Archaeology
Excavations on the island of Timor hint at which route was used to first settle vast continent
ACAVE on the island of Timor has given us a vital clue to the route taken by ancient humans when they first made their way to the Australian continent.
It is known from archaeological evidence in Australia’s Northern Territory that people were there at least 65,000 years ago. At that time, when sea levels were lower, Australia and the island of New Guinea were part of a larger landmass known as Sahul.
Researchers believe there are two likely routes people could have taken from South-East Asia to Sahul. One is a southern route via Timor. Or, Homo sapiens could have travelled via Sulawesi, an island to the north of Timor.
Now, Sue O’Connor at the Australian National University in Canberra and her colleagues believe they have found evidence ruling out the possibility that the first arrivals came through Timor.
In other locations on this island, the oldest evidence of human occupation was less than 50,000 years old. Archaeologists were unable to look for older artefacts because, at all the other sites there, they hit bedrock rather than sediment layers that could potentially contain evidence of an earlier presence, says O’Connor.
In 2019, her team dug anew pit at a cave called Laili –on the north coast of Timor in the country of East Timor – and discovered a rich deposit of evidence including tens of thousands of stone tools, showing that humans had occupied the island for 44,000 years. travellers. “It’s a perfect place for people to establish an occupation base camp. You couldn’t find a more ideal setting,” says O’Connor Because of the evidence that
