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 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.
Indigenous Australia culture is tens of thousands of years older than many other ancient civilisations that are revered around the world, such as Mesopotamia (dating back as early as 3500 B.C.), Egypt (3100 B.C.), Greece (2700 B.C.), Maya (2600 B.C.) and China (1600 B.C.).
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 islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
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.
H. erectus is the oldest known species to have a human-like body, with relatively elongated legs and shorter arms in comparison to its torso.
Megafauna are large animals that roamed the Earth during the Pleistocene, 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. In Australia, Megafauna included the huge wombat-shaped Diprotodon and giant goanna Megalania. European Megafauna included Woolly Rhinoceroses, Mammoths, Cave Lions and Cave Bears.
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.
Earth's oldest known piece of continental crust dates to the era of the moon's formation. Australia holds the oldest continental crust on Earth, researchers have confirmed, hills some 4.4 billion years old.
Anatomically modern humans are known to have left Africa approximately 72,000 years ago, eventually spreading across Asia and Europe. Outside Africa, Australia has one of the longest histories of continuous human occupation, dating back about 50,000 years.
Australia and Antarctica are neither definitely Old World nor definitely New World, since the terms "Old World" and "New World" were used before their discovery by Europeans. The New World is one of the names used for the American continents, in use since the 16th century.
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.
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.
Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils.
Deep in a remote, hot, dry patch of northwestern Australia lies one of the earliest detectable signs of life on the planet, tracing back nearly 3.5 billion years, scientists say. At that time, the Earth – relatively speaking – wasn't into its adulthood yet.
Contrary to prevailing thought, new research shows that early humans in Australia lived alongside giant reptiles, marsupials, and birds for thousands of years before these megafauna went extinct.
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.
Evidence still suggests that all modern humans are descended from an African population of Homo sapiens that spread out of Africa about 60,000 years ago but also shows that they interbred quite extensively with local archaic populations as they did so (Neanderthal and Denisovan genes are found in all living non-Africa ...
Yes, the first humans were almost certainly black. The human species evolved in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. Black skin was necessary for survival in this hot and sunny climate.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans.
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.
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.
They conclude that, like most other living Eurasians, Aborigines descend from a single group of modern humans who swept out of Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago and then spread in different directions.