Free Republic

The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses. Previously, the oldest indication of hominins in Wallacea, the oceanic island zone east of Sunda, comprised flaked stone artifacts deposited at least 1.02 million years ago at the site of Wolo Sege on the island of Flores. On Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island, previous excavations revealed stone artifacts with a minimum age of 194,000 years at the open site of Talepu. Now, archaeologists from Griffith University show that stone artifacts also occur at the nearby site of...

Sundaland The cradle of human civilization may well have been the prehistoric lowlands of the Southeast Asian peninsula, rather than the Middle East. Since those lowlands ‘sank’ beneath the seas thousands of years ago (actually drowned by rising sea levels), humanity has remained unaware of their possible significance up through the early 21st century. Unaware except, that is, for a so-called myth perpetuated by a respected Greek philosopher named Plato, before 347 BC. Plato spoke of an advanced civilization named Atlantis, which sank below the seas perhaps around 9,000 BC. It may well be he wasn’t so far off after...