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 and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
Molecular clock estimates, genetic studies and archaeological data all suggest the initial colonisation of Sahul and Australia by modern humans occurred around 48,000–50,000 years ago. Over the last few decades, a significant number of archaeological sites dated at more than 30,000 years old have been discovered.
The original inhabitants of Australia were known as the Aborigines. They were the indigenous people of mainland Australia.
Prior to British settlement, more than 500 First Nations groups inhabited the continent we now call Australia, approximately 750,000 people in total. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures developed over 60,000 years, making First Nations Peoples the custodians of the world's oldest living culture.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
Aboriginal Australians have lived in the Northern Territory for more than 65,000 years. It is the oldest continuous culture on earth.
Aboriginal Australians became genetically isolated 58,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before other ancestral groups, making them the world's oldest civilization.
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.
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! There are many archaeological sites throughout the country where the long history of Indigenous people can be found.
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.
Co-lead researcher Shimona Kealy said these people probably travelled through Indonesia's northern islands, into New Guinea and then Australia, which were part of a single continent between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, when sea levels were 25-50 metres below the current level.
The First Humans
One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon on Australia's northern coast. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, what is now called Torres Strait and associated islands.
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.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
They had neither the impetus of cultural exchange or of any genetic exchange with other populations to instigate development. The agricultural revolution that swept the rest of the world never happened for them. Without access to carbohydrates the population never grew significantly.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas. Increasingly sophisticated dating methods are helping us gain a more accurate understanding of how people came to be in Australia.
After the seas rose about 12,000 years ago and covered the land bridge, the inhabitants there were isolated from the mainland until the arrival of European settlers. Short-statured Aboriginal tribes inhabited the rainforests of North Queensland, of which the best known group is probably the Tjapukai of the Cairns area.
There are 468000 Aboriginals in total in Australia in which 99 percent of them are mixed blooded and 1 percent of them are full blooded.
Which is the oldest nationality in the world? The oldest continuous nationality is probably Chinese, though some archaeologists beg to differ. Many are of the opinion that there is another Asian country out there that is not yet discovered to be the oldest among all.
Aboriginal people have been in Australia for at least 60,000 years (Torres Strait Islanders at least 2500 years). It is only in the past 500 years there has been European contact with Australia and the Torres Strait.
1. Iran. Iran is the oldest country in the world founded in 3200 B.C. and has a topography characterized by numerous mountains and mountain ranges. Iran was established as a country in 3200 B.C.
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.
The Pintupi Nine were a group of nine Pintupi people who remained unaware of European colonisation of Australia and lived a traditional desert-dwelling life in Australia's Gibson Desert until 1984, when they made contact with their relatives near Kiwirrkurra. They are sometimes also referred to as "the lost tribe".