Indonesia: Discovered artifacts believed to be of the oldest ape man

According to a VNA reporter in Jakarta, Indonesian and Australian archaeologists have found small, chipped tools, possibly used to cut small animals and carve stones, underground in the Soppeng area of Indonesia's South Sulawesi province.

Tools and animal teeth found around the site have been dated to 1.48 million years ago.

Among the artifacts found is a series of stone tools in South Sulawesi that scientists say could be evidence of humans living 1.5 million years ago on islands between Asia and Australia, the first known humans in the Wallacea region of eastern Indonesia.

These findings could change theories about early human migration, according to a report by archaeologists published in the journal Nature in August 2025.

The team of archaeologists said their findings demonstrated that stone artifacts discovered in sandstone layers in the Beru Member Sub-Unit B sedimentary area of Calio in South Sulawesi date back much earlier than the oldest archaeological evidence ever reported of hominins on Sulawesi island.

The first Wallacean hominins – prehistoric humans known as Homo Erectus – are thought to have settled only on the Philippine islands of Flores and Luzon around 1.02 million years ago, as they were unlikely to have moved further across the sea. This demonstrates the importance of the Sulawesi finds in migration theories.

Adam Brumm, a leading archaeologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, said: "These are artifacts created by ancient humans who lived on Earth long before our species, Homo Sapiens, evolved. We believe that ancient Homo Erectus somehow traveled from mainland Asia across a significant ocean distance to reach Sulawesi at least 1 million years ago."

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/indonesia-phat-hien-nhung-hien-vat-duoc-cho-la-cua-nguoi-vuon-lau-doi-nhat-post1055683.vnp