Researchers demystify the secrets of ancient Aboriginal migration across Australia

By Dana Morse
Posted Yesterday at 10:16pm, updated Yesterday at 10:33pm

Sixty thousand years ago, when rhino-sized wombats, giant echidnas and carnivorous kangaroos roamed the country, Aboriginal Australians were just making their way onto the shores.

Australia's first people are thought to have arrived when the continent was a much bigger place, with lower sea levels connecting Papua New Guinea and Tasmania to what we now know as modern Australia, forming the mega-continent of Sahul.

New research from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage shows the paths that were likely trodden by the ancient Aboriginal people as they moved across the continent from the Kimberley to Tasmania.

Professor Corey Bradshaw is one researcher who mapped the routes.

"We really wanted to understand not just how they got here, but what they did once they got here," he said.


The models take data from archaeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, geneticists, climatologists, geomorphologists, and hydrologists, and analyses the information to come up with the most likely routes around the country.

'Super-highways' for super movers
The models hypothesise the first Australians landed on the shores of Western Australia, around the Kimberley region, about sixty thousand years ago, and in as little as 6,000 years they had settled across the country, from the far north of the tropics to the deep south of Tasmania.

More:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-30/research-into-ancient-aboriginal-migration-across-australia/100105902