Researchers map Australians who âsailedâ into the deserts
30 Apr 2021 | 4 mins
‘Superhighways’ used by a population of up to 6.5 million Indigenous Australians to navigate the continent tens of thousands of years ago have provided new insights into how people thrived in harsh environments.
The international team of researchers, including from The University of Western Australia, used sophisticated modelling of past people and landscapes to reveal the routes that led to the early and rapid settlement of Australia by the First Australians.
The study, published today in
, provides further evidence of the capacity and resilience of the ancestors of Indigenous people, and paints a picture of large, well-organised groups navigating tough terrain.
Research estimates that pre-colonisation, more than 3 million people lived in the area that is now modern-day Australia, far more than any previous estimate.
Cutting-edge computer modelling has generated an intricate network of routes used by Aboriginal tribes to cross Australia when it was connected to Papua New Guinea about 10,000 years ago.
Date Time
Mapping ‘superhighways’ travelled by first Australians
‘Superhighways’ used by a population of up to 6.5 million Indigenous Australians to navigate the continent tens of thousands of years ago have been revealed by new research using sophisticated modelling of past people and landscapes.
The new insights into how people not only survived, but thrived, in harsh environments provide further evidence of the capacity and resilience of the ancestors of Indigenous people, and help paint a picture of large, well-organised groups navigating tough terrain.
The ‘peopling’ of Sahul – the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were lower than today – could have taken as little as 5,000 years as people moved from the far northwest, all the way to Tasmania in the southeast.