The Lena Hara cave is the main cave of a system of solutional caves in the

Lautém District Lautém (Tetum: Lautein) is a toponym for a place eastmost in East Timor. It may refer to, from small to large: * Lautém (city) * Lautém Administrative Post * Lautém Municipality Lautém ( pt, Município Lautém, ) is one of the municipa ...

at the eastern tip of

East Timor East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-west ...

(Timor-Leste), close to the village of

Tutuala Tutuala is a village and suco in the subdistrict of Tutuala ( Lautém District, East Timor). It is situated at the extreme eastern end of Timor. Its population at the 2004 census was 3,707. The subdistrict of Tutuala comprises two sucos, inc ...

. Others are ''Ile Kére Kére'' and ''

Jerimalai Jerimalai is a limestone cave southeast of Tutuala, on the eastern tip of East Timor. Fish remains and fish hooks excavated in Jerimalai provide evidence for advanced fishing technique by inhabitants of Timor 42,000 years ago. Jerimalai has the ...

''. Lene Hara has provided evidence that

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...

has been occupied by humans since at least 35,000 years

Before Present Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becau ...

and thus is evidence that humans crossed the waters of

Wallacea Wallacea is a biogeographical designation for a group of mainly Indonesian islands separated by deep-water straits from the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Wallacea includes Sulawesi, the largest island in the group, as well as ...

between the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

continents of

Sunda Sunda may refer to: Europe * Sunda, Faroe Islands India * Sunda (asura), an asura brother of Upasunda * Sunda (clan), a clan (gotra) of Jats in Haryana and Rajasthan, India Southeast Asia * Sundanese (disambiguation) ** Sundanese people ...

and

Sahul __NOTOC__ Sahul (), also called Sahul-land, Meganesia, Papualand and Greater Australia, was a paleocontinent that encompassed the modern-day landmasses of mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands. Sahul was in the south- ...

. The cave was first investigated in 1963 by

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

anthropologist Antonio de Almeida, when Timor Leste was still under

Portuguese rule The Portuguese Empire ( pt, Império Português), also known as the Portuguese Overseas (''Ultramar Português'') or the Portuguese Colonial Empire (''Império Colonial Português''), was composed of the overseas Colonialism, colonies, Factory ...

. Radiocarbon dating of the cave taken from digs beside those investigated by Almeida, by a team led by

Sue O'Connor Sue O'Connor is an Australian archaeologist and Distinguished Professor in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University. Her research focuses primarily on the evidence of Pleistocene settlement and early huma ...

from the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

, shows deposition of shells (

trochus ''Trochus'' is a genus of medium-sized to large, top-shaped sea snails with an operculum and a pearly inside to their shells, marine gastropod molluscs in the subfamily Trochinae of the family Trochidae, the top snails.Bouchet, P.; Gofas, S. ( ...

and

strombus ''Strombus'' is a genus of medium to large sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Strombidae, which comprises the true conchs and their immediate relatives. The genus ''Strombus'' was named by Swedish Naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1 ...

) by transitory inhabitants beginning 35,000 years BP. O'Connor ''et al'' pointed out that the earliest occupation of Australia is dated to around 55,000 BP, so it is unclear whether the early Timor settlers belong to the same wave of colonisation as the first Australian settlers. O'Connor also reported finding in Lena Hara

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

fish hook A fish hook or fishhook, formerly also called angle (from Old English ''angol'' and Proto-Germanic ''*angulaz''), is a hook used to catch fish either by piercing and embedding onto the inside of the fish mouth (angling) or, more rarely, by impal ...

s made from shell, and shell

bead A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood, or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under ...

s. In May 2009, carved faces were found high in the cave, and have since been dated to 10,000 years. This was reported in the journal ''Antiquity'' of February 2011. Paintings in Ile Kére Kére are believed to be 2,000 to 6,000 years old. In March 2020, 16

hand stencils In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 y ...

were discovered at Lene Hara cave, painted in the Pleistocene epoch.

References

External links

{{Navbox prehistoric caves Archaeology of East Timor Caves of East Timor Pleistocene Holocene Lautém Municipality Geology of East Timor

References

Further reading

External links