that the earliest occupation of China could be over 2 Ma, our results may also point at multiple migrations of early hominins into East Asia throughout the early Pleistocene."

The tools, in my layman opinion, seem to be Oldowan. The authors explain that they are Acheulean because they display higher mental abilities required to perform additional steps in knapping, elaborate techniques, and "standardized end products". They admit that "the differences between CJW (and by extension other Nihewan sites) and the typical Acheulean should not be ignored, and the absence of handaxes in East Asian sites cannot be attributed to raw material availability only... we propose that these mode 2 hominins with complex technical abilities were led to produce smaller tools due to the poor local raw material quality and environmental conditions, which may have also required the development of new survival strategies and/or technological innovations to adapt to the local environmental conditions in this region of northern China."

If we accept their explanations, then two (or more) different populations peopled Asia 1.1 Ma, one in Sunda another in China, with different tool-making techniques. This was way before Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans. Were they H. erectus? Dmanisi - H. georgicus? Another unknown hominin?

Could any of these groups have moved north and then east, into America? They would have had 1 million years with the New World for themselves before modern humans arrived around 30 ky ago, or perhaps Neanderthals and⁄or Denisovans arrived during the past 500 ky. Who knows? Nobody ever digs deep enough to look for any remains older than 20,000 years in the New World.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

More evidence of archaic humans in Asia ca. 100-200 kya.

A paper published in Nature, two days ago: Earliest hominin occupation of Sulawesi, Indonesia by Gerrit D. van den Bergh et al., Nature 529, 208–211 (14 January 2016) doi:10.1038/nature16448, reports an interesting finding in Indonesia:

"Sulawesi is the largest and oldest island within Wallacea, a vast zone of oceanic islands separating continental Asia from the Pleistocene landmass of Australia and Papua (Sahul). By one million years ago an unknown hominin lineage had colonized Flores immediately to the south1, and by about 50 thousand years ago, modern humans (Homo sapiens) had crossed to Sahul. On the basis of position, oceanic currents and biogeographical context, Sulawesi probably played a pivotal part in these dispersals. Uranium-series dating of speleothem deposits associated with rock art in the limestone karst region of Maros in southwest Sulawesi has revealed that humans were living on the island at least 40 thousand years ago. Here we report new excavations at Talepu in the Walanae Basin northeast of Maros, where in situ stone artefacts associated with fossil remains of megafauna (Bubalus sp., Stegodon and Celebochoerus) have been recovered from stratified deposits that accumulated from before 200 thousand years ago until about 100 thousand years ago. Our findings suggest that Sulawesi, like Flores, was host to a long-established population of archaic hominins, the ancestral origins and taxonomic status of which remain elusive.

The Bold, part that I highlighted above is very clear: archaic humans lived in this part of Sulawesi between 200 and 100 thousand years ago. They were not Homo sapiens, who arrived there about 50,000 years ago. So what are these "elusive" people?

The evidence of a non-African ancestral human group is growing. Could they be Denisovans? Homo erectus? We will just have to wait and see.

Did they move further north, into China, Eastern Siberia and, maybe the Americas? Or did they come from there in an Out-Of-America dispersal?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2016 by Austin Whittall ©