And in sufficient numbers to make a settlement viable. It is estimated that several crossings occurred and each most have has in excess of 1000 individuals to make it a success which points to reasonably advanced organisation of population along with the ability to make vessels capable of navigating 50-80 km of open sea and then actually making that journey long before recorded history.
Same original peopling of Australia and other places. Deep in ice age or way before.
I’ve been binging Mystery Road, an Australian series which delves pretty deep into Aboriginal culture in Western Australia (WA). I was stunned to learn the culture is 65,000 years old. Last ice age was 19-26,000 years ago.
I can see why Aboriginal and all indigenous cultures are angry at mercantilism. Not just the British obviously. And we can see how Japan wasn’t having it for a couple hundred years after the Portuguese left.
The LGM (Last Glacial Maximum i.e. height of the the last ice age) was as you say 19-26,000 years ago however that ice age began around 200-250,000 years ago and increased in severity over up to the LGM. Along with genetic data and carbon dating we can estimate roughly where and when ocean crossings were made and we can marvel at the fact that ice age communities could build & navigate sea-faring craft, like you say, 65,000 years ago in the case of Australia.
That number is BS. There were humans there 65kya, but not the aborigines’ ancestors. They arrived to papua/australia maybe 30kya. An Australian population came a bit later.
You misunderstand. People lived there 65kya. That’s clear from archeological evidence. But the genetic evidence is very clear that the ancestors of modern aborigines could not have arrived earlier than around 45kya because they share the same bottleneck and Neanderthal admixture as all other non-Africans. They also share the later denisovan admixture of Papuans (to whom they are closely related). All that together means 30kya is about the earliest the ancestral Papuan/aborigine population could have arrived. Aborigines probably split off about 10ky later. This may be too technical, but you can get most of this from this Nature paper. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06831-w
It was still a crossing of dozens of miles at the time (iirc ~60-80?) which would mean no line of sight and require some rudimentary navigation skills and some good woodworking skills, And the bottle to get out there and do it. The oceans require some bravery, especially tens of thousands of years ago.
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u/Scott_Of_The_Antares Oct 29 '24
And in sufficient numbers to make a settlement viable. It is estimated that several crossings occurred and each most have has in excess of 1000 individuals to make it a success which points to reasonably advanced organisation of population along with the ability to make vessels capable of navigating 50-80 km of open sea and then actually making that journey long before recorded history.
Same original peopling of Australia and other places. Deep in ice age or way before.