Sulawesi
Sulawesi, also known as Celebes, is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Within Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra are more populous.
The landmass of Sulawesi includes four peninsulas: the northern Minahasa Peninsula, the East Peninsula, the South Peninsula, and the Southeast Peninsula. Three gulfs separate these peninsulas: the Gulf of Tomini between the northern Minahasa and East peninsulas, the Tolo Gulf between the East and Southeast peninsulas, and the Gulf of Boni between the South and Southeast peninsulas. The Strait of Makassar runs along the western side of the island and separates the island from Borneo.
Etymology
The name Sulawesi possibly comes from the words sula and besi and may refer to the historical export of iron from the rich Lake Matano iron deposits. The name came into common use in English following Indonesian independence.The name Celebes was originally given to the island by Portuguese explorers. While its direct translation is unclear, it might be a Portuguese rendering of the native name "Sulawesi".
Geography
Sulawesi is the world's eleventh-largest island, covering an area of . The central part of the island is ruggedly mountainous, such that the island's peninsulas have traditionally been remote from each other, with better connections by sea than by road. The three bays that divide Sulawesi's peninsulas are, from north to south, the Tomini, the Tolo and the Boni. These separate the Minahasa or Northern Peninsula, the East Peninsula, the Southeast Peninsula and the South Peninsula.The Strait of Makassar runs along the western side of the island. The island is surrounded by Borneo to the west, by the Philippines to the north, by Maluku to the east, and by Flores and Timor to the south.
Minor islands
The Selayar Islands make up a chain stretching southwards from Southwest Sulawesi into the Flores Sea are administratively part of Sulawesi. The Sangihe Islands and Talaud Islands stretch northward from the northeastern tip of Sulawesi, while Buton and Muna Islands and their neighbors lie off its southeast peninsula, the Togian Islands are in the Gulf of Tomini, and Peleng Island and the Banggai Islands form a cluster between Sulawesi and Maluku. All the above-mentioned islands and many smaller ones off the coasts of Sulawesi are administratively part of Sulawesi's six provinces.Geology
The island slopes up from the shores of the deep seas surrounding the island to a high, mostly non-volcanic, mountainous interior. Active volcanoes are found in the northern Minahasa Peninsula, stretching north to the Sangihe Islands. The northern peninsula contains several active volcanoes such as Mount Lokon, Mount Awu, Soputan and Karangetang.According to plate reconstructions, the island is believed to have been formed by the collision of terranes from the Asian Plate and from the Australian Plate, with island arcs previously in the Pacific. Because of its several tectonic origins, various faults scar the land and as a result the island is prone to earthquakes, including the deadly 2018 and 2021 quakes.
Off the eastern coast of Sulawesi, the North Banda Sea was created through subduction rollback during the early Miocene. Evidence for this tectonic event lies with the extensive interconnected fault network found in the area, a volcanic seamount with its surrounding ridges, and an accretionary wedge. Off the coast of east Selawesti and Banggai is an accumulation of carbonate rocks from the late Miocene. These carbonates are likely pinnacle reefs and the carbonate platform has a total thickness of around 180–770 meters.
Sulawesi, in contrast to most of the other islands in the biogeographical region of Wallacea, is not truly oceanic, but a composite island at the centre of the Asia-Australia collision zone. Parts of the island were formerly attached to either the Asian or Australian continental margin and became separated from these areas by vicariant processes. In the west, the opening of the Makassar Strait separated West Sulawesi from Sundaland in the Eocene c. 45 Mya. In the east, the traditional view of collisions of multiple micro-continental fragments sliced from New Guinea with an active volcanic margin in West Sulawesi at different times since the Early Miocene c. 20 Mya has recently been replaced by the hypothesis that extensional fragmentation has followed a single Miocene collision of West Sulawesi with the Sula Spur, the western end of an ancient folded belt of Variscan origin in the Late Paleozoic.
