Stone tools on Sulawesi Excavations at a site called Calio, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, have found new evidence of the island’s occupation by early hominin species. Carried out between 2019 and 2022 by a joint team from Indonesia…
Stone tools recently discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are rewriting the story of the early human occupation of island Southeast Asia. Perhaps the most famous hominin from this region is Homo floresiensis (the ‘Hobbit’), a small-statured species found…
Oldest figurative art identified The oldest narrative art in the world has been identified in Indonesia during new analysis of rock-art sites on the island of Sulawesi. A new method of dating called laser- ablation uranium-series (LA-U-series) imaging uses a…
New analysis of rock-art sites in Indonesia has identified the earliest narrative art currently known anywhere in the world. Research in recent years had already revealed that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is home to some of the oldest figurative…
What are they? Each of these two modified tiger shark teeth was once part of a handled knife. They were found in contexts dated to 7,000-5,000 years ago, associated with the Toalean culture, hunter-gatherers who lived in south-western Sulawesi, Indonesia,…
A round-up of some of the latest archaeological news from across the globe.
The fossilised remains, which date to between 31,000 and 30,000 years ago, were found during excavations at Liang Tebo. Previously, the earliest known evidence of surgical amputation came from a farmer in France c.7,000 years ago
Evidence of what appears to be the earliest known surgical amputation of a limb, dating to c.31,000 years ago, has been identified in Borneo.
Earliest known rock art ever found in Indonesia; skulls relating to sacrificial ceremony found in Tenochtitlan; German enigma machine discovered in Bay of Gelting.
Archaeologists now believe that they have found a painting on the island of Sulawesi that pre-dates all other examples in the region, and may even be the earliest piece of representational art currently known.
A Sulawesi warty pig painted in red ochre on an Indonesian cave wall may be the world’s oldest known representational image of an animal, dating back at least 45,500 years, according to a study recently published in Science Advances. Archaeologists…
A sub-adult burial dating to the early-mid Holocene, c.8000 BP, has been found in Makpan Cave on Alor Island, south-eastern Indonesia. To date, only a few complete pre-Neolithic burials have been found in Island South-east Asia, despite the region’s vast…
Sensational discoveries of metal masks in a subterranean temple have led to calls for Javanese history to be rewritten. Fiorella Rispoli investigates.