Crossing the Wallace Line: The Maritime Skills of the Earliest Colonists in the Wallacean Archipelago

The ability ot catch fish has usually been considered an advanced modern human skill that first appeared relatively late in prehistory, at the close of the Pleistocene. New evidence from East Timor demonstrates that the modern humans who crossed the oceans to reach Island Southeast Asia 42,000 years ago were capable of systematic fishing for a diverse range of species, including fast-moving pelagic species such as tuna. The evidence from East Timor has implications for the fishing skills of early modern humans elsewhere in the world, where evidence of coastal occupation and resource use was submerged by rising sea levels in the terminal Pleistocene.