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 Gulf of Tolo between the East and Southeast peninsulas, and the Gulf of Boni between the South and Southeast peninsulas. The Makassar Strait runs along the western side of the island and separates the island from Borneo.
Etymology The name Celebes ( ) was originally given to the island by Portuguese explorers. First recorded in 1512, it may come from , 'the famous ones', referring to some prominent rocks; the interrelationship between the Portuguese name and the local name Sulawesi is uncertain. Tomé Pires called the northeast tip of the island (point of currents) in 1515. From the 17th century, the Dutch were referring to the island as Selebessi.Waterson, R. (2009:xi). Paths and Rivers: Sa'dan Toraja Society in Transformation. Netherlands: Brill.
The second element may come from the Proto-Malayo-Chamic root *bəsi, "iron," but the origin of the first is uncertain.Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. (2005:33). Indonesia: Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. The first part is sometimes derived from Sanskrit शूल॑ (śū́la, 'dagger, stake'), referring to the sharp peninsulas, jagged mountains and treacherous offshore rocks.Dunham, S. A. (p. 997). Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds. United States: University Microfilms. Geography Sulawesi is the world's eleventh-largest island, covering an area of (including minor islands administered as part of Sulawesi). 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 and 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 (forming the west and southwest) and from the Australian Plate (forming the southeast and Banggai), with island arcs previously in the Pacific (forming the north and east peninsulas). 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.C.C. Macknight (1975) The emergence of civilization in South Celebes and elsewhere, in A. Reid and L. Castles (ed.) Pre-Colonial state systems in Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society: 126–135.
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 (now part of Bone Regency), 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.
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 human migrations in and through the region. Known as Besséʼ, she belonged to a previously unknown lineage of modern humans that diverged from Onge- and Hoabinhian-related lineages around 37,000 years ago. Later population movements appear to have largely displaced this ancestry from Sulawesi.Nogrady, Bianca, First ancient human DNA found from key Asian migration route, Nature, August 26, 2021
Following Peter Bellwood's model of a southward migration of Austronesian-speaking farmers (AN),Peter Bellwood,1997, The prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). 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 (PSS). 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.Bulbeck, F.D. 1992. 'A tale of two kingdoms: The historical archaeology of Gowa and Tallok, South Sulawesi, Indonesia.' PhD thesis, The Australian National University.
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 (which is preserved in other local languages) was Ugiq. Despite the fact that today they are closely linked with the Makassarese, the closest linguistic neighbors of the Bugis are the Torajans.
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 (Behoa Valley Pokekea Megalithic Site, Bada and Napu valleys within the Lore Lindu National Park), 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 (Kalamba) and stone plates (Tutu'na).Sangadji, Ruslan: C. Sulawesi's Lore Lindu park, home to biological wealth, The Jakarta Post, 5 June 2005 , retrieved 11 October 2010
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. "we present dating results for three sites in Spain that show that cave art emerged in Iberia substantially earlier than previously thought. Uranium-thorium (U-Th) dates on carbonate crusts overlying paintings provide minimum ages for a red linear motif in La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil in Maltravieso (Extremadura), and red-painted speleothems in Ardales (Andalucía). Collectively, these results show that cave art in Iberia is older than 64.8 thousand years (ka). This cave art is the earliest dated so far and predates, by at least 20 ka, the arrival of modern humans in Europe, which implies Neandertal authorship."
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."