An our human species lived in the neighboring island of Sulawesi jungles of Indonesia hide one of the most interesting and unknown human evolution chapters. That is the message that today launches a group of researchers after finding a large number of stone tools on the island of Celebes (Sulawesi in Indonesian), located between continental Asia and Australia. So said the discovery may seem disappointing, but the analysis of remains opens up possibilities that would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago.
Sulawesi is close to another much more famous island in these matters: Flores. There lived the human (member of the genus Homo) more atypical that we know: Homo Floresiensis...... The new study, published in Nature by Gerrit van den Bergh, of the University of Wollongong, Australia, and other palaeoanthropologists, describes the discovery in Sulawesi more than 200 stone tools near the village of Talepu. The team has gone back to them and they have at least 118.000 years. On this island there are no remains of modern humans (Homo sapiens) before 40,000 years, so these elaborate stone fragments prove that an unknown human species was established on the island and launch an obvious question: who were they? [...] THE COUNTRY http://cuevadelapileta.blogspot.com/2016/01/un-nuevo-hallazgo-aumenta-el-misterio.html
Note: There are people in that region (Papua) who make stone tools today.
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Stone Tools Point to Mysterious Neighbor of Flores ‘Hobbit’ The sharp-edged stones were made at least 60,000 years before modern humans reached the island of Sulawesi—but who made them?
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No human remains were found . ........before 40ky....as yet .in short , they are speculating ! Get with the program people .
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Please read this: Much older timescale but...
I'm seriously considering that this island Celebes/Sulawesi "rafted" eastwards from Socotra, Oman region before India collided into South Asia (which destroyed the geologic evidence = scraping of the seafloor). Note that Cuba also did this, it had been in the Pacific, but rafted eastwards into the Caribbean before South America collided into North America. I think that when south continents moved north they dragged equator islands eastwards, and this is part of why earthquakes/volcanoes occur.
Celebes has a warthog and some bird species found only in Africa (not Asia, India, Papua nor Australia)!
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A globe map, with (my) arrows marking the "drift" of Cuba and Celebes eastward, probably preceding the northward collisions of Africa > Europe, India > So. Asia and Australia/Sahul> Sunda plate.
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Note: The 118ka tools are Tiny, per John Hawks: "The deepest artifacts are tiny, a bit more than a centimeter in their longest dimension"
Pygmy tools?
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JH: "The biogeographic islands within Southeast Asia may have retained some Homo erectus-like populations, but almost certainly the dispersal corridors across the region would have been dominated by events coming from the large population of the Indian subcontinent to the west."
[Note: Per Wallace, Sulawesi is proportionately rich in African and poor in Indian/Malayan/Australian species.]
van den Bergh GD, Li B, Brumm A, Grün R, Yurnaldi D, Moore MW, Kurniawan I, Setiawan R, Aziz F, Roberts RG, Suyono, Storey M, Setiabudi E, Morwood MJ. 2016. Earliest hominin occupation of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Nature 529:208-211. doi:10.1038/nature16448
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p 209 - 212, Malay Archipelago, Lord Alfred Wallace
(among the birds of Celebes-Sulawesi island)
Celebes roller (Coracias temmincki) is an interesting example of one species of a genus being cut off from others in the genus. It seems to resemble more to resemble those of Africa (than Asian, European) and does not live elsewhere in the Malay archipelago.
The Bee-eater family is equally isolated, Meropogon forsteni, combines the characters of African and Indian Bee-eaters, and whose only near-ally M. breweri was discovered in West Africa.
Scissirostrum pagei, though classed in the Starling family, differs from all other species in the bill and nostrils, and seems most nearly allied in its structure to the African Oxpeckers Buphaga.
(among the mammals of Celebes-Sulawesi island)
Baboon-like monkey Cynopitchecus nigrescens, spaniel size, jet-black color, with red callosities, the dog-like muzzle and overhanging brows of the African baboons, and very short tail, which go around in large bands foraging
Anoa depressicornis, the sapi-utan/forest cow, appears in between buffalo, ox and antelope; it only lives in the mountains wild never inhabiting places where deer live (possibly because the deer were imported by Malays indicating agricultural communities), seems to approach some of the ox-like antelopes of Africa.
Celebes has both a native wild pig, which digs with its snout; and the deer-pig Babirusa, which eats fallen fruit and who bears upward-pointing curved tusks which most resemble the wart-hogs of Africa.
Thus we see that the mammalia of Celebes are no less individual than the birds, since the largest and most interesting species have no near relatives in the surrounding area, but seem vaguely to indicate a relation to the African continent
The insects ... very individual (unique) despite being surrounded by other islands carrying Asian, Indian, Australian genera.
Celebes seems to be the oldest part of the Archipelago...
Such an antiquity is necessary to account for the number of animal forms it possesses which bear no link to surrounding countries but rather with those of Africa...
Lemurs are members of the quadrumana (4 hands) along with primates, their metropolis is Madagascar, but are found also in Africa, Ceylon - India, Malaya, and furthest easternmost in Celebes.
Note: Celebes is the marsupial order's Cuscus opossum westernmost site.
Note: Maleo (bird) lays singe very large egg in communal 3'/1m deep pit beneath black volcanic sand at beach (related to Australian Megapodii birds which lay eggs in decomposing vegetation), the hen then leaves, later the chicks hatch, dig up through the sand and run off to the jungle. Megapodii: large strong claws, Maleo: small claws with interdigital webbing. Note: these and emus lay huge eggs, despite their small size, with long periods between.
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