Early stone technology on Flores and its implications for Homo Floresiensis
Date
2006
Authors
Brumm, Adam
Aziz, Fachroel
van den Bergh, Gerrit D
Morwood, Michael John
Moore, Mark
Kurniawan, Iwan
Hobbs, Douglas R
Fullagar, Richard
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Macmillan Publishers Ltd
Abstract
In the Soa Basin of central Flores, eastern Indonesia, stratified archaeological sites, including Mata Menge, Boa Lesa and Kobatuwa (Fig. 1), contain stone artefacts associated with the fossilized remains of Stegodon florensis, Komodo dragon, rat and various other taxa. These sites have been dated to 840-700 kyr BP (thousand years before present). The authenticity of the Soa Basin artefacts and their provenance have been demonstrated by previous work, but to quell lingering doubts, here we describe the context, attributes and production modes of 507 artefacts excavated at Mata Menge. We also note specific similarities, and apparent technological continuity, between the Mata Menge stone artefacts and those excavated from Late Pleistocene levels at Liang Bua cave, 50 km to the west. The latter artefacts, dated to between 95-74 and 12 kyr ago, are associated with the remains of a dwarfed descendent of S. florensis, Komodo dragon, rat and a small-bodied hominin species, Homo floresiensis, which had a brain size of about 400 cubic centimetres. The Mata Menge evidence negates claims that stone artefacts associated with H. floresiensis are so complex that they must have been made by modern humans (Homo sapiens).
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Keywords: Biodiversity; Excavation; Natural resources; Regional planning; Artefacts; Homo floresiensis; Modern humans; Stone technology; Structural geology; archaeological evidence; archaeology; artifact; fossil record; lizard; Pleistocene; rodent; archeology; arti
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