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It’s one of anthropology’s most enduring and controversial mysteries – no one is quite certain just how or when the indigenous peoples of Australia (also known as “aboriginals”) arrived. As recently as the turn of the last century, it was believed that they had been on the continent no longer than 400 years or so. That eventually gave way to the notion that Aboriginals had been in Australia since about 8,000 years ago. Then in the 60s, a geologist named Jim Bowler uncovered the skeleton of a woman on the banks of a long-dried lake bed, who had died some 23,000 years ago. Nowadays, experts put the date of arrival from anywhere between 45,000 and
60,000 years ago.
That’s where the trouble begins. Australia, as you probably already know, is an island; considered by some to be the world’s largest, to be precise. It is surrounded by a not inconsiderable amount of water, the narrowest bits of which – like the Torres Strait in the north, between the top of Queensland and the bottom of Papua New Guinea – are dangerously rough and notoriously difficult to navigate. In general, human beings were not an oceangoing people prior to about 10-15,000 years ago, so the idea of people from what is now Indonesia crossing the Timor Sea in fishing rafts to populate the Northwestern coast of Australia is, needless to say, a problematic one. In his wonderful travel memoir In A Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson expresses this problem best:
“In order to put Homo sapiens in Australia you must accept that at a point in time so remote that it precedes the known rise of behaviorally modern humans there lived in southern Asia a people sufficiently advanced that they were fishing inshore waters from boats of some sort, rafts presumably. Never mind that the archaeological record shows no one else on earth doing this for another thirty thousand years.
Next we have to explain what led them to cross at least sixty miles of open sea to reach a land they could not know was there. The scenario that is invariably invoked is of a simple fishing raft – probably little more than a floating platform – accidentally carried out to sea, probably in one of the sudden squalls that are characteristic of this part of the world. The craft then drifted helplessly for some days before washing up on a beach in northern Australia. So far so good.
The question that naturally arises – but is seldom asked – is how you get a breeding stock out of this. If it’s a lone fisherman who is carried off to Australia, then clearly he must find his way back to his homeland to report his discovery and to persuade enough people to come with him to start a colony. This suggests, of course, the possession of nautical skills sufficient to shuttle back and forth between invisible landmasses – a prowess few prehistorians are willing to grant. … No one can possibly say. All that is certain is that Australia’s indigenous peoples are there because their distant ancestors crossed at least sixty miles of fairly formidable sea tens of thousands of years before anyone else of earth dreamed of such an endeavor, and did it in sufficient numbers of begin to start the colonization of a continent. By any measure this is a staggeringly momentous accomplishment.”
There is one other possible explanation, which the humorous and always-elegant Bryson fails to mention. Tasmania, Australia, Papua New Guinea and the patch of islands between the latter two all make up a single ancient continent, called Sahul, and as global sea levels rose and fell throughout the ice ages of the past 100,000 years, the forbidding straits of ocean between them occasionally disappeared, replaced by lush, tropical landbridges. In fact, it’s thought that the now-underwater lowlands beneath the Torres Strait, between New Guinea and northern Australia, were a very popular place to live prior to about 10,000 years ago, when rising sea levels submerged them. (This is a very cool interactive site that allows you to check out the changing sea levels over time.)
Which is to say, at one time it was a bit simpler to get to Australia than Bryson lets on – though still not a cakewalk. It would have involved sailing (on planklike pseudo-rafts) from now-submerged islands on the eastern tip of Indonesia to now-submerged bits of what was western New Guinea – a distance certainly less than 60 miles.
Either way, the population of the Australian continent by humans remains a fascinating mystery.
