One of the most important claimed potential early sites is in northern Australia, at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in Arnhem Land.
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.
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.
The earliest dates for human occupation of Australia come from sites in the Northern Territory. The Madjedbebe (previously called Malakunanja II) rock shelter in Arnhem Land has a widely accepted date of about 50,000 years old.
The time of arrival of the first human beings in Australia is a matter of debate and ongoing investigation. The earliest conclusively human remains found in Australia are those of Mungo Man LM3 and Mungo Lady, which have been dated to around 50,000 years BP.
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.
Study suggests continent was colonized by more people than originally suspected. Some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, a band of intrepid Southeast Asians became the first humans to reach Australia, and without a single glance at a GPS unit.
Fifty thousand years ago, sea levels were so low that Australia and New Guinea formed a single continent. Humans moved from Southeast Asia onto this landmass, some settling in what is now New Guinea, others traveling farther south into Australia.
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.
A cumulative population of 1.6 billion people has been estimated to have lived in Australia over 65,000 years prior to British colonisation. The regions of heaviest Aboriginal population were the same temperate coastal regions that are currently the most heavily populated, the Murray River valley in particular.
There were between 300,000 to 950,000 Aboriginal people living in Australia when the British arrived in 1788.3 At that time there were approximately 260 distinct language groups and 500 dialects.
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.
Estimates were based on post-1788 observations of a population already reduced by introduced diseases and other factors, and range from a minimum pre-1788 population of 315,000 to over one million people. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that a population of 750,000 Indigenous peoples could have been sustained.
The Oldest Civilization In The World
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. They then settled in Australia around that time.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
These findings suggest that modern Aboriginal Australians are the direct descendants of the eastern wave, who left Africa up to 75,000 years ago. This finding is compatible with earlier archaeological finds of human remains near Lake Mungo that date to approximately 40,000 years ago.
These populations diverged from each other around 36,000 years ago, suggesting that they all descended from an early southward migration out of Africa. But Pugach also found evidence of more recent gene flow from India and northern Australia, which took place around 141 generations ago.
Aboriginal Australians have lived in the Northern Territory for more than 65,000 years. It is the oldest continuous culture on earth.
Some are near-white like the F1; but none darker than either parent have been seen. Study of the various crosses leads to the conclusion that a single main gene for melanin in the skin is present in the aborigines, together with a minor gene which alone produces brunet-white skin colour.
Long connection to country
Analysis of maternal genetic lineages revealed that Aboriginal populations moved into Australia around 50,000 years ago.
Archeologists have dated these artefacts to be at least 65,000 years old. The Madjedbebe site revealed that Aboriginal people made and used stone tools, ochre crayons and other pigments. This discovery includes the oldest known examples in the world of the use of the micaceous pigment.
For thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans, northern Sydney was occupied by different Aboriginal clans. Living primarily along the foreshores of the harbour, they fished and hunted in the waters and hinterlands of the area, and harvested food from the surrounding bush.
Previous archaeological digs and dating had suggested people migrated to Australia between 47,000 and 60,000 years ago. But a new excavation at an aboriginal rock shelter called Madjedbebe revealed human relics that dated back 65,000 years.
From at least 60,000 B.C. the area that was to become New South Wales was inhabited entirely by indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with traditional social, legal organisation and land rights.
An unprecedented DNA study has found evidence of a single human migration out of Africa and confirmed that Aboriginal Australians are the world's oldest civilization. The newly published paper is the first extensive DNA study of Aboriginal Australians, according to the University of Cambridge.