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 between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago. Because there were no written records, we call this time prehistory, but 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, dating back about 41,000 years.

When the first Europeans arrived, there were many Aboriginal people—estimates say between 300,000 and one million, maybe even over 3 million. They lived as hunter-gatherers and had many different groups, with around 600 tribes and 250 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 different from mainland Aboriginal peoples, good sailors, and used resources from the sea and reefs for food. Some islands even had farming and villages by the 1300s.

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. Most scholars agree on this time frame as of 2023.

Recent 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 around 51,500 to 43,500 years 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. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that earlier humans lived in Australia but were not ancestors of people today.

There is much discussion about how the first people reached Australia. It happened during a time when the Earth was going through a cold period called the Pleistocene. During this time, sea levels were lower than today. When glaciers were big, sea levels dropped more than 100 metres. 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, linked by land that stretched across the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria, and Torres Strait. 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. One path went through islands between Sulawesi and New Guinea. The other went across Timor to northwestern Australia. Some scientists think these first people may have arrived by accident during a big ocean wave, but they still needed to travel over water, making them some of the earliest sailors in the world.

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 on an island called Toba. If they arrived around 70,000 years ago, they could have crossed from Timor when the sea level was low. But if they came around 50,000 years ago, they probably came through a group of islands called the Moluccas to New Guinea. Because many coastal areas where they may have first landed are now under about 50 metres of water, we may never know the exact timing.

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, but a study in 2020 says this dating might not be correct. Studies of special DNA from cells show that Aboriginal people reached Eyre Peninsula in South Australia between 49,000 and 45,000 years ago, coming from both the east and the west.

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. Near Penrith, a suburb of Sydney, many stone tools were found in old sediments that are 45,000 to 50,000 years old. This means people lived in Sydney earlier than we thought.

Evidence from old objects shows people lived in the upper Swan River area of Western Australia about 40,000 years ago. A study in 2018 using plants dated proof of people living at Karnatukul in the Carnarvon Range in the Little Sandy Desert to around 50,000 years ago — 20,000 years earlier than we used to think. People lived there continuously since then.

Tasmania, which was linked to Australia by land when the sea level was low, was home to people at least 40,000 years ago. The oldest known place there is Wareen Cave, dated to that time.

Migration routes and waves

A study in 2021 by researchers at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage mapped out the likely paths that people took as they moved across Australia to the southern part that is now Tasmania. Back then, Tasmania was part of the mainland. The mapping uses information from scientists who study old objects, human groups, plants and animals, genes, weather, Earth shapes, and water. They hope to compare this mapping with old stories from Aboriginal people, including Dreaming stories, rock art in Australia, and the many Aboriginal languages. The paths, called “superhighways” by the scientists, 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, including the ancestors of Ancient Ancestral South Indians, Andamanese, East Asians, and other people in Australasia like Papuans.

We do not know how many different groups of people lived in Australia before Europeans came. Some people think there was one main group, while others think there were many. Keith Windschuttle, who believes Aboriginal history has been influenced by politics, says the idea of one group is linked to feeling united, and many entries were ignored because they could be used to take Aboriginal lands, but scientific studies do not support this idea.

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 from 2012 by Alan J. Redd and others 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, especially cleaning a type of seed called cycads; and the Pama-Nyungan language spreading across most of Australia. At first, people thought dingoes came from dogs in India, but tests on the DNA of dingoes show they are more related to dogs from Eastern Asia and North America. This suggests they came with people moving from Southern China to Timor in the last 5,000 years. A finding in 2007 of tiny bugs called kangaroo ticks on dogs in Thailand suggests this movement may have gone both ways.

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. One test looked at DNA from many Aboriginal Australians, people from New Guinea, Southeast Asia, and India. It found that people from India and Australia mixed before Europeans came, about 4,230 years ago. The researchers had two ideas for this: either Indians mixed with people in Indonesia who then mixed with Aboriginal Australians, or a group of Indians traveled all the way to Australia and mixed with people there.

However, a study in 2016 in Current Biology by Anders Bergström and others 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. Tests also suggest that people could have mixed with people from the Torres Strait Islands, but we do not know when this happened in the last 10,000 years. New science might help answer these questions in the future.

Advent of fire farming and megafauna extinctions

Further information: Fire-stick farming

Long ago, people in Australia used fire to change the land. Evidence shows they did this over 100,000 years ago. They may have used fire to help find animals or to make the land easier to travel. This changed many plants, like eucalyptus trees, to grow more.

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

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.