Early Human Occupation In Australia

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Archaeological evidences have been recovered one after another in Australia. New discovery probably provides an answer to a question, but sometimes brings further question. During the Pleistocene, Australia connected with Tasmania, New Guinea and islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea, and this continent is called Sahul. This essay will discuss archaeological evidence for the early human occupation in Australian continent and argue that the chronology of the earliest human occupation in Australia impacts on hypothesis regarding universal modern human. Firstly, this essay will introduce an archaeological site, which has the earliest date for the human occupation, and to support this, it will compare other archaeological evidences from …show more content…
Then, based on these evidences, it will consider a human dispersal pattern within Australia. Finally, it will argue that the chronology of human occupation of Australia which seemingly right is yet inconsistent with general modern human hypothesis.

It seems that the human occupation started from somewhere the northwest of Sahul. There are many Pleistocene sites in Sahul, and sites dated earlier can be the place human occupied at beginning or near this. Here is an archaeological site regarded as the oldest in Australia located in Arnhem Land in the north of the Northern Territory. The lowest artefact found from the formation of over 50,000 BP at Madjebebe (Roberts et al. 1998, p. 19-20). The finding of human occupation possibility based on thermoluminescence was reinvestigated by using single-aliquot and single-grain optical dating and dated older than 50,000 BP (Roberts et al. 1998, p. 23). As both sites are close to each other and the
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Riwi is in the northern Western Australia, where charcoal was found and according to this, the first occupation of this site was estimated around 45, 000 BP (Wood et al. 2016). At the Devil’s Lair located in the southern Western Australia, the deepest artefact was excavated and dated approximately 45,000 BP (Fifield et al. 2001, p. 1140). In the northeast of Papua New Guinea, there is an archaeological site, Huan Peninsula, in which artefacts were found and recently re-dated 44, 000 BP by O’Connell and Allen (2004, p. 840). At Lake Mungo in the southwest of the New South Wales, the deepest artefact dated between 45, 000 and 50,000 BP and human skeletons, such as the Mungo III dated around 42,000 BP were excavated, and it is estimated that this site was occupied by human 46,000 - 50,000 BP based on these findings (Bowler et al. 2003, pp. 838, 840). Therefore, if people initially occupied the northwest part of the Australian continent, around Madjedbebe, people spread to the north, south and east parts of the continent by the 45,000 BP. However, these evidences do not show that the closer site to Madjedbebe is, the closer date it has. In fact, although Riwi is the closest site to Madjedbebe among these examples, Lake Mungo has the closest date to Madjedbebe’s. Thus, archaeological evidence across Australia shows that people had already