Matja Kuru

The Matja Kuru caves are located in the east of the island of Timor

Matja Kuru in the west of the Tutuala Administrative Office

Matja Kuru is the name of two caves in the East Timorese Suco Tutuala ( Lautém municipality ). They are north of the Ira Lalaro , the largest lake in Timor .

Matja Kuru 1 is a large, open cave that reaches a depth of 1.55 meters. The base is 14,000 years old, the overlying sediments are 4600 to 5600 years old.

Also Matja Kuru 2 is a large open cave. It is only a few hundred meters east of Matja Kuru 1. The base is 32,000 years old and covered by a layer of sediment over two meters high. There seems to be a time gap between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago.

Both caves show traces of prehistoric settlement. The remains of preyed animals from the surrounding grasslands, forests and the lake in the south and from the north sea coast were found here. There were also bones from dogs, pigs, and various types of rats that are 3500-4000 years old. The Australian archeology professor Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University discovered the remains of the Coryphomys musseri , an extinct rat species , for the first time .

Another find from Matja Kuru 2 is part of a 35,000 year old harpoon. The piece of bone was used to attach a point to the wooden shaft and fasten it with a strap. The harpoon was probably used to hunt large fish and prey on the beach. It is the oldest evidence of such a complex bonding technique in Southeast Asia and Australasia . Examples of this are known from all over Melanesia and Australia , but these are only a few hundred years old. The harpoon is comparable with 80,000 year old finds from Africa.

In Matja Kuru 1 one also found remains of a large rabbit of the genus Turnix , the age of which came to at least 1372 to 1300  cal BP .

-8.4333333333333 127.13333333333Coordinates: 8 ° 26 ′ 0 ″ S , 127 ° 8 ′ 0 ″ E

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d K. P. Aplin, KM Helgen: Quaternary Murid Rodents of Timor. Part I: New Material of Coryphomys buehleri Schaub, 1937, and Description of a Second Species of the Genus. In: Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 341, 2010, pp. 1-80, doi : 10.1206 / 692.1
↑ Miksic, John Norman; Goh, Geok Yian; O'Connor, Sue: Press Rethinking Cultural Resource Management in Southeast Asia: Preservation, Development, and Neglect ISBN 978-0-85728-389-4
^ S. O'Connor, G. Robertson, KP Aplin: Are osseous artefacts a window to perishable material culture? Implications of an unusually complex bone tool from the Late Pleistocene of East Timor in Journal of Human Evolution, January 15, 2014, accessed January 23, 2014
↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Knowledge: 35000 DIE ZAHL , 23. January 2014 ( memento of February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 23, 2014
↑ 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.

[AH-1] K. P. Aplin, KM Helgen: Quaternary Murid Rodents of Timor. Part I: New Material of Coryphomys buehleri Schaub, 1937, and Description of a Second Species of the Genus. In: Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 341, 2010, pp. 1-80, doi : 10.1206 / 692.1

[2] Miksic, John Norman; Goh, Geok Yian; O'Connor, Sue: Press Rethinking Cultural Resource Management in Southeast Asia: Preservation, Development, and Neglect ISBN 978-0-85728-389-4

[3] S. O'Connor, G. Robertson, KP Aplin: Are osseous artefacts a window to perishable material culture? Implications of an unusually complex bone tool from the Late Pleistocene of East Timor in Journal of Human Evolution, January 15, 2014, accessed January 23, 2014

[4] Süddeutsche Zeitung: Knowledge: 35000 DIE ZAHL , 23. January 2014 ( memento of February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 23, 2014

[5] 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.