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The principal finding of the project so far is that the level of maritime competence required to cross from Timor to Australia with a minimal number of males and females is far in excess of what had been assumed available to these hominids. Hundreds of specific skills are involved, in procuring, transporting, processing, curating, fashioning and assembling numerous materials for one singular, totally abstract goal: to reach a still invisible shore, at immense cost in labour and hardship, and with a perseverance to be maintained over periods of many months. It is perfectly possible to do this with Middle, even Lower Palaeolithic technology. But it is an achievement that renders all current ideas about the cognitive, intellectual and linguistic abilities of these hominids totally superseded.

Humans also settled the islands of Nusa Tenggara, not by swimming but after they had developed maritime navigation capability. By about 800 ka (800,000 years) ago, hominids had established a substantial population on Flores, which suggests that they had earlier settled Lombok and Sumbawa, the two major islands between Bali and Flores. The Soa Basin in central Flores, north of Boawae, consists of a series of mostly volcanic facies, transected by numerous deep drainage valleys documenting the uniformity of the geological sections (Ehrat 1925; Hartono 1961).

There is no seafaring evidence of such antiquity anywhere else in the world, although it has been mentioned from time to time that the Strait of Gibraltar may have been crossed by hominids (Freeman 1975: 662, 733; Johnstone 1980: 3). The presence of in situ stone tools in Middle Pleistocene deposits at Sa Coa de sa Multa near Perfuga, Sardinia, provides the earliest known indication of seafaring in the Mediterranean (Bini et al. 1993). The finds have been suggested to be in the order of 300 ka old. Sardinia was connected to Corsica at times of low sea level, but never to the Italian mainland. Similarly, Kefallinía near Greece, where Mousterian tools have been found (Kavvadias 1984), must have been reached via the sea, even though the distance from the mainland was considerably smaller than in the Indonesian crossings. Human skeletal remains from Crete combine both modern and neanderthaloid features and are about 50 ka old, clearly indicating seafaring ability in the late Middle Palaeolithic period (Facchini & Giusberti 1992: 189-208). To reach Crete, at least two crossings totalling about 80 km were required. Upper Palaeolithic evidence we have of European seafaring is also from the Mediterranean, consisting of a 20-ka-old human finger bone in Corbeddu Cave, Sardinia (Spoor & Sondaar 1986; Sondaar et al. 1995); and the discovery of obsidian from Melos, about 11 ka old and involving two journeys of over 100 km each to reach Frachthi Cave on mainland Greece (Perles 1979). Similarly, the presence on Honsho of obsidian from Kozushima, about 50 km from the main island of Japan, some 30 ka ago (Anderson 1987: 279), renders sea crossings in both directions necessary, indicating the availability of advanced navigation technology.

Spanish investigators believe they may have found proof that neanderthal man reached Europe from Africa not just via the Middle East but by sailing, swimming or floating across the Strait of Gibraltar.