1.5 million-year-old stone tools found in Indonesia rewrite human history

The new discovery of ancient tools on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island is forcing scientists to rethink early human migration routes

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A stone tool dated to 1.04 million year ago. Prehistoric humans were thought to have only settled in Indonesia’s Flores Island and the Philippines’ Luzon Island around 1.02 million years ago. Photo: Handout

Published: 9:44am, 11 Aug 2025Updated: 9:47am, 11 Aug 2025

Scientists have found a series of stone tools on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island they say may be evidence of humans living 1.5 million years ago on islands between Asia and Australia, the earliest known humans in the Wallacea region.

Archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia found the small, chipped tools, used to cut little animals and carve rocks, under the soil in the region of Soppeng in South Sulawesi. Radioactive tracing of these tools and the teeth of animals found around the site was dated at up to 1.48 million years ago.

The findings could transform theories of early human migrations, according to an article the archaeologists published in the journal Nature this month.

Excavations at Calio in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Photo: BRIN/Handout

The earliest Wallacean humans, prehistoric persons known as Homo erectus, were thought to have only settled in Indonesia’s Flores island and the Philippines’ Luzon island around 1.02 million years ago, as they were thought to be incapable of distant sea travel, proving the significance of the Sulawesi findings in theories of migration.

“These were artefacts made by ancient humans who lived on the earth long before the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens,” said Adam Brumm, lead archaeologist from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.

“We think Homo erectus somehow got from the Asian mainland across a significant ocean gap to this island, Sulawesi, at least 1 million years ago.”

Wallacea is a region in Eastern Indonesia, including several islands such as Sulawesi, Lombok, Flores, Timor and Sumbawa that lie between Borneo and Java and Australia and New Guinea.

The region is named for the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who studied the fauna and flora of the area.

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