In News:

Recent archaeological findings on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, have revealed stone tools dating back to nearly 1.5 million years ago, marking the earliest known evidence of human presence in the Wallacea region.

Key Findings:

• Archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia discovered small, chipped stone tools in the Soppeng region of South Sulawesi.
• The artefacts, likely used to cut small animals and carve rocks, were found along with animal teeth.
• Radioactive dating suggests the tools are up to 1.48 million years old.
• These findings were published in Nature (August 2025).

Significance:

• The artefacts are attributed to Homo erectus, pre-historic hominids that lived long before the emergence of Homo sapiens.
• Previously, Homo erectus in Wallacea were thought to have occupied only Flores (Indonesia) and Luzon (Philippines) around 1.02 million years ago.
• The Sulawesi discovery pushes back the timeline by almost half a million years, challenging earlier assumptions that Homo erectus lacked the capacity for long-distance sea crossings.
• It provides crucial evidence of early maritime dispersal and migration patterns of ancient humans from the Asian mainland into island ecosystems.

About Wallacea:

• Wallacea is a biogeographic region in Eastern Indonesia, comprising islands such as Sulawesi, Lombok, Flores, Timor, and Sumbawa, situated between Borneo–Java and Australia–New Guinea.
• The region is named after Alfred Russel Wallace, the naturalist who studied its distinct biodiversity.
• It acts as a natural transitional zone between the fauna of Asia and Australia.