Archaeologists find oldest evidence of humans on ‘Hobbit’s’ island neighbor – who they were remains a mystery

Stone tools were excavated from Calio, Sulawesi, and dated to over 1.04 million years ago. The scale bars are 10 mm. (Image Credit: Credit: M.W. Moore/University of New England)

Long before Homo sapiens set sail, ancient human relatives were already making daring ocean crossings. In a stunning new discovery, archaeologists have uncovered stone tools on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that date back at least 1.04 million years, rewriting what we thought we knew about early human migration.

The findings, published in Nature, suggest that early hominins — possibly Homo erectus — managed to cross deep-sea barriers to reach Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene (or Ice Age), long before modern humans existed.

“This discovery is a game-changer,” said Professor Adam Brumm from Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, who co-led the study with Budianto Hakim of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN). “It tells us that early humans were capable of far more adventurous sea travel than previously imagined.”

The Tools That Time Forgot
The breakthrough came from a surprising location — a cornfield near a sandstone outcrop in southern Sulawesi. There, archaeologists unearthed seven stone artefacts, sharp flakes deliberately chipped from riverbed pebbles. These weren’t random rock shards; they were the handiwork of early toolmakers, likely used for cutting meat, wood, or plants.

Using a combination of palaeomagnetic dating of the surrounding sandstone and fossil dating of a nearby ancient pig, the team confirmed that the tools were at least 1.04 million years old — pushing back the timeline for hominin activity in the region.

“These tools are small, but their implications are huge,” said Brumm. “They show that early humans made the perilous crossing of the Wallace Line — a biogeographical boundary that has long puzzled scientists.”

Cracking the Wallace Line Mystery
The Wallace Line separates the fauna of Southeast Asia from the distinctive species of Australasia. It’s a line few species, let alone ancient humans, were thought to have crossed without boats.

Previously, Brumm’s team had uncovered stone tools on Flores dating to 1.02 million years ago and on Talepu (Sulawesi) dating to around 194,000 years ago. But the new Calio site predates those findings — confirming that Sulawesi was settled even earlier than once believed.

But here’s the twist: no human bones have been found — yet.

“We know toolmakers were here a million years ago,” Brumm said. “But we still don’t know who they were.”

Could They Be the Ancestors of the “Hobbits”?
The discovery raises fascinating questions about the fate of these mystery seafarers. On Flores, Brumm’s team previously discovered the remains of Homo floresiensis — the so-called “hobbit” species — which likely evolved from Homo erectus through island dwarfism over hundreds of thousands of years.

But Sulawesi is massive — over 12 times the size of Flores — with varied ecosystems and rich biodiversity. Would isolation have led hominins here to shrink like the hobbits? Or did an entirely different evolutionary story unfold?

“Sulawesi is like a mini-continent,” Brumm said. “If early humans were marooned here for a million years, what did they become? We may have a completely new chapter of human evolution hiding beneath this island.”