70,000 years ago, humans came to Australia by land, and we finally know which way they went

Crazy as it may seem given the current layout of the world and continents, the first humans to populate Australia reached it on foot. The invention is not new. Scientists have known for decades that 70,000 years ago there was a continent called Sahul that connected Southeast Asia to Australia.

Sahul, a submerged continent

But till now we don't know which way those men went and at what time they went. On April 23, an Australian team of geoscience researchers published a new study Natural communicationThis tells us more.

Sahul appeared during the Pleistocene Ice Age. The glaciation process lowered sea levels and exposed thousands of kilometers of land connecting what are now Australia, Papua New Guinea and Tasmania.

The rest is under this ad

Australia: Aboriginal sacred paintings of Arnhem Land on display.

This part of the world remained undiscovered for thousands of years before humans were able to explore it. But climatic events may have made this task difficult or altered the trajectory. Australian researchers focused on this.

The path of humans is dictated by changes in the landscape

To understand the route of humans that slowly migrated to Australia through Sahul, Tristan Salz and his team built a model based on known climate changes between 70,000 and 35,000 years ago. Several migration routes seem possible, starting from either West Papua or East Timor.

The rest is under this ad

The researchers also took into account the travel habits known to the people of the time. They were later hunter-gatherers and moved to new places in small steps to find food. An important element in determining the speed at which men move.

A model to learn more about the journey of humans on Earth

According to their model, the researchers now believe that the migrants arrived along the Sahul coast via rivers that existed in central Australia at the time. As a pioneer, they would have traveled an average of 1.15 kilometers per year.

A speed that might seem ridiculous today, but was especially fast at a time when every meter south faced the unknown.

The rest is under this ad

The new study will help archaeologists find burial sites and traces of human presence. “Our study is the first to show the effects of landscape changes on the early migration of Sahul, allowing a new archaeological perspective”Researchers evaluate

“If we apply this same approach to other regions, we can learn more about humanity's extraordinary journey from Africa to other parts of the planet.”