Seafaring colonisation of Wallacea and Island Southeast Asia
- Date
- c. 45,000 years ago
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Wallacea (Indonesia / Timor)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Between Sunda (the Ice Age landmass of mainland Southeast Asia) and Sahul lies Wallacea, a chain of islands — including Sulawesi, Flores and Timor — separated from both continental shelves by deep-water straits that were never bridged even at the lowest sea levels.
Archaeological records show modern humans occupying the larger Wallacean islands by at least 45,000 years ago, with sites such as Asitau Kuru (Jerimalai) on Timor preserving evidence of sophisticated marine exploitation, including deep-sea fishing for pelagic species like tuna by around 42,000 years ago; the same site later yielded the world's earliest known fish-hooks, made of shell and dated to roughly 16,000–23,000 years ago. Crossing these straits demanded repeated, intentional water voyages, marking Wallacea as the cradle of the earliest sustained maritime adaptation by our species. The same seafaring capability carried people onward to Sahul. The region's island ecologies also brought modern humans into contact with relict archaic populations, including the diminutive Homo floresiensis, whose lineage disappears from the record around this time.
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Related exploration & colonisation events
- Modern humans enter Europe and the Aurignacian beginsc. 45,000 years ago
- Dmanisi: the earliest well-dated humans in Eurasiac. 1.8 million years ago
- Pre-Clovis America: Monte Verde and the Pacific coastal routec. 16,000–14,500 years ago
- Settlement of Sahul: human occupation of Australia at Madjedbebec. 65,000 years ago
- White Sands footprints: humans in the Americas during the Last Glacial Maximumc. 23,000–21,000 years ago
- Earliest human occupation of the high-altitude Tibetan Plateauc. 40,000 – 30,000 years ago
Further reading
The wider story
A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads
Authoritative yet readable history of the whole region, mainland and maritime.
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