Cave discovery suggests that early humans reached Australia through a northern route

A cave on the island of Timor has given archaeologists important clues about the route ancient humans took when they first reached the Australian continent.

Archaeological evidence from Australia's Northern Territory shows that people lived there at least 65,000 years ago. At that time, sea levels were low and Australia and New Guinea were part of a large land mass called Sahul.

Researchers believe there are two possible routes people could have taken from Southeast Asia to Sahul. One is the southern route via Timor. The other is homo sapiens They may have traveled via Sulawesi, north of Timor.

now, sue o'connor Professors at the Australian National University in Canberra believe they have found evidence that rules out the possibility that the first arrivals came via Timor.

Elsewhere in Timor, the earliest evidence of human occupation was less than 50,000 years old. O'Connor said archaeologists have been unable to look for older artifacts at all of the other sites they have examined because they hit bedrock rather than layers of sediment that may contain evidence of an earlier presence. It is said that there was not.

In 2019, her team excavated new holes in a cave called Laili on Timor-Leste's north coast and uncovered a wealth of archaeological evidence, including tens of thousands of stone tools, proving that humans have inhabited the island for 44,000 years.

But importantly, beneath the strata of this settlement were deposits with no evidence of human presence. In other words, it's likely that humans did not exist before 44,000 years ago, O'Connor said.

“This is the first time in Timor that there is a sterile, uninhabited layer beneath traces of human presence,” she says.

O'Connor says these sharp boundaries between places with no trace of humans and places with tens of thousands of years of remains are called “arrival trails.”

The cave's prominent location and access to resources mean that researchers believe it would be unlikely for early humans traveling through the region to miss it.

“It's a really big cave, with a big river running through a mesh floodplain, and it's very close to the coast,” O'Connor says. “This is a great place for people to set up an occupation base. There could be no more ideal location.”

Evidence that humans were in Australia as early as 65,000 years ago, but not in Timor until 44,000 years ago, means they likely migrated north via islands, O'Connor said.

“If you look at the layers in Laili Cave, there's this 'bang' sound – you can really tell when people arrive,” she says. “It was like there was a line drawn between two layers, before the people and after the people. It was so obvious.”