Toalean culture

The Toalean (or Toalian or Toala in Indonesian) people were hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Indonesian island of Sulawesi during the Mid- to Late-Holocene period prior to the spread of Austronesian Neolithic farmers some 3,500 years ago from mainland Asia.

The term 'Toalean' was assigned by the earliest excavators from the local Bugis word 'Toaleʼ' meaning "forest people", cognate to Proto-Austronesian *Cau-ni-Salas or Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *tau-ni-halas "forest people". The term is misleading as later research has found the Toalean culture to be unrelated to the later forest-dwelling people of southern Sulawesi. The Toalean culture is recognised by the presence of refined bone points, backed microliths, large amounts of shells (especially the freshwater gastropod Tylomelania perfecta), small denticulate stone 'Maros points', and an absence of the ground stone technologies that characterise later local cultures. Toalean artefacts are often associated with skeletal remains of Sulawesi warty pigs. Few examples of Toalean art have been found, and these are limited to portable examples including an engraved bone point from Ulu Leang 1 and a painted shell at Leang Rakkoe. No Toalean cave art has been identified.