Papuans, the earliest people in the Western…

Indonesia consists of parts of the Sunda Shelf, extending from mainland Asia and forming the world's largest submerged continental shelf; a deep-water channel charting what is known as Wallace's Line roughly running between the islands of Kalimantan and Sulawesi, and between the islands of Bali and Lombok; and parts of the Sahul Shelf, an extension of Australia.

Despite arcs of frequent volcanic activity and patterns of rising and falling sea levels, this has been a favored region for modern humans and their hominid predecessors for nearly two million years.

Today Indonesia is of crucial importance to the study of human origins and evolution.

Sites in central Java, such as Sangiran and Ngandong, now account for about seventy-five percent of the world's examples of homo erectus, an early hominid type.

Most recently, the 2004 announcement of discoveries on the island of Flores (between Bali and Timor) created international controversy because they suggested an entirely new, locally evolved, and distinctively smaller hominid form overlapping chronologically with both homo erectus and modern humans.

About eight hundred thousand years ago, some early hominids of the archipelago made stone tools, constructed water craft sophisticated enough to cross twenty-five kilometers of rough sea channel, and may have used fire and language.

About six hundred thousand years ago, a fairly sophisticated hominid culture was widely distributed throughout what is now Indonesia.

The earliest modern humans cannot currently be firmly dated before about 40,000 years ago, but some specialists argue either that they appeared much earlier (as much as 90,000 years ago) in a rapid dispersal from Africa, or that they evolved independently in East or Southeast Asia from existing hominid stock.

Whatever the case, Indonesia's earliest modern humans did not immediately or everywhere displace their hominid relatives but coexisted with them for tens of thousands of years.

The earliest modes of their existence show little evidence of having deviated markedly from those of their predecessors.

A pattern evolves of small hunting-fishing-foraging communities depending on tools made of shell, wood, bamboo, and stone, adapting to a wide variety of ecological niches and remaining in contact with neighboring peoples over land and sea.

One center of these societies is in the northern Maluku and Papua region, where between twenty thousand and about nine thousand years ago there is evidence of long-distance trade (for example, in obsidian, used for making cutting tools), deliberate horticulture, and the transport of plants (bananas, taro, palms) and animals (wallabies, flying squirrels) used as food sources.

Possibly these communities also use sails and outriggers on their boats.

The Mesolithic (Greek: mesos "middle," lithos "stone") is an archaeological concept used to refer to specific groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic.

The term developed as a catchall to refer to material that did not fit into the other categories of prehistory and after the development of radiocarbon dating the arbitrary nature of its definition has become apparent.

The term was first used to refer to post-Holocene but pre-agricultural material in northwest Europe about 10,000 to 5000 BCE but is also applied to material from the Levant (about 20,000 to 9500 BCE); in Japan, the Jomon period (about 14,000 to 400 BCE) is sometimes called Mesolithic and it is also applied to some cultures from the Indian subcontinent.

The term "Epipaleolithic," often used for areas outside northern Europe, was also the preferred synonym used by French archaeologists until the 1960s.

The Upper Paleolithic (also spelled Upper Palaeolithic) is the final subdivision of the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), as defined in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Broadly dating between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, this period coincides with the emergence of behavioral modernity and predates the development of agriculture.

The terms "Late Stone Age" and "Upper Paleolithic" refer to the same time period. However, due to historical conventions, "Stone Age" is more commonly used in reference to Africa, while "Upper Paleolithic" is typically applied to Europe.

The Natufian period was between 12,000-10,200 cal. BCE and the so called "proto-neolithic" is now included in the PPNA between 10,200-8800 cal. BCE.

As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas are thought to have forced people to develop farming.

Farming communities arose by 10,200-8800 cal. BCE in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa and North Mesopotamia.

Early Neolithic farming is limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which includes einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep and goats.

Unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species (Homo sapiens sapiens) reaches the Neolithic, a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 10,200 cal. BCE according to the ASPRO chronology in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world.

The term Neolithic, which derives from the Greek eolithikos, from neos, “new," and lithos, "stone," literally meaning "New Stone Age," was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.

Traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age, the Neolithic follows the terminal Holocene Epipaleolithic period, beginning with the rise of farming, which produces the "Neolithic Revolution," and ending when metal tools become widespread in the Copper Age (chalcolithic) or Bronze Age or developing directly into the Iron Age, depending on the geographical region.

The Neolithic is a measured progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops and the use of domesticated animals.

New findings put the beginning of a culture tentatively called Neolithic back to around 10,700 to 9400 BCE in Tell Qaramel in northern Syria, twenty-five kilometers north of Aleppo.

Until those findings are adopted within the archaeological community, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant (Jericho, modern-day West Bank) about 10,200-8800 cal. BCE.

It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming.

Artistic creativity flourishes beginning around 29,000–28,000 BCE, as Early European Modern Humans produce their first small engravings, relief carvings, and animal sculptures. Over time, they create statuettes of ivory or stone, as well as occasional engravings of female figures on stone.

Many of the finest examples of prehistoric cave art, depicting animals in remarkable detail, have been preserved in French and Spanish caves, spanning a period of nearly 20,000 years.

There is no evidence of human beings having lived in Oceania before about 31,000 BCE.

If they did, they would have lived along the coasts of the various small islands, and evidence would have long since disappeared below the rising seas of the Holocene Epoch.

Traces of starch from an apparently domesticated variety of the taro plant on flint tools from the Solomon Islands suggests that conscious planting is being done in the Pacific by 28,000 BCE.