» Home > In the News

Sea level change 40,000 years ago

3 October 2020
Geology

At https://phys.org.news/2020-10-years-sea-level-alor-island.html … a cave on Alor Island in Indonesia, located between Flores and Timor, has been intermittently occupied over 40,000 years. Sea levels in that time experienced a series of highs and lows. Sometimes it was a cave on the sea shore and sometimes stranded miles inland as the sea shore retreated. People came and went, adapting to the different environments. At 40,000 years ago the sea was near the cave and the people fed themselves on shell fish and sea urchins etc. Later, the sea was a long way off and people ate a lot of fruit, and vegetable matter figured high in their diets. Later, as the ice melted the cave was 1 km from the sea shore, contemporary in time with Clovis in North America and the Magdalenians in western Europe, and they enjoyed a  lot of sea food. Bones of a variety of fish were found in the sediments and also shell fish made a return. However, the cave waa abandoned around 7000 years ago, it is estimated, roughly at the time Sunda Land was drowned. It was reoccupied around 3500 years ago.

Skip to content