The research, funded by the Australian Research Council and published this week in Nature Communications, dated and analysed ancient sediment, artefacts, and animal remains discovered in a large rock overhang in Laili, located in north-central Timor-Leste (East Timor).
The research team, composed of archaeologists from UCL, the Australian National University (ANU), Flinders University, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, excavated deposits deeply buried in the rock overhang. There, they unearthed thousands of small stone tools, as well as charcoal, ashes, and charred fish bones. The researchers found a distinct ‘arrival signature’ dating to about 44,000 years ago, indicating there were no humans on the island before then.
These dates, combined with findings from other sites in Timor-Leste and nearby Flores Island, show that humans were largely absent from Timor and the nearby islands when there were already people living in Australia. This means that the first settlers of Australia likely used New Guinea instead of Timor as a stepping stone to reach the continent.
Strong ocean currents on the western side of the island may have been an obstacle to earlier colonisation of Timor for people emigrating from Southeast Asia. Instead, early humans seemed to have passed Timor by to settle New Guinea farther east and then Australia to the south, before a later migration wave arrived on Timor.
The sudden appearance in sediment layers and sheer number of artefacts found at Laili indicate that this migration to Timor was quick, massive and was likely a major concerted colonisation effort.
According to Ceri Shipton:
This finding represents a significant change to our understanding of ancient human migration across the Malay Archipelago and into Australia. Tracing the ancient journeys of our ancestors is a major challenge, but this new evidence shows that there was a particularly intensive migration across the southern islands soon after 50,000 years ago.
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