Origins of the Australian Aborigines: Help! , page 2

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

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I don't think that ancient humans came to Australia - I think they were already there - or close by, in New Guinea.

Who is to say that they did not originate in Australia or New Guinea?

According to archaeologist, Dr Alan Thorne, “There's always been people who for various philosophical or scientific or political reasons have wanted aborigines to have only arrived the week before last Tuesday, and those who have thought that aboriginal people may well have evolved partially here, and have made adaptations physically and culturally over a very long period.”

The current accepted estimates of earliest occupation float somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 years. But in the last 12 months there’s been talk in scientific circles of dates as old as 150,000 years. Conventional wisdom holds that at that time Homo sapiens was only just venturing out of Africa. So if this date were to prove correct there’d have to be a major reassessment of how humans spread across the globe.

From here
A very interesting read on this topic.

Lake Mungo and Kow Swamp are 2 very well known sites where discovered relics pushed the earliest known occupation back by many many thousands of years.

The Tasmanian aboriginals were cut off from the mainland when ocean levels flooded Bass Strait and the earliest europeans here found them so different they considered them to be an entirely different race to mainland tribes. Their descendants are still trying to get all the remains removed to European Universities in the 1800s for study to be returned.

Tasmanian aboriginals, for example, had never mastered the art of making fire. What they did was appoint a member of a tribe as the 'keeper of fire' which was obtained after a lightning strike started a bush fire for example and that person had to transport the fire as a smouldering mass whenever the tribe moved and keep the fire going 24/7 when camp was established. If the fire was allowed to go out the tribe might wait years before they had fire again (big disgrace).

Aboriginals occupied this country for 10s of thousands of years without degrading the land in any way. Can't exactly say the same for about 200 years of european occupation now can we.

I see much discussion about ancient civilisations like Sumeria but in terms of aboriginal civilisation, that's modern history. What's missing is artwork even though the tribes produce some striking works using natural ochres so what happened to it all? The answer turns out to be an insect - the termite. Most of their art was produced on bark and timber which didn't last and the same can be said of native African art. Only rock carving and cave painting has stood the test of time.


[edit on 8/11/2009 by Pilgrum]

reply to post by Pilgrum

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Going to shortly reply to two posts above.
There never was a complete land-bridge between Australia and New Guinea, there was between Australia and Tasmania between 20-10 000 years ago.
Just searched on fire and Tasmanians. It's hard to generalize about a people that were made extinct so quickly, especially culturally. From one site however I see that the Tasmanians used fire-flint instead of the mainland drill method. These flints have been found. However, by the time anyone took any notice of the Tasmanians, apart from exterminating them as "vermin" they no longer had access to the flint "mines".
(Getting tipsy, so won't type out a link now.)

reply to post by halfoldman

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www.bees.unsw.edu.au...

For most of the last 250,000 years Australia and New Guinea have been connected by land across the shallow body of water that currently separates them (Gulf of Carpentaria). The most recent connected Cape York with New Guinea 10,000 years ago "bridging" the twelve meter deep Torres Strait. The land bridge and other geological events make New Guinea Australia's most recent zoogeographic province.

www.wisegeek.com...

There were extensive land bridges between islands in present-day Indonesia, connected them to the southeast Asian mainland. These made it possible for early humans to travel from Africa to islands like Borneo. In what is the first confirmed instance of humans traveling over a significant stretch of open ocean, early man built rafts and made it across the present-day Wallace Line, a deep sea channel in central Indonesia that separates the fauna of west Indonesia (which is more Asian) from east Indonesia (more Australian). From the east side of the Wallace Line, these people reached New Guinea and Australia, which were also connected by land bridges.

The land bridge existed and is known about, and I believe the Aboriginals did migrate to Australia using this land bridge, but it existed for a long enough amount of time for the Aboriginals to have migrated over it much much longer ago than 6000 years.

[edit on 8/11/2009 by Kryties]

reply to post by halfoldman

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There has been some discussion about their fire-making knowledge and perhaps not all of the 9 distinct tribes had access to resources like flint. The terrain and vegetation here meant many of these groups lived in virtual isolation from the others.

It's a sad commentary on european occupation that these tribes were decimated in just 30 years or so with the remaining several hundred forcibly relocated to places like Flinders Island where diseases like measles and influenza took the rest of them when living in close proximity to each other.

Mitochondrial DNA analysis appears to show close link with Asian tribes. I seem to recall there being some evidence of there being more than one 'wave' of migration into Australia based on the remains found at Lake Mungo & Kow Swamp which looked to be somewhat different to the later people which ultimately dominated the country.



[edit on 8/11/2009 by Pilgrum]

reply to post by Kryties

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Interesting on the land-bridge between Australia and New Guinea-Indonesia.
I thought this was true, but the the Nat Geo channel once showed a documentary that stated that there were still bodies of water. However, they were never very significant by modern standards. Let me attempt another link:
www.mentalfloss.com...

Originally posted by spellbound
reply to post by TheWalkingFox

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I don't think that ancient humans came to Australia - I think they were already there - or close by, in New Guinea.

