Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
is similar in its geological origin to the Niah caves of Borneo. Such large lime-
stone caves, fi rst carved out by groundwater seeps and then exposed to the
outside by subsequent erosion, are common throughout Southeast Asia.
About half a million years ago the interior of Liang Bua Cave was exposed
to the outside world for the fi rst time when a nearby river's path shifted so
that it fl owed past the mountain containing the cave. The river broke open
part of the cave's thin limestone shell, illuminating the clusters of ancient
stalactites on the cave's roof for the fi rst time.
In the hundreds of thousands of years since that time the river has contin-
ued to sculpt the landscape. Currently it fl ows through a nearby valley about
20 meters below the level of the cave. And because the cave is opened up to the
outside, it has been repeatedly fl ooded by the torrential rains of the region. The
result of all this fl ooding has been an accumulation of great quantities of wet silt
on the cave's fl oor. For much of the time during which the cave has been open
to the elements there has been at least one deep pool of water on the fl oor.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s Father Verhoeven and Indonesian excavators
had dug a little way down into the cave fl oor deposits. They found remains of
modern humans near the surface, along with bones of the animals that they
had killed. But they were stopped by a layer of hard volcanic tufa that seemed
to mark the base of the deposits.
Morwood's team was able to break through this thick layer, fi nding
immense deposits of silt below. But digging down further proved to be tech-
nically dii cult. At every stage in the excavations the pits had to be shored up
by massive wooden scaf olding, and even so there was one sudden collapse
that nearly caught some of the workers.
As Morwood's team dug further down through the wet layers they began
to fi nd the bones of animals, some now extinct on Flores, that also showed
signs of having been butchered. Along with the bones they found stone tools
that could have been used to dismember the animals. These tools resembled
the very old tools that had been found earlier at Mata Menge and other nearby
non-cave sites.
Early in these new excavations they unearthed a tiny hominan radius,
the small bone of a lower arm. The radius was extremely fragile, making
it a challenge to free it from the muck that surrounded it. It was tiny but
 
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