Scientists have discovered evidence that early humans were living on the Indonesian island of Flores at least one million years ago.

An archaeological dig has discovered stone tools that have pushed back the age that hominins were living on the island.

Now scientists are speculating that this mystery human may have evolved into the now famous hobbit of Flores.

Dr Adam Brumm, a research fellow at the Centre for Archaeological Science at the University of Wollongong, was part of a team that went to Indonesia to find out just how long humans have been living on Australia’s doorstep.

Their work is published today in the science journal Nature.

“We’ve found a site in the Soa Basin of Flores, which is in central Flores, which back dates the known occupation of early humans on the island by at least 120,000 years,” he said.

Dr Brumm and his colleagues dug up some primitive stone tools.

“The stone tools are in a deposit that are sealed by volcanic layers like ash, that are dated by the argon dating technique to one million years ago,” he said.

“We can’t go down any deeper so we now have absolutely no idea how long the hominins may have been on the island for. It could be two million years for all we know.”

Dr Brumm says the finding gives some credence to a theory that it was this mystery hominin that gave rise to the tiny human species that lived on Flores 18,000 homo floresiensis – better known as the hobbit.

“Recent studies based on certain characteristics of the feet, the brain, the skull, the hand, the arm and the shoulders of the hobbit are actually suggesting that it may well have evolved from a much earlier and a much more primitive human population then homo erectus,” he said.

“One postulation is in fact that this proposed new species may well have radiated out out Africa and reached south-east Asia as early as 1.8 to 2 million years ago.

“The door is certainly open to the possibility that this sort of unknown and mysterious new lineage of hominids may well have been present somewhere in south-east Asia and potentially on Flores at a extraordinarily early point in time.”

Dr Brumm hopes to find more evidence as he and his colleagues widen their search for human ancestors.

“There are 17,000 islands across Indonesia and we know that they must have been through this area,” he said.

“We’re literally dealing this with a pin prick or a glimmer of insight into what potentially could be out there.

“It is just mind boggling to think of what new discoveries may be made in south-east Asia of the next 50 years or so and what more we will be learning about the evolution of our kind.”