Ancient seafarers in the Philippines and ISEA built sophisticated boats and mastered deep-sea fishing 40,000 years ago, challenging the view that Paleolithic technology was limited to Europe and Africa.
Ancient peoples of the Philippines and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) may have built advanced boats and mastered seafaring tens of thousands of years ago—long before Magellan, Zheng He, or even the Polynesians.
A forthcoming study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (April 2025) by Ateneo de Manila University researchers Riczar Fuentes and Alfred Pawlik challenges the prevailing belief that technological advancements during the Paleolithic were exclusive to Europe and Africa.
The researchers highlight that much of ISEA was never connected to mainland Asia by land bridges or ice sheets, yet archaeological evidence confirms early human habitation. How these ancient peoples undertook such daring ocean crossings remains an open question, as wooden and fiber-based materials used for boats rarely survive in the archaeological record. However, new findings from sites in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste strongly suggest that early seafarers possessed a level of technological sophistication comparable to much later civilizations.
Deep-Sea Fishing and Seafaring Expertise
Microscopic analysis of stone tools excavated at these sites, dating as far back as some 40,000 years ago, showed clear traces of plant processing—particularly the extraction of fibers necessary for making ropes, nets, and bindings essential for boatbuilding and open-sea fishing. Archaeological sites in Mindoro and Timor-Leste also yielded the remains of deep ocean fish such as tuna and sharks as well as fishing implements such as fishing hooks, gorges, and net weights.
“The remains of large predatory pelagic fish in these sites indicate the capacity for advanced seafaring and knowledge of the seasonality and migration routes of those fish species,” the researchers said in their paper. Meanwhile, the discovery of fishing implements “indicates the need for strong and well-crafted cordage for ropes and fishing lines to catch the marine fauna.”
This body of evidence points to the likelihood that these ancient seafarers built sophisticated boats out of organic composite materials held together with plant-based ropes and also used the same rope technology for open-sea fishing. If so, then prehistoric migrations across ISEA were not undertaken by mere passive sea drifters on flimsy bamboo rafts but by highly skilled navigators equipped with the knowledge and technology to travel vast distances and to remote islands over deep waters.
Experimental Archaeology and the FLOW Project
Several years of fieldwork in Ilin Island, Occidental Mindoro, inspired the researchers to think of this topic and to test this hypothesis. Together with naval architects from the University of Cebu, they recently started the First Long-Distance Open-Sea Watercrafts (FLOW) Project, supported by a research grant from the Ateneo de Manila University, with the aim of testing raw materials that were probably used in the past, and to design and test scaled-down seacraft models.
The presence of such advanced maritime technology in prehistoric ISEA highlights the ingenuity of early Philippine peoples and their neighbors, whose boat-building knowledge likely made the region a center for technological innovations tens of thousands of years ago and laid the foundations for the maritime traditions that still thrive in the region today.
Reference: “Testing the waters: Plant working and seafaring in Pleistocene Wallacea” by Riczar Fuentes and Alfred Pawlik, 8 February 2025, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.105020
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4 Comments
Their only evidence for d e e p sea fishing, thence sophisticated watercraft, are remains of typically deep sea fish: tuna and sharks.
But these species wash up dead on shore all the time, eg.
“Bluefin tuna washes up far from home near BC Gulf Islands.” —CBC
and I’m pretty sure they have occasion for plying shallow waters at times. Dead fish can be chopped up and used for shallow-water-fishing bait using more simple craft like rafts, and for dogs, pigs, and chickens, which ancient Polynesians typically raised.
Why should not H sap have invented string 40 000 years ago and used it for making useful watercraft? I see no reason at all apart from Archaeologists’ doubt about the capability of people to be imaginative and creative. After all, human got to Australia 45 000 years ago and I doubt that they walked from SE Asia across the Arafura Sea or for that matter across the seas from Indonesia to PNG/Australia. As for the sea-crossing between mainland Asia and Indonnesia, even H erectus had got to Java and thereabouts earlier than 100 000 years ago.
There is a difference between deep sea faring (no land in sight) and island hopping (land in sight).
“It is believed that early human migration to Australia was achieved when it formed part of the Sahul continent, connected to the island of New Guinea via a land bridge.[25] This would have nevertheless required crossing the sea at the so-called Wallace Line.[26] It is also possible that people came by island-hopping via an island chain between Sulawesi and New Guinea, reaching North Western Australia via Timor.[27]”
The genetic record of early migrations have been overwritten. The more modern record imply that it is mostly the parts towards the Asian continent that recently see migrations, implying it is rare.
[The genetic origins and impacts of historical Papuan migrations into Wallacea
Gludhug A. Purnomo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7616-5977 [email protected], Shimona Kealy https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0646-1313, Sue O’Connor https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9381-078X, +5 , and Raymond Tobler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4603-1473 [email protected] Info & Affiliations
Edited by James O’Connell, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; received July 21, 2024; accepted October 30, 2024
December 17, 2024
121 (52) e2412355121]