Aborigine Origins Identified?
A mystery here on Australia that continues to strike debate among Australian scientists and the Australian community in general is what are the origins of the native Aborigines of Australia? It is pretty much agreed by everyone that the natives on the island of New Guinea migrated to the Australian mainland some 40,000-50,000 years ago when the Ice Age lowered sea levels enough where the island of New Guinea was connected by a land bridge to the York Peninsula in Queensland. This same lowering of ocean levels allowed the Aborigines to occupy Tasmania as well. Now the big question is how did the Aborigines get to New Guinea to begin with? The black natives on New Guinea and the Australian aborigines share no genetic relations to the Asian and Polynesian peoples of southeast Asia that they are surrounded by. Well some scientists believe the Aborigines arrived in Australia from Africa:
Australia along with the rest of the world was first settled by a single group of settlers who left Africa more than 55,000 years, new DNA research suggests.Once there, they apparently evolved in relative isolation, developing genetic characteristics and technology found nowhere else until the arrival of the first European settlers.
The uniqueness of Australia’s ancient Aborigines and archaeological finds on the continent have previously threatened to undermine the “out of Africa” hypothesis of human origins favoured by most experts.
But the latest research by geneticists at the University of Cambridge reinforces the theory that all modern human beings belonging to the species Homo sapiens are descended from a small number of Africans who left their home between 55,000 and 60,000 years ago.
If the Aborigines are linked genetically to a single group of settlers from Africa how in the world did they get to Australia? I seriously doubt people back then were skilled enough to build boats to sail to Australia which means they had to walk and make short boat trips between islands in Indonesia to reach Australia. So how did black Africans simply walk through lands filled with Asians and Polynesians to get to New Guinea and Australia? It is a fascinating question that will probably continue to perplex researchers for some time to come.
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About The Author
Dobbs
I am a avid hiker with a love for travel and the outdoors. I currently call the Evergreen State of Washington my home.
They didn't walk across lands filled with Asians and Polynesians. They migrated from Africa into Asia and then into Indonesia and New Guinea. The Austronesians and Polynesians only came to dominate the region a lot later. That is the general view.But personally I think people were a lot smarter back then than people give credit. It's not inconceivable they could have navigated the seas back then if they had good knowledge of sea currents and seasonal winds. People have been sailing across the Indian Ocean on the Monsoon Winds on simple vessels for a very long time. It is after… Read more »
I doubt racism has anything to do with theory considering that white people are believed to have evolved from people from Africa as well. What I can’t understand is, if they did come from Africa, how did these people get all the way to Australia? They would have to had been the world’s greatest seafarers and advanced civilizations of the time and then suddenly forget all their knowledge once they got to Australia.
these are racist theories,what u have to know is that when these hypothesis were developed in the early 19th century they were driven by a racist belief that africans are subhumans…
There had to be some kind of hostile natives of some kind on the land the walked over and you would think they would have settled some where closer if no one was on the land. Why walk all the way to Australia? That is why I think the sailing is more plausible but it is incredible to think that a tribe of people of such knowledge of sailing would forget all they had learned once they got to Australia. It is a fascinating topic to think about though.