Stepping-stones back in time — a ‘treasure map’ and local knowledge uncover first evidence of people living on a remote Indonesian island tens of thousands of years ago.
Stone tools, animal bones, and decorative beads unearthed on a remote tropical island in the northern gateway to Australia are helping to build a picture of how people lived there more than 17,500 years ago.
The discoveries, on the small Indonesian island of Obi, include the earliest evidence in the region of a particular stone tool technology, edge-ground axes, dating back 14,000 years. Obi, a densely forested 2,500km2 island, was one of the destinations previously plotted on a ‘‘ developed by researchers to identify the stepping-stones Aboriginal people used to get to Australia.
The rugged volcanic island is located in a region historically renowned for like nutmeg, mace, and cloves that may also contain preserved evidence of modern people moving across Indonesia to the super-continent of Sahul more than 50,000 years ago. However, the archaeology of the region is largely unexplored.
The results of the first excavations on Obi, published today in , offer exciting insights to the technologies and diets of people living there during three phases of occupation dating back to before the last Ice Age.
