Migrating to Prehistoric Australia: Part Two

The first human inhabitants of the island continent of Australia arrived perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years – just 10,000 years after some nomadic band(s) kissed their African homeland good day. Since there is, and never has been in human prehistory, a land bridge between the two geographical continents, the first Australians had to have mastered the ‘art’ of sailing. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to back up what must be the obvious.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Fast-forward tens of thousands of years later.

Aborigines in the northeast of Australia, starting roughly 2500 years ago, had contact with Melanesian seafarers, the Torres Strait Islanders, who could island and reef-hop over the newly created Torres Strait. Post Ice Age sea level rise created that 150 km Torres Strait marine barrier by flooding that former land connection that separated Australia from New Guinea. However, Melanesian seafaring technology apparently wasn’t readily adopted by the Aborigines. In any event, it doesn’t assist in explaining the arrival(s) – one or more waves – of Aborigines that many tens of thousands of years ago.

Prior to white settlement, less than three centuries ago, there is no archaeological or pictorial evidence for sophisticated Aboriginal maritime activities in Australia. Dugout canoes is about as sophisticated as you get, technology which apparently came via Makassan traders from Sulawesi (an Indonesian island), and then only since the early 18^th Century, or shortly prior to white settlement. That’s not much help is getting Aborigines to Australia 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.

All up, it was non-Australian seafarers who discovered the Aborigines (the Dutch in 1606, the English in 1688, all culminating with Captain Cook’s visit in 1770, hence white settlement in 1788) and never the other way around.

So, if there is one thing one doesn’t associate with the Australian Aborigine, its seafaring and ocean navigation abilities. Aborigines are nomadic landlubbers with at best bark canoes. Aborigines go walkabout, not sailabout. If the Aborigines really had halfway decent maritime abilities, you’d of thought they would have discovered and colonized Lord Howe Island or Norfolk Island, even New Zealand several tens of thousands of years ago. [Tasmania doesn’t count since that island was connected to the Australian mainland during the drop in sea levels during the Ice Ages.] But New Zealand only dates human inhabitation back to just roughly 1300 AD or CE if you like, and the Maoris aren’t the Australian Aborigines.

It’s a similar mystery as the one as to why the ancient prehistoric east African Homo sapiens or Homo erectus didn’t discover that rather large island target off their own eastern coast – Madagascar. Madagascar wasn’t inhabited until roughly between 350 BCE and 550 CE, and then from Borneo. Native Africans (the Bantu) didn’t hit town until 1000 CE. The evidence suggests to me that prehistoric nomadic hunter-gatherers just didn’t have the seamanship skills everyone assumes they must have had.

So, the $64,000 question is, how did they, the Aborigines, arrive in Australia? By boat stupid! It’s an axiomatic response that in prehistoric times to get from Point A to Point B, when Point A and Point B are separated by reasonably vast oceanic distances, that our ‘primitive’ ancestors must have constructed rafts or boats and used same to cross said vast oceanic distances. It just has to be, no other explanation is possible. But is it logical? No, IMHO. They, our prehistoric ancestors didn’t have boat or raft building know-how, or navigation skills nor seamanship abilities. Is there actual evidence they did? Again, the answer is in the negative.

The first boats found in the archaeological record only date to about 7000 BCE, the historical era, way, way after they are required in way earlier prehistoric times. That’s probably because ‘modern’ sailing, as in lengthy ocean voyages involving maritime crossings with nothing but the ocean in view, only took off in historical times, post the Agricultural Revolution which dates to roughly 10,000 years ago. That’s now well documented in the archaeological and pictorial record. The main outcomes were establishing trade routes and the opening up of Oceania (Hawaii, Easter Island, New Zealand, Madagascar, etc.) to both initial discovery and colonization. Perhaps that was a logical outcome due to the stability and population growth caused by establishing settlements. Or, perhaps like agriculture itself, maritime skills were a gift from the ‘gods’.

One other bit of evidence that it isn’t easy to reach Australia from S.E. Asia, despite a theory that it would have been relatively easy via island hopping, is that Australia has a very unique fauna. You don’t find the kangaroo, koala, or platypus in S.E. Asia, and you don’t find fauna from S.E. Asia in Australia’s natural environment. Seeds, insects, birds, etc. can cross over of course, carried on the winds or under their own power, but not anything that’s larger and fully terrestrial. 

In conclusion, in prehistoric times, in order to migrate to certain geographical locations, like Australia, it’s traditional to assume, actually stating the bleeding obvious, that primitive humans from that era had to stick their toes in the water and cross on over by building rafts or boats, acquiring various maritime skills and sailing the ocean blue. However, there is no evidence, far less proof for this assertion. Rather, IMHO, you’d be a bloody idiot to stick your toe in the water unless practically forced at ‘gunpoint’. It’s a Catch-22: Before you risk your all sailing the ocean blue, you’d better first have or acquire motive, means and opportunity. But, you can only become comfortable with having motive, means and opportunity after you’ve already risked your all by having first sailed the ocean blue and become skilled professional sailors. Or, in other words, before you’re at all comfortable sticking your toes in the water, you’ve got to stick you toes in the water. Faced with that sort of choice, the sane decision is to keep your toes out of the water from the get-go. That’s also stating the bleeding obvious. When two sides state the bleeding obvious, and both those sides are contradictory, well that’s a Catch-22.

So how did the Australian Aborigine get to Australia, or Sahul? Well, maybe they just flapped their arms and flew, or were flown, but they didn’t swim the distance nor did they sail it. It’s time to think outside of the box.

Further reading:

Flood, Josephine; Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People; Angus & Robertson, Sydney; Revised Edition, 1995:

Isaacs, Jennifer (Compiler & Editor); Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History;  Lansdowne Press, Sydney; 1980:

Kamminga, Johan & Mulvaney, John; Prehistory of Australia; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.; 1999:

Mountford, Charles P. & Roberts, Ainslie; Legends of the Dreamtime; International Limited Editions, Hong Kong; 1975: