A keen amateur archaeologist, Dutch priest Father Verhoeven undertook numerous excavations within the Soa Basin of central Flores during the 1940s and 1950s.

At Mata Menge, Verhoeven found lots of stone tools associated with volcanic sediments. The find was largely ignored at the time but is now widely accepted to show a species of human was on the island of Flores at least 800,000 years ago. This find is all the more remarkable because it demonstrates an early species of human was able to get across the biogeographical boundary that marks the floral and faunal division between Asia and Australia (the so-called ‘Wallace Line’).  Could getting to Flores be the earliest use of boats by humans?