Original Australians numbered 1,000-3,000: study
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | April 24, 2013 16:41Australia was first settled by between 1,000 and 3,000 humans around 50,000 years ago, but the population crashed during the Ice Age before recovering to a peak of some 1.2 million people around five centuries ago, a study said on Wednesday.
Estimating the early population of Australia is a source of debate in anthropology, partly because it touches on how European colonisation affected the country’s indigenous people.
The newcomers crossed via a land bridge from Papua New Guinea, across a continental shelf that is now flooded, according to a common theory.
The numbers grew but then fell by as much as 60 percent between 21,000-18,000 years ago during the peak of the last Ice Age, when Australia became cooler and far drier than it is today, Williams believes.
Facebook
Tweet This
RSS Feed
Email This Post
Loading ...
