Earliest human occupation of Sulawesi pushed back dramatically

New archaeological evidence has dramatically pushed back the accepted earliest human occupation of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to more than 100,000 years ago – 60,000 years older than previously thought. It has long been believed that humans first entered the island sometime between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago. Sulawesi could have been a stepping stone for the first people to arrive in Australia 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Now a research team, led by the University of Wollongong, has reported, in the prestigious Nature magazine, the existence of stone artifacts on Sulawesi dated to more than 100,000 years using the latest generation of luminescence dating technique for feldspars minerals.

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