Talking Indonesia

Bones can tell us so much about the past, not just about the ancestry of modern humans (or homo sapiens) but also about the people and cultures of times long forgotten. When we think about Indonesia’s place in history, we’re often inclined to think about the histories that shape the socio-cultural and political dynamics we see today. But Indonesia’s global historical significance goes way beyond this when we start considering how Indonesia features in early movements and migrations of humans and how they might have lived. It's estimated that ancient humans travelled through Wallacea, what we now understand as Eastern Indonesia, at least 50,000 years ago (possibly even before 65,000 years ago) before coming to Australia and its surrounding islands. There is also evidence of pre-modern ancestry- the most famous, perhaps, being the discovery of skeletal remains in Central Java, which became known as the “Java man,” in the 1980s. These were the first known fossils of the species homo erectus. While difficult