WE WERE ON top of the world in Tibet. Take a short step of 3500 miles southeast and here we are in the island of Timor, whose coins we will discuss next.
We’re not quite at the international date line, but from where I’m writing this, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S, it is the other side of the world.
Timor is southeast of Java, the largest Indonesian island. There are Malaysian islands nearby to the west. To the south, not far away, is Australia.
It is part of a group of islands geographically designated as the Lesser Sundas. Other noted Sunda islands are Flores, were fossils of small hominids, nicknamed “hobbits,” were found in recent decades, and Sulawesi, home of the oldest known cave art, 39,000 years, and local culture center.
There were anatomically modern humans on Timor at least 42,000 years ago. Paleontologists and archeologists are arguing about whether they got there from Australia or from Asia.
The Indonesian islands in general were at the forefront of tool and weapons technology through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, meaning they tended to start using those methods several centuries before other places, like Greece for example.
