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 could be the oldest population of humans living outside of Africa, where one theory says they migrated from in boats 70,000 years ago. Australia's first people—known as Aboriginal Australians—have lived on the continent for over 50,000 years.
Aboriginal Australians have lived in the Northern Territory for more than 65,000 years. It is the oldest continuous culture on earth.
The Beginning
The earliest scientific evidence of Indigenous occupation dates back over 60,000 years. At the time of European invasion there were an approximate 950,000 Aboriginal people living in the country.
Aboriginal occupation
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.
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.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the first peoples of Australia, meaning they were here for thousands of years prior to colonisation.
In 1803, British colonisation began and in 1876, Truganini died. She was the last full-blood and tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal. Within her one lifetime, a whole society and culture were removed from the face of the earth.
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.
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.
The oldest continuous nationality is probably Chinese, though some archaeologists beg to differ.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Human Genetics. Dr John Mitchell from La Trobe's Department of Biochemistry and Genetics, who led the study, said the research revealed there was a high level of genetic diversity among Aboriginal Australians.
Traces of this lineage that are manifest in many Aboriginal fossils and many of the modern people include the more rugged bones and the huge, thick skulls with big brow ridges, wide noses, flat foreheads and massive projecting faces.
Early history
In 1895 the first true race was held, from Paris to Bordeaux, France, and back, a distance of 1,178 km. The winner made an average speed of 24.15 kph. Organized automobile racing began in the United States with an 87-km race from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois, and back on Thanksgiving Day in 1895.
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!
Commonly cited as the first white child or the first white female born in Australia, Rebecca Small (22 September 1789 – 30 January 1883), was born in Port Jackson, the eldest daughter of John Small a boatswain in the First Fleet which arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788.
Some 90% of present-day Australian Aboriginals belong to the Pama-Nyungan linguistic family. This family originated only around 6,000 years ago, but according to the new study the people who speak the Pama-Nyungan languages today started to become genetically differentiated in Australia as early as 31,000 years ago.
The original Australians were dark-skinned, but a large proportion of the country's Aborigines today are of mixed blood, and many appear to be white.
Wide nostrils of the aborigines again appear to depend on a small number of additive genes compared with the narrow nose of the white man. The lips of the aborigines tend to be thick throughout, but generally not everted.
In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Baiame (or Biame, Baayami, Baayama or Byamee) was the creator god and sky father in the Dreaming of several Aboriginal Australian peoples of south-eastern Australia, such as the Wonnarua, Kamilaroi, Guringay, Eora, Darkinjung, and Wiradjuri peoples.
Aboriginal peoples
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.
The only historical evidence of Mr Stewart's age is an engraving on an old windmill at Wallal Downs Station, about 300 kilometres south of Broome. The rusted iron is marked "Stephen Stewart, 1918", making Mr Stewart at least 103.
Long connection to country
Analysis of maternal genetic lineages revealed that Aboriginal populations moved into Australia around 50,000 years ago. They rapidly swept around the west and east coasts in parallel movements - meeting around the Nullarbor just west of modern-day Adelaide.
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.
Prior to that time, were 1,000-pound kangaroos in Australia, 2-ton wombats, 25-foot-long lizards, 400-pound flightless birds, 300-pound marsupial lions and Volkswagen-sized tortoises. After that time, those huge creatures had disappeared.