Comments (10)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
certainly fascinating. the best bet is the sea level theory. it makes the most sense, but it would still be awesome if they managed it on rafts. regardless, they were an inventive and intelligent group of humans. Of course, there is still debate over how the western hemisphere was populated as well.
reCaptcha: Shippy build
posted by Claire on 1-5-2009 at 11:55 am
What has been found in sequencing the genomes of various groups such as Australia’s aboriginals and Indonesians and Asians and Africans? When I saw my first photos of Australian aboriginals many years ago, I was struck with how they seemed to be a combination of all the various racial groups known to man. In other words, I thought they might well represent the best model for the first true Homo sapiens. Very unscientific, but a study of the genomes would be most illuminating.
posted by Mary Thorman on 1-5-2009 at 12:46 pm
Mary, this is from the genetic genealogist website:
The results suggest that the Australian aboriginals are descendants of the same emigrant group that left Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago and populated Europe and Asia. At least from the small number of samples analyzed for this study, there does not seem to be any DNA contribution from Homo erectus.
The uniformity of the sequences suggests that once humans migrated into the region there was little other gene flow. This might explain why the Australian and New Guinean populations share phenotypic features that are unique to the region.
Me again: there is a lot of controversy surrounding aboriginal genome projects – you can do a google search and find lots of info on it.
posted by Diana on 1-5-2009 at 2:31 pm
I agree with Mary about the genome. Surely sombody has already undertaken this and we just don’t know it.
In the Americas they can trace human migration partly by the dying off of megafauna. Although, many Native American groups aren’t keen on the idea, it seems pretty clear that their ancestors were immgrants across the Bering land bridge.
If you use the Sahul time thingy and go back 23, 45 and 60,000 years it’s easy to see the aboriginals crossing from New Guinea.
Do we have any idea of how they got to New Guinea?
posted by BassMan on 1-5-2009 at 2:44 pm
All the genetic crap aside, if one raft drifted, many more did. Viola, question answered. That is, until more Clovis points are found in an entirely different area.
posted by gus on 1-5-2009 at 4:36 pm
This article misses the point slightly. Sahul story explains how humans crossed over from New Guinea to Australia, but the real mystery is how they got to Papua New Gunea/Sahul in the first place.
Namely in the middle of Indonesian archipelago exists something called Wallace Line. Its great deep water divide which was never above sea surface even at points of lowest possible sea level. Its the place where Australian and Indonesian tectonic plates meat. Wallace Line represents a boundary between bird and mammal species of Sahul and Asian origin. This divide has to have been crossed by some kind of raft, as it couldn’t have been walked over.
posted by Stane on 1-6-2009 at 7:19 am
There have been quite a few experiments to test theories about ancient sea travel. One famous one is the Kon-Tiki 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands. Check out the Wikipedia link in my name it has info on mitochondrial DNA of Polynesian peoples along with the expedition infomation.
My personal opinion is that it’s asinine to assume that people couldn’t or didn’t do something in ancient times. It seems like the more we assume about what they could and couldn’t do the more we are proved incorrect.
posted by nihil on 1-6-2009 at 10:06 am
What about Pangaea (or however that’s spelled)? I always thought people explained populations on all of the continents by saying that they all used to be connected & then split. Why couldn’t people have been on the Australia part when it split away, just like they were everywhere else?
posted by Julie on 1-7-2009 at 3:20 pm
Just a quick note: Indigenous Australians are actually referred to as Aborigines, not Aboriginals. ‘Aboriginal’ is the adjective used to describe things such as Aboriginal art or culture. So you can either say that someone is an Aboriginal person or that they are an Aborigine.
I had this drilled into me by my history teacher when I was a kid, so I can’t forget… I’m sure this post would make her proud!
Excellent post though, it’s good to see something on here about Australia!
posted by Evelyn on 1-21-2009 at 8:51 pm
I have always been facinated by the idea of the Aborigines arriving in Australia via foot from Africa. Unfortuantly I have yet to find research or even a source that questions the possibility. It seems highly probable. When facial reconstruction people work their magic on ancient African skeletons, the image appears hauntingly close to that of the Aborigine. I believe this idea is one that should be looked into seriously.
posted by Craig on 2-22-2009 at 8:09 pm