Who is to say that they did not originate in Australia or New Guinea?

Answer = DNA

Please see The Genographic Project and especially the section called Atlas of Human Journey

In the Atlas, if you select on the timeline the block just to the left of 50,000 years ago, you get a nice map showing the migration of haplogroups M and B from Africa throu India and into Australia.

There is somewhere a bit of video documenting the Genoproject chief scientist going to India and actually finding a village with DNA markers identical to Australians (which also explains what they are looking for better than I just did).

It's on the DVD you get if you participate in the project, but I'm not sure I can find it on the web. Maybe it is on the site but I haven't found it yet. I'll keep looking.

Edit: found it Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Part 5 of 13)



Edit 2: oops, we need part 6 too




[edit on 8/11/2009 by rnaa]

[edit on 8/11/2009 by rnaa]

They have been there a lot longer than 6.000 years. The Archeological proof goes way back. Here is a small part of one of my newer threads.

Source

Geneticist:

On one hand we have a very real genetic lineage of the Aboriginals of Australia tied to some blood lines in India this line was established over 60.000 to 70.000 years ago and some have argued as old as 80.000 years. They didn't sail there so the most obvious route would be coastal migration along the now sunken Indian coast. The exact location we are discussing.

DNA confirms coastal trek to Australia

DNA evidence linking Indian tribes to Australian Aboriginal people supports the theory humans arrived in Australia from Africa via a southern coastal route through India, say researchers. The research, lead by Dr Raghavendra Rao from the Anthropological Survey of India, is published in the current edition of BMC Evolutionary Biology.
One theory is that modern humans arrived in Australia via an inland route through central Asia but Rao says most scientists believe modern humans arrived via the coast of South Asia. Skeletal remains, dating back between 40-60,000 years from Lake Mungo in New South Wales, also support the theory that modern human arrived in Australia at least as far back as this, he says.

Let's go further East from here, Australia.

Again keep in mind the light blue areas were exposed land when the oceans where as much as 130m lower than they are now. There would have been vast areas that were exposed dry land around the time in question.

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene (pronounced /ˈplaɪstəsiːn/) is the epoch from 2.588 million to 12 000 years BP covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations.

Each glacial advance tied up huge volumes of water in continental ice sheets 1500–3000 m thick, resulting in temporary sea level drops of 100 m or more over the entire surface of the Earth. During interglacial times, such as at present, drowned coastlines were common, mitigated by isostatic or other emergent motion of some regions.

Earliest Australian

THE FIRST INHABITANTS : Last May, the Australian National University released this photograph, taken in 1974, of the skeleton of a man from Lake Mungo, NSW which the university has now dated at between 56,000 and 68,000 years old. Previously, the remains had been dated at just 30,000 years old. REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Interesting tibit

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) researchers have opened a window into the past by exposing ancient mangrove forests entombed beneath the Great Barrier Reef. AIMS biologist Dr Dan Alongi said the expedition was surveying the impact of nutrients on coastal inshore areas when scientists unearthed mangrove forests in old river channels they believe may snake for 30 kilometres to the edge of the continental shelf. Scientists have long theorised that sea level rose very gradually over several thousand years, but these remnant mangrove forests tell another story. While it was previously known that relic river beds exist beneath the Great Barrier Reef, formed 9000 years ago when the sea level was lower than the continental shelf, their significance was never studied.

"When we took the first samples it was difficult to believe… we stood amazed wondering what exactly we were dealing with. We thought it was cyclone debris, but it was far too deep to be a modern event," said Dr Alongi. AIMS researchers cored 1-2 metres of sediment and found remnant mangrove 70 centimetres below the surface of the present seafloor. These core samples of mud are an evolutionary time frame. The evidence will help to establish the state of the reef and nutrient sediment information as it existed prior to human activity. Dr Alongi said the mangroves were incredibly well preserved; a fact most likely attributed to the antibiotic properties in the concentrated tannins. "The cores still have the characteristic smell of tannins, that’s why we thought they were young.

"Within the cores were intact root systems and parts of trees including twigs and branches that radiocarbon dating put between 8550 and 8740 years of age. "There’s such an abrupt change in core composition from mud-like substance to intact mangrove branches…from the modern to the ancient, that it suggests a large climate change happened," said Dr Alongi.

Land bridge

Migration was achieved during the closing stages of the Pleistocene, when sea levels were much lower than they are today. Repeated episodes of extended glaciation during the Pleistocene epoch, resulted in decreases of sea levels by more than 100 metres in Australasia. The continental coastline extended much further out into the Timor Sea, and Australia and New Guinea formed a single landmass (known as Sahul), connected by an extensive land bridge across the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait. Nevertheless, the sea still presented a major obstacle so it is theorised that these ancestral people reached Australia by island hopping. Two routes have been proposed. One follows an island chain between Sulawesi and New Guinea and the other reaches North Western Australia via Timor.

