Jerimalai

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Tutuala (East Timor)
Tutuala
Tutuala
The Jerimalai Cave is located near Tutuala on the eastern tip of Timor

Jerimalai is a limestone cave , southeast of the town of Tutuala , on the eastern tip of East Timor . It is located at a height of 75  m , less than a kilometer from the sea.

Finds

Jerimalai to the east of the Tutuala Administrative Office

42,000 years ago the cave was 55  m deeper and thus only 2.8 km from the sea. 22,000 years ago, the sea level was 122  m lower than it is today due to the last ice age, and Jerimalai was 3.5 km from the shore. Since the path was also steeper, the cave was hardly used at that time.

Since 2005, various archaeological finds have been made in the cave that are more than 42,000 years old (38,255 ± 596 bp in test section A and 37,267 ± 453 bp for test section B (Wk-17833)). The age is only exceeded by finds in the Laili cave . The age of the Jerimalai site was determined using the radiocarbon method. Since this method reached its detection limit here , the site could also be older than 42,000 years. The Australian archeology professor Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University found the oldest human traces on the islands between Southeast Asia and Australia .

The Stone Age inhabitants of the cave ate turtles (presumably Chelonia mydas ), tuna and giant rats (presumably Coryphomys buehleri ). The archaeologists found stone tools and seashells ( Nerita spp. , Strombus spp. , Trochus spp. , Turbo sp. ) That were used as jewelry. The tools are similar to the finds that are assigned to Homo floresiensis , a member of the genus Homo that lived on the nearby island of Flores until around 50,000 years ago . The inhabitants of Jerimalai were anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) , because clues for their advanced development could be proven. Fish like tuna can only be caught in deep waters and not near the shore. For this, there are fish hooks and boats or rafts necessary.

Half of the remains of the fish come from species that only live in the deep sea. This indicates for the first time that people started fishing far from the coast 42,000 years ago. In addition, the fragments of the world's oldest fishing hook could be found. It is estimated to be between 16,000 and 23,000 years old, is four centimeters long and made from the shell of a sea snail. The hook was used to catch fish in the coastal waters, which at that time were becoming richer in fish due to the formation of the coral reefs.

The remains of a crane ( Grus sp. ) From the late Pleistocene were also found in Jerimalai .

Another find were five pieces of jewelry made from the shell of Nautilus pompilius and dyed with ocher . Small plates with drilled holes. They come from different times. The oldest find is estimated to be 38,000 to 42,000 years old. Since Nautilus pompilius is usually only caught at depths of more than 150 m, it is assumed that the shells washed up on the beach were collected. This would also explain why, among the thousands of shell fragments (about 50 kg of material was collected during the excavation), only 268 belonged to Nautilus pompilius . It is believed that the pieces of jewelry made from nautilus shells were of great cultural importance, which is why finds date back several thousand years.

The findings corroborate the theory that anatomically modern humans spread on the southern route via the Lesser Sunda Islands from Asia to Australia and not on the northern route via Borneo , Sulawesi and New Guinea . O'Connor therefore describes the site as world-important. Earlier finds on the islands of the southern route were far too young to prove this path of spread.

Ceramic finds in the test sections were dated to 5500 bp, but the excavator judges this surprisingly early date to be not entirely certain.

See also

supporting documents

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Michelle C. Langley, Sue O'Connor, Elena Piotto: 42,000-year-old worked and pigment-stained Nautilus shell from Jerimalai (Timor-Leste): Evidence for an early coastal adaptation in ISEA
  2. ↑ CENTER FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH ( Memento of February 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Hawkins, Stuart & O'Connor, Sue & Maloney, Tim & Litster, Mirani & Kealy, Shimona & N. Fenner, Jack & Aplin, Ken & Boulanger, Clara & Brockwell, Sally & Willan, Richard & Piotto, Elena & Louys , Julien: Oldest human occupation of Wallacea at Laili Cave, Timor-Leste, shows broad-spectrum foraging responses to late Pleistocene environments , (2017). Quaternary Science Reviews. 171. 58-72. 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2017.07.008.
  4. ^ Sue O'Connor et al .: Pelagic Fishing at 42,000 Years Before the Present and the Maritime Skills of Modern Humans , Science, Vol. 334, p. 1117, 2011
  5. ^ Adelaide Now: World's first anglers hooked in Timor , November 26, 2011
  6. ↑ Hanneke JM Meijer, Julien Louys, Sue O'Connor: First record of avian extinctions from the Late Pleistocene and Holocene of Timor Leste , 2018 , accessed on November 23, 2018.