Hominins reach Flores
Stone tools on an island that was never connected to the mainland mean someone crossed open water.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 226 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 100 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Stone artefacts at Wolo Sege on Flores date to about a million years ago, and the site of Mata Menge, around 700,000 years old, has yielded jaw and tooth fragments of small-bodied hominins already substantially reduced in size. Flores lies east of the Wallace Line and has been separated by deep water throughout, so reaching it required a sea crossing — whether deliberate or accidental, on a raft of vegetation after a tsunami, is unknown. Their descendants become Homo floresiensis.