The sharing of animal and plant species between Australia-New Guinea and nearby Indonesian islands is another consequence of the early land bridges, which closed when sea levels rose with the end of the last glacial period. The sea level stabilised to near its present levels about 6000 years ago, flooding the land bridge between Australia and New Guinea.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by SLAYER69]

reply to post by halfoldman

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New Guinea and Australia were certainly connected during the lower sea levels of the last ice age. This map shows the extent of dry land at the time:



As you can see, there was still a strait running through Indonesia, so early humans had to be seafaring to reach Australia.

Footprints have been found in mud dating to around 20,000 years ago

epublications.bond.edu.au...

Humans are thought to have arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago and their arrival seems to coincide with megafaunal extinctions on the continent

www.sciencedaily.com...

Anyone claiming humans only arrived 6,000 years ago is ignoring all the avaliable science in favour of a personal racist agenda. It's rather sad that anyone believes him

Genetics also clearly show the ancestory of aborigines.

They may possibly even be more 'pure' homo sapien sapien than modern Europeans are if, as some, suggest, our ancestors mated with Neanderthals - such mating would have occured in Europe thousands of years after the ancestors of the aborginies had reached Australia.

So if anything, the Abbos are real humans and the rest of us are inferior hybrids

reply to post by Essan

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Did a another Google search on aborigines+origins. Apparently, DNA shows that aborigines and New Guineans shared a common ancestor as far back as 70 000 years ago.

reply to post by spellbound

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The complete and utter lack of non-human primates in Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania is a good starting reason why. In fact, it's the best reason why.

Genetic proof just provides backup in this case.

And as cool as I think the whole dreamtyme mythos is... People didn't spring out of rocks.

reply to post by 297GT

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Not sure what you are specifically referring to?
Many aboriginals (and posters) are Christian or Jewish. Not all Christians follow the "young earth" theory. You can read Liddell and make up your own mind on the paradigm he pushes. Just because the book sold well (for a self-publication) does not mean that it represents Australians, or even a fraction of Australia. Liddell does have petitions and a political "advert" in his book that seems congruous with the One Nation Party at the time.
unlearningtheproblem.wordpress.com... has a discussion that clearly states that Liddell fits into the Christian Right's interpretation of Genesis.
(If the link fails, the site is called "Unlearning the Problem".) Young earth creationists freely admit it.

reply to post by halfoldman

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It's been rumoured there were in act two native australian races. One displaced the other.. I wonder if neanderthals were the extinct one.

reply to post by riley

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Well this is the problem that the post starts with (framed in a highly disputable book).
The short answer is no.
Neanderthal man lived in Europe with adaptions to the cold. The latest DNA suggests that they were the last other species of humans (once there were 5 or more) except us (Homo Sapiens). They could not have produced fertile off-spring with humans.
In Africa (or Europe) one can find diverse varions from an area smaller than Australia. In Africa we have pygmies, Bantu people, Hamites and Khoisan (Busmen) in relatively small areas. The black Hadza tribe in Tanzania split from the Khoisan original group 40 000 years ago, according to DNA evidence.
Such Evidence suggests that the New Guineans and aborigines shared common ancestors 70 000 years ago. This is more than enough time to develop regional variations. The Tasmanians were also seperated from the main group about 10 000 years ago. The differences are thus relatively minor, when one considers that other races turned white in less time!

Originally posted by halfoldman
reply to post by riley

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Well this is the problem that the post starts with (framed in a highly disputable book).
The short answer is no.
Neanderthal man lived in Europe with adaptions to the cold. The latest DNA suggests that they were the last other species of humans (once there were 5 or more) except us (Homo Sapiens). They could not have produced fertile off-spring with humans.

Yet it's also been recently said we may had interbred with them. I'd prefer to wait until they are absolutely certain as tommorow they might find fossils that contradict those assumptions.

In Africa (or Europe) one can find diverse varions from an area smaller than Australia. In Africa we have pygmies, Bantu people, Hamites and Khoisan (Busmen) in relatively small areas. The black Hadza tribe in Tanzania split from the Khoisan original group 40 000 years ago, according to DNA evidence.
Such Evidence suggests that the New Guineans and aborigines shared common ancestors 70 000 years ago. This is more than enough time to develop regional variations. The Tasmanians were also seperated from the main group about 10 000 years ago. The differences are thus relatively minor, when one considers that other races turned white in less time!

Other races turned white in that time because there was reason for that mutation.. so lack of mutation may just mean there was no reason. White skin is also a very small change genetically speaking. The rumours I was referring to had alot to do with bones being found in a cave that were not allowed to be tested because of tribal law.. these bones/fossils were suspected as being related to (ancient) tasmanian aboriginies and not modern mainland ones (modern as in last 50/100 thousand years). It is my own speculation that they may have been neandethal. You are right though.. apparently it was their lack of being migratory that may have led to their extinction. Or we killed them off. In reponse to the OP.. yes I believe that they travelled across the land bridge during an ice age. I think it's pretty much a given as they brang the dingos ancestors with them from the same region.

edit. I've asked around but can't find anymore information on those rumours.

[edit on 2-12-2009 by riley]

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