Bone Basin
The Bone Basin lies between the south-eastern and southern arms of Sulawesi. According to recent studies, the basin has been opened up due to extensional forces. The basin is bounded by normal faults on each side of the basin with each side of the basin surrounded by uplifted basement rock with young sediments found in the middle. The past geological history has allowed for a large accumulation of carbonates which could lead to a higher potential of oil and gas occurrences. However, the faults present in the basin makes it a very complicated system.Prehistory
The oldest evidence for humans on Sulawesi are stone tools produced by archaic humans, dating to at least 1.04 million years ago and possibly as old as 1.48 million years ago, found at the Calio site near the village of Ujung in Lilirilau district of Soppeng Regency, southwestern Sulawesi. Other archaic human produced stone tools, dating to over 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, have been found at the Talepu site near Cabenge village, which is also located in the Lilirilau district.Before October 2014, the settlement of South Sulawesi by modern humans had been dated to 30,000 BC on the basis of radiocarbon dates obtained from rock shelters in Maros. No earlier evidence of human occupation had at that point been found, but the island almost certainly formed part of the land bridge used for the settlement of Australia and New Guinea by at least 40,000 BC. There is no evidence of Homo erectus having reached Sulawesi; crude stone tools first discovered in 1947 on the right bank of the Walanae River at Barru, which were thought to date to the Pleistocene on the basis of their association with vertebrate fossils, are now thought to date to perhaps 50,000 BC.
Following Peter Bellwood's model of a southward migration of Austronesian-speaking farmers, radiocarbon dates from caves in Maros suggest a date in the mid-second millennium BC for the arrival of a group from east Borneo speaking a Proto-South Sulawesi language. Initial settlement was probably around the mouth of the Sa'dan river, on the northwest coast of the peninsula, although the south coast has also been suggested.
Subsequent migrations across the mountainous landscape resulted in the geographical isolation of PSS speakers and the evolution of their languages into the eight families of the South Sulawesi language group. If each group can be said to have a homeland, that of the Bugis – today the most numerous group – was around lakes Témpé and Sidénréng in the Walennaé depression. Here for some 2,000 years lived the linguistic group that would become the modern Bugis; the archaic name of this group was Ugiq. Despite the fact that today they are closely linked with the Makassarese, the closest linguistic neighbors of the Bugis are the Torajans.
File:Tokalalaea Megalith 2007.jpg|thumb|Megalith in Central Sulawesi.
Pre-1200 Bugis society was most likely organized into chiefdoms. Some anthropologists have speculated these chiefdoms would have warred and, in times of peace, interbred. Further, they have speculated that personal security would have been negligible and head-hunting an established cultural practice. The political economy would have been a mixture of hunting and gathering and swidden or shifting agriculture. Speculative planting of wet rice may have taken place along the margins of the lakes and rivers.
In Central Sulawesi, there are more than 400 granite megaliths, which various archaeological studies have dated to be from 3000 BC to AD 1300. They vary in size from a few centimeters to approximately. The original purpose of the megaliths is unknown. Approximately 30 of the megaliths represent human forms. Other megaliths are in form of large pots and stone plates.
A burial of a woman associated with the hunter-gatherer Toalean culture dating to 7,000 years ago has yielded DNA that has provided rare insight into early migrations in and through the region.
Cave art
In October 2014, it was announced that cave paintings in Maros had been dated as being approximately 40,000 years old. One of a hand was 39,900 years old, which brings it among the oldest known hand stencils in the world.Dr. Maxime Aubert, of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, said that was the minimum age for the outline in Pettakere Cave in Maros, and added: "Next to it is a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old, and this is one of the oldest figurative depictions in the world, if not the oldest one."
On 11 December 2019, a team of researchers led by Dr. Maxime Aubert announced the discovery of the oldest hunting scenes in prehistoric art in the world that is more than 44,000 years old from the limestone cave of Leang Bulu' Sipong 4. Archaeologists determined the age of the depiction of hunting a pig and buffalo thanks to the calcite 'popcorn', different isotope levels of radioactive uranium and thorium.
In March 2020, two small stone 'plaquettes' were found by Griffith University archaeologists in the Leang Bulu Bettue cave, dated to a time between 26,000 and 14,000 years ago. While one of the stones contained an anoa and what may be a flower, star, or eye, another depicted astronomic rays of light.
In January 2021, archaeologists announced the discovery of cave art that is at least 45,500 years old in a Leang Tedongnge cave. According to the journal Science Advances, the cave painting of a warty pig is the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region. An adult male pig, measuring 136 cm x 54 cm and what is likely a Sulawesi or Celebes warty pig, was depicted with horn-like facial warts and two hand prints above its hindquarters. According to co-author Adam Brumm, there are two other pigs that are partly preserved and it appears the warty pig was observing a fight between the two other pigs.
In January 2026, newly discovered images of hand stencils and human figures in caves on the Southwestern peninsula of Sulawesi were dated to be at least 67,800 years old, making them the earliest known evidence of rock art in the world and predating the previous record-holding images in the Cave of Maltravieso by over one thousand years.