Island-hopping

We discovered that in the deep past (between 70,000 to 60,000 years ago, and potentially for much longer), people could see from the Indonesian islands of Timor and Rote to a now drowned island chain in the Timor Sea.

From this island chain it was possible to sight the Australian continental shelf, which in the last ice age formed a massive fan of islands extending towards Indonesia. Much of this landscape is now more than 100m below the surface of the Timor Sea.
Regions with visibility between islands and continents during the last ice age are shown by the connective white lines. Dark grey regions represent the now submerged ice age continent of Sahul, light grey shows landmasses above modern sea level. Kasih Norman

As the island chain sat at the midpoint between southern Indonesia and Australia, it could have acted as a stepping-stone for Australia’s first maritime explorers.