How did the Australian Aborigines first arrive in Australia?
Veiled Splendor asked:
My book says they crossed the Bass Strait into Tasmania, but that is leaving Australia, not entering it. I need to know where these people, in pre-history, may have come from and may have originally come to Australia.
My book says they crossed the Bass Strait into Tasmania, but that is leaving Australia, not entering it. I need to know where these people, in pre-history, may have come from and may have originally come to Australia.
Around 75000 BC, archaeologists have decided, anatomically modern humans first began sweeping southward into Indochina from China and India. From there, it took awhile for them to figure out such things as “boats,” but evidence seems to indicate that the first humans made the move across Indonesia, and thence to Australia and Tasmania, sometime around 40000 BC.
(Boats, by the way, may not have been necessary for all of this journey; sea levels are thought to have been lower then and the aborigines may have used a now-submerged land bridge known as the Sahul Shelf.)
Genetically, aborigines are classified as “Australoid;” they’re essentially a mixing of Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Ne groid stock, and it’s hard to say who their closest “relatives” would be.
Tasmania is Australia.
There is only speculation as to where Aboriginals came from. There is evidence they’ve been in Australia for 60 000 years. Some say they came from areas such as Polynesia, South Africa etc. Not sure that there is any solid evidence to say exactly where they came from originally.