AN ABORIGINAL CHRONOLOGY
Early Aboriginal Settlement of the Australian Continent.
The first Aboriginal inhabitants
possibly arrived in Australia between 40,000 - 50,000 years ago. They arrived
via the North of the continent somewhere between the Kimberley and Cape
York Peninsula utilising land bridges and short water crossings. Since
that time, sea levels have risen and any evidence of coastal occupation
is now beneath the sea in what is known as the
continental shelf.
The first immigrants would have hugged the coastal area. Food supplies would surely have been similar to those found to the north, with an abundance of sea life, edible vegetation and slow moving herbivores.
Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent. This
was not always the case, for great changes in the climate occurred during
the ice age. At this time Aborigines would have spread out from coastal
regions to most areas of Australia. Indeed archaeological evidence has
been found at the Willandra Lakes Region of Western New South Wales which
confirms the age of bones found in
sediment to be approximately 26,000 years old. It would
have been surprising if the exploring of Greater Australia was completed
in less than 400 - 500 years.
It was around 10,000 years BP (before
present) that Tasmanian Aborigines became separated from the mainland Aborigines.
Around 5000 years BP the coastline of Australia took
its present form.
Aboriginal people do not explain their presence in Australia
in the way described above. They explain it through the Dreamtime, stories
of how their spirit ancestors came to this land and drifted over
the continent creating life forms and establishing human order.
Timeline