Prehistory of Australia

The prehistory of Australia is the time before people started writing down what happened, from when the first humans arrived until the year 1788, when colonisation began and records were kept. Most experts think humans first lived in Australia many thousands of years ago. Because there were no written records, we call this time prehistory. Some believe that the stories told by Indigenous people should also be considered important knowledge.

The first people in Australia were the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal Australians. They travelled by land bridges and short sea trips from areas that are now part of Southeast Asia. One of the oldest places showing people lived there is the Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land. The oldest human remains found are at Lake Mungo in New South Wales.

When the first Europeans arrived, there were many Aboriginal people. They lived as hunter-gatherers and had many different groups, with many languages. Some groups used fire-stick farming, fish farming, and built semi-permanent shelters.

The Torres Strait Islander people settled their islands about 4,000 years ago. They were good sailors, and used resources from the sea and reefs for food. Some islands even had farming and villages long ago.

Arrival

See also: Early human migrations § Near Oceania, History of Indigenous Australians § Origins, and Aboriginal Australians § Origins

The earliest signs of humans living in Australia are thought to be between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago.

Studies of DNA show that all people outside of Africa, including Aboriginal Australians, share a little bit of DNA from an ancient group called Neanderthals. This happened in Europe long ago. If this is true, it means the people who lived in Australia today came from ancestors who arrived after about 50,000 years ago.

There is much discussion about how the first people reached Australia. It happened during a cold period called the Pleistocene. During this time, sea levels were lower. People likely reached Australia by traveling over water during one of these cold periods. Back then, New Guinea and Tasmania were connected to Australia because the sea level was lower. Australia and New Guinea were one land called Sahul. Even so, the sea still stood in their way, so these early people probably traveled from island to island to get to Australia. Scientists have suggested two possible routes.

In the book First Footprints: The Epic Story of the First Australians, Scott Cane writes that the first group of people may have been pushed to travel because of a big volcanic eruption.

Dating of sites

The smallest time that most people agree humans lived in Australia is at least 48,000 years ago. Many places from this time have been dug up by scientists. In Arnhem Land Madjedbebe fossils and a rock shelter have been dated to around 65,000 years old.

Tests using a science called radiocarbon dating show that people lived in and around Sydney for at least 30,000 years. In Parramatta, Western Sydney, scientists found that some Aboriginal people used charcoal, stone tools, and maybe old campfires.

Evidence from old objects shows people lived in the upper Swan River area of Western Australia about 40,000 years ago. A study dated proof of people living at Karnatukul in the Carnarvon Range in the Little Sandy Desert to around 50,000 years ago.

Tasmania was home to people at least 40,000 years ago.

Migration routes and waves

A study mapped out the likely paths that people took as they moved across Australia. The mapping uses information from scientists who study old objects, human groups, plants and animals, genes, weather, Earth shapes, and water. The paths look like today’s roads and paths for moving cattle in Australia. Lynette Russell of Monash University thinks this new model is a good start for working with Aboriginal people to learn more about their history. The new models suggest the first people may have first landed in the Kimberley region of Western Australia about 60,000 years ago and moved across the whole continent within 6,000 years.

Old object studies show that the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal Australians first moved to Australia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago. DNA studies suggest this happened between 43,000 and 60,000 years ago.

DNA studies have suggested that the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians were part of a group that moved out of Africa. They went through South and Southeast Asia and then split into different groups.

Changes c. 4000 years ago

Scientists are studying differences in DNA to find clues, but there is not enough proof to say if one big group came or many smaller groups.

A paper talked about people coming from India about 4,000 years ago. This time matches with other changes, like the dingo arriving; the spread of a certain kind of stone tools; new ways to work with plants; and the Pama-Nyungan language spreading across most of Australia.

The dingo came to Australia about 4,000 years ago. Around the same time, the Pama-Nyungan language family spread across most of the mainland, and new, smaller stone tools were used. This suggests people from other places came to Australia, and genetic tests have found signs of this.

