The Peopling of Australia: Human Migration to the Sahul Continent

The questions of how and when the first Humans reached Australia have long been topics of fierce debate. As dating techniques advance in sophistication the available methods for determining the age of habitation sites and human remains become more varied and reliable. Reading through academic literature, one can observe a direct correlation with the age of the publication and the believed oldest habitation age for humans in Australia.  The threshold for the oldest dates obtained seems to be marching back through prehistory, beginning around 8000 BP and now so far advanced that archaeologists believe the Australian continent could have been settled as early as 55000 BP (Turney and Bird 2001) based on dating techniques alone.

Early human migration route. Diagram credit: Hudjashov 2007.

Direction of human migration across the Sahul continent. Image credit: Wikipedia.

Many sites have been sampled to ascertain the pattern and time by which Australia was colonised by humans. In line with the modern scientific knowledge that Homo sapiens emerged from Africa and spread from there along different migratory routes, the location of the earliest human remains in Australia can be guessed at. In the Pleistocene and early Holocene eras, Australia was joined to land masses such as New Guinea to the north and Tasmania to the south, the name for this supercontinent was Sahul. Australia was not however connected with the Eurasian continent, thereby requiring early humans to travel by sea in order to reach Sahul (Bednarik 1997). From the mainland, or other Oceanic islands, it can be guessed that humans would first have landed on the Northern reaches of the Sahul landmass. This assumption of northern colonization first is supported by evidence in the archaeological record, the oldest sites being placed in these northern regions of Australia. According to the most recent studies, the agreed earliest date for human habitation in Australia is 48000 BP (Turney and Bird 2001), with human expansion to all bio-regions by 30-20000 BP (White and O'Conell 1979). It is important to note that there is no evidence that Homo erectus ever inhabited Australia, making Homo sapiens pioneers in adapting to the landscape of the Sahul continent.