The Australian continent, being a part of the Indo-Australian Plate (more specifically, the Australian Plate), is the lowest, flattest, and oldest landmass on Earth and it has had a relatively stable geological history.
Australia holds the oldest continental crust on Earth, researchers have confirmed, hills some 4.4 billion years old. For more than a decade, geoscientists have debated whether the iron-rich Jack Hills of western Australia represent the oldest rocks on Earth.
The earliest known manifestations of the geologic record of the Australian continent are 4.4-billion-year-old detrital grains of zircon in metasedimentary rocks that were deposited from 3.7 to 3.3 billion years ago.
Although the building blocks of Australia are the oldest, those of other continents are not much younger. Australia is "older" because much of it is little changed from the early days of the Earth.
Author of the study, Dr Caroline Eakin from The Australian National University (ANU), said the Australian land mass is made up of different building blocks that fused together over 1.3 billion years ago. "Australia is an old, stable continent," Dr Eakin said.
The Australian continent, being a part of the Indo-Australian Plate (more specifically, the Australian Plate), is the lowest, flattest, and oldest landmass on Earth and it has had a relatively stable geological history.
What became South Australia was mainly under a great inland sea stretched over one quarter of the yet to emerge full Australian continent during the Cretaceous period (144 to 65 million years ago). The ancient inland sea inhabited by large underwater creatures and brimming with sea life.
Indigenous people have lived in Australia more than 65,000 years ago, according to scientific evidence of human occupation1. To put this in perspective, this is ten times older than the ancient Egyptian pyramids.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
Australia is home to the oldest continuing living culture in the entire world. The richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia is something we should all take pride in as a nation.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Most of the explorers of this period concluded that the apparent lack of water and fertile soil made the region unsuitable for colonisation.
About 200 million years ago, all the continents on Earth were actually one huge "supercontinent" surrounded by one enormous ocean. This gigantic continent, called Pangaea , slowly broke apart and spread out to form the continents we know today. All Earth's continents were once combined in one supercontinent, Pangaea.
North of Western Australia is the Pilbara, a sizable, arid area with a sparse population. The Pilbara area of Western Australia is home to the fossilized remains of the planet's earliest life forms. Because of the discoveries made in the area, it has been declared the oldest place on Earth.
The culture of Australia's Aboriginal people is one of the oldest in the world – Aboriginal Australian Culture dates back more than 60,000 years!
Aboriginal peoples
Genetic studies appear to support an arrival date of 50–70,000 years ago. The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.
Prehistory. It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
Genetic data confirm that ancient Aborigines and Eurasians left Africa in one single, great wave. Australian Aborigines have long been cast as a people apart.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.
Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave, and are most closely related to other Oceanians, such as Melanesians.
Thus people lived in Australia through a time when temperatures were about 3 K lower than now, winds were stronger, and the southern half of the continent wetter, especially over higher terrain. Also, the sea was some 130-150 metres lower so that Tasmania was part of the mainland.
The researchers found that during times of high climatic stress, human populations contracted into localised environmental 'refuges', in well-watered ranges and along major riverine systems, where water and food supplies were reliable.
Abstract. Australia was glaciated several times during the Pleistocene and possibly during the Pliocene. On the Australian mainland, glaciers were restricted to only the highest elevations of the Kosciuszko massif. However, in Tasmania, a succession of glacial systems are recorded.