However, a study looked at DNA from men called Y chromosomes from 13 Aboriginal Australians. They used new science to study these chromosomes and compare them to others around the world. They found that, while we cannot completely rule out that people from South Asia came to Australia around this time — and the dingo’s arrival does show people came — the tests suggest no mixing of genes happened. The changes in tools and language seem to come from the people already there.

Advent of fire farming and megafauna extinctions

Further information: Fire-stick farming

Long ago, people in Australia used fire to change the land. They may have used fire to find animals or to make travel easier. This helped some plants, like eucalyptus trees, grow more.

Many large animals, called megafauna, disappeared around this time. This included very big marsupials and large flightless birds. We are not sure why they disappeared. It could have been because of fires, hunting, or changes in the weather.

The land and climate also changed. About 30,000 years ago, it became colder and drier. Later, the weather got warmer, and sea levels rose. This separated Tasmania from the rest of Australia and created many islands.

People changed too. They made new tools from stone and wood, like spears and boomerangs. They built fish traps and special huts. On Tasmania, people had fewer tools and changed what they ate and where they lived.

Culture and technology

Around 4,000 years ago, people began to live on the Torres Strait Islands. Over time, more islands were settled, and a special way of living by the sea developed there. Some of these islanders began to grow food, and villages appeared about 700 years ago.

On the Australian mainland, new ideas and tools came from nearby places. About 4,000 years ago, the dingo, a type of wild dog, arrived. About 1,200 years ago, fish hooks made from shell appeared, likely brought by seafarers from places like the Torres Strait. From the mid-1660s, fishing boats from Indonesia visited northern Australia looking for trepang, a type of sea cucumber. This led to trading and friendly relationships, which showed up in Aboriginal art, ceremonies, and stories. Aboriginal people also began using canoes and new hunting tools from these visitors, which helped them catch sea animals like dugong and turtles.

Even with these new ideas, the basic way of Aboriginal life stayed the same. Families joined together in small groups, usually about 25 people, each with their own area to find food. These groups were part of larger tribes or nations, each with its own language. When Europeans arrived, there were around 600 tribes and 250 different languages.

Aboriginal society did not have kings or leaders. Instead, older people, who knew a lot about traditions, helped make decisions. Men usually hunted large animals, while women gathered smaller foods like shells, fruits, and seeds. Food was shared among the group and sometimes traded with others.

Aboriginal people moved around a lot, but they stayed within certain areas marked by natural features like rivers or hills. They could visit other areas through family ties or invitations for special events.

According to Aboriginal beliefs, the Dreaming was a sacred time when spirit beings created the world, its laws, and the way people should live. Some Aboriginal groups built clever traps for fish and eels and lived in semi-permanent homes during certain seasons, but they still moved to find other foods.

Behaviour followed strict rules about family and relationships. Young men often went through special ceremonies when they became adults, while young women had their own rites.

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Contact outside Australia

The Aboriginal people of Australia have no memory of living anywhere else, but those living along the northern coastline, such as in the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, Gulf of Carpentaria, and Cape York, met visitors from other places for thousands of years.

People and goods were traded between Australia and New Guinea even after rising sea levels created the Torres Strait about 8,000 years ago. The islands in the Torres Strait were settled by seafaring Melanesian groups like the Torres Strait Islanders more than 2,500 years ago, and they kept trading with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.

For hundreds of years, Indonesian "Bajau" fishermen from the Spice Islands, like those from Banda, fished near Australia's coast. Also, Macassan traders from Sulawesi came to northern Australia to fish for trepang, a type of sea cucumber, to trade with China, starting in the early 1700s.

There was a lot of cultural sharing. This included Aboriginal rock and bark paintings, new tools like dug-out canoes, and even new words in Aboriginal languages from the Macassan traders. Some Aboriginal communities today have ancestors from Malay people because of marriages and movement between groups.

Stories from Arnhem Land talk about a group of people called the Baijini who caught trepang and grew rice. These stories describe them as being in Australia long before the Macassan traders arrived. Researchers think the Baijini might have been visitors from Southeast Asia, or perhaps they were based on experiences of Yolŋu people who traveled with the Macassans to Sulawesi and returned.