Location | near Tutuala, Lautém District |
---|---|
Region | East Timor |
Coordinates | 8°23′38″S127°16′6″E / 8.39389°S 127.26833°E |
Altitude | 75 m (246 ft) |
Type | Limestone cave |
Jerimalai is a limestone cave southeast of Tutuala, on the eastern tip of East Timor. Fish remains and fish hooks excavated in Jerimalai provide evidence for advanced fishing technique by inhabitants of Timor 42,000 years ago. [1] [2]
Jerimalai has the third oldest findings discovered in Wallacea, after Madjedbebe in mainland Northern Australia and the Laili cave near Manatuto on Timor. [3]
The cave lies at an altitude of 75 m, less than a kilometer from the sea. [1]
42,000 years ago, the sea was 55 m lower than in 2016, and the cave was 2.8 km from the sea. 22,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, the sea level was 121 m lower than in 2016 and Jerimalai was 3.5 km from the shore. During the glacial age, the descent from the cave to the coastline was much steeper, which explains why the cave was little used at that time. [1]
Since 2005, several archaeological findings dating back more than 42,000 years have been made in the cave. The age of the findings was determined using radiocarbon dating. However, some findings might be older, as their level of Carbon-14 is below the detection limit. [1]
The inhabitants of the cave fed on turtles, tuna and giant rats (probably Coryphomys buehleri ). [4] Archaeologists also believe some stones and shells were used as jewelry. [1]
Tools found in Jerimalai are similar to findings in the Liang Bua cave attributed to Homo floresiensis , who lived on the nearby island of Flores until 50,000 years ago. The high similarity has prompted questions about whether tools in Liang Bua were made by Homo sapiens , and not by Homo floresiensis. [5]
The fish remains found in Jerimalai are the oldest evidence of fishing far from the shore. [6] [7] In addition, a fish hook believed to be between 16,000 and 23,000 years old was discovered. The four inches long hook is made from the shell of a marine snail. The hook was used to catch fish in the coastal waters, which at the time were rich in coral reef fish. [4]
The high advancement of fishing technique for the time can be explained by the lack of land animals on Timor in that era. 40,000 years ago, rodents and reptiles were the only land species available to the inhabitants of Timor. [4]
Five pieces of jewelry were also found, made from the shell of Nautilus pompilius and stained with ocher. They had small tiles and drilled holes. Since nautiluses are usually caught at depths of 150 m or more, [8] it is believed that the shells were collected washed up on the beach. This would also explain why among the thousands of shell fragments (about 50 kg of material was collected during the excavation) only 268 belong to Nautilus pompilius. It is believed that the jewelry made of nautilus shells had a great cultural significance. [1]
The findings corroborate the theory that the anatomically modern man spread from Asia to Australia on the South route over the Lesser Sunda Islands and not on the northern route via Borneo, Sulawesi and New Guinea. Earlier findings on the islands of the southern route were too young to prove that the southern route was the propagation path. [9]
Jerimalai also preserves fossils of birds. With the exception of an undescribed species of Grus, all the avian remains represent taxa still extant in the present. [10]
The nautilus is an ancient pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina.
Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current Homo sapiens from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior, music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others. Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented experimentally and ethnographically by evolutionary and cultural anthropologists. These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin.
A fish hook or fishhook, formerly also called angle, is a hook used to catch fish either by piercing and embedding onto the inside of the fish mouth (angling) or, more rarely, by impaling and snagging the external fish body. Fish hooks are normally attached to a line, which tethers the target fish to the angler for retrieval, and are typically dressed with some form of bait or lure that entices the fish to swallow the hook out of its own natural instinct to forage or hunt.
Homo floresiensis( also known as "Flores Man") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.
Liang Bua is a limestone cave on the island of Flores, Indonesia, slightly north of the town of Ruteng in Manggarai Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. The cave demonstrated archaeological and paleontological potential in the 1950s and 1960s as described by the Dutch missionary and archaeologist Theodor L. Verhoeven.
Nautilus is a genus of cephalopods in the family Nautilidae. Species in this genus differ significantly in terms of morphology from those placed in the sister taxon Allonautilus. The oldest fossils of the genus are known from the Late Eocene Hoko River Formation, in Washington State and from Late-Eocene to Early Oligocene sediments in Kazakhstan. The oldest fossils of the modern species Nautilus pompilius are from Early Pleistocene sediments off the coast of Luzon in the Philippines.
Post-canine megadontia is a relative enlargement of the molars and premolars compared to the size of the incisors and canines. This phenomenon is seen in some early hominid ancestors such as Paranthropus aethiopicus.
Theodorus (Theo) Lambertus Verhoeven, SVD, was a Dutch missionary and archaeologist who has become famous by his discovery of stone tools on the Indonesian island of Flores, in association with the c. 800,000-year-old fossils of stegodontids, or dwarf elephants, from which he concluded that islands in Wallacea had been reached by Homo erectus before modern humans appeared there.
The Nino Konis Santana National Park is East Timor's first national park. The park, established on 15 August 2007, covers 1,236 square kilometres (477 sq mi). It links important bird areas such as Lore, Mount Paitchau, Lake Ira Lalaro, and Jaco Island. The park also includes 556 square kilometres (215 sq mi) of the Coral Triangle, an underwater area which supposedly contains the world's greatest diversity of both coral and coral reef fish. Some of the rare birds protected by this park are the critically endangered yellow-crested cockatoo, the endemic Timor green-pigeon, the endangered Timor imperial-pigeon, and the vulnerable Timor sparrow.
Timor is an island in South East Asia. Geologically considered a continental crustal fragment, it lies alongside the Sunda shelf, and is the largest in a cluster of islands between Java and New Guinea. European colonialism has shaped Timorese history since 1515, a period when it was divided between the Dutch in the west of the island and the Portuguese in the east.
Prehistoric Indonesia is a prehistoric period in the Indonesian archipelago that spanned from the Pleistocene period to about the 4th century CE when the Kutai people produced the earliest known stone inscriptions in Indonesia. Unlike the clear distinction between prehistoric and historical periods in Europe and the Middle East, the division is muddled in Indonesia. This is mostly because Indonesia's geographical conditions as a vast archipelago caused some parts — especially the interiors of distant islands — to be virtually isolated from the rest of the world. West Java and coastal Eastern Borneo, for example, began their historical periods in the early 4th century, but megalithic culture still flourished and script was unknown in the rest of Indonesia, including in Nias and Toraja. The Papuans on the Indonesian part of New Guinea island lived virtually in the Stone Age until their first contacts with modern world in the early 20th century. Even today living megalithic traditions still can be found on the island of Sumba and Nias.
Homo luzonensis, also locally called "Ubag" after a mythical caveman, is an extinct, possibly pygmy, species of archaic human from the Late Pleistocene of Luzon, the Philippines. Their remains, teeth and phalanges, are known only from Callao Cave in the northern part of the island dating to before 50,000 years ago. They were initially identified as belonging to modern humans in 2010, but in 2019, after the discovery of more specimens, they were placed into a new species based on the presence of a wide range of traits similar to modern humans as well as to Australopithecus and early Homo. In 2023, a recent study revealed that the fossilized remains of the Callao Man has been found out to be 134,000± 14 years old and much older than previously known.
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