ConservationBytes.com

Not exactly a conservation topic, I know, but it does provide insights into how the ancestors of Indigenous Australians adapted to and thrived in a new and sometimes harsh landscape. The more I study elements of human ecology in deep time, the more awed I become at the frankly amazing capacity of First Peoples.

Our new research (co-authored by Stefani Crabtree, Devin White, Sean Ulm, Michael Bird, Al Williams, and Fred Saltré) has revealed that the process of peopling the entire continent of Sahul — the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today — took 10,000 years.  

We combined new models of demography and wayfinding based on geographic inference to show the scale of the challenges faced by the ancestors of Indigenous people making their mass migration across the supercontinent more than 60,000 years ago.

The ancestors of Aboriginal people likely first entered the continent 75,000–50,000 years ago from what is today the island of Timor, followed by later migrations through the western regions of New Guinea.

This pattern led to a rapid expansion both southward toward the Great Australian Bight, and northward from the Kimberley region to settle all parts of New Guinea and, later, the southwest and southeast of Australia.

We did this research under the auspices of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) and including international experts in Australia and the United States to investigate the most likely pathways and the timeframe needed to reach population sizes able to withstand the rigours of their new environment.

By combining two existing models predicting the routes these First Peoples took – ‘superhighways’ – and the demographic structure of these first populations, we were able to estimate the time for continental saturation more precisely. The new research has just been published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

Based on detailed reconstructions of the topography of the ancient continent and models of past climate, we developed a virtual continent and programmed populations to survive in and move successfully through their new territory.

Navigating by following landscape features like mountains and hills and knowing where to find water led to successful navigation strategies. The First Peoples of Australia soon passed along cultural knowledge to subsequent generations facilitating the peopling of the whole continent.