By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - 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.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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