Australia’s First People

Abstract

Mainland Australia was connected to New Guinea and Tasmania at various times throughout the Pleistocene and formed the supercontinent of Sahul. Sahul contains some of the earliest known archaeological evidence for Homo sapiens outside of Africa, with a growing record of early complex social, technological, and artistic life. Here we present an overview of the oldest known sites in Australia along with key evidence pertaining to the dynamic cultures of early Aboriginal peoples. We review debates surrounding the age of first settlement and present evidence for the earliest technology, economy, and symbolism in Australia, emphasizing maritime skills, a large founding population size, novel technology, and adaptation to a wide range of environments.

Correction: Aboriginal artefacts on the continental shelf reveal ancient drowned cultural landscapes in northwest Australia

“…As with the sampling strategy, the size of the sample was constrained, however it was sufficient (more than double the number of channel artefacts) for preliminary comparison. There is no hard and fast numerical or proportional test for the appropriateness of a sample beyond “more is better”, however it is generally accepted that a sample is more robust if you can draw random samples and not dramatically change the statistical result [ 7 ]. As noted above, additional artefacts have been added to this dataset (S4_Table in S1 File ) since publication of [ 1 ] and this increases the dataset by 7%.…”