Crossing Wallacea
A chain of islands separated by deep water is traversed by people with boats we have never found.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 20 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 6 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
Between Sundaland and Sahul lies Wallacea, a set of islands that no sea-level fall ever connected to either. Crossing it required repeated open-water voyages, and it was done by 65,000 years ago. No vessel survives — bamboo rafts leave nothing — so the entire maritime technology of the first Australians is invisible archaeologically and known only from the fact that they arrived. Deep-sea fish bones at Jerimalai in Timor show they were also fishing offshore by 42,000 years ago.