Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 132 An effi gy on the roof of a house in the nearby village of Bena signals the impor-
tance of its owner.
Verhoeven died in 1990, and it was not until 1998 that other scientists
fi nally followed up on his observations. A group led by Michael Morwood of
Australia's University of New England and Fachroel Aziz from Bandung on
Java were able to date the volcanic layers above and below the stone tools at
Mata Menge. 10 These and other dating methods yielded an astonishingly old
date of approximately 800,000 years. Similar stone tools, some as old as 1.1
million years, were found later at a number of nearby sites.
Morwood and his colleagues agreed with Verhoeven's conclusion that the
makers of these stone tools must have been H. erectus . This was because the
only hominans known to be living in the Sunda islands at this early date were
H. erectus , and the H. erectus of Java had used similar tools. But even so their
conclusion was startling, because deep-water channels separate Flores from
the islands to the west. Even during the severest Ice Age the gaps between the
islands would never have closed. The only way that these hominans could
have crossed was by boat or—far less likely—by clinging to trees uprooted
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search