The Lost Civilisations of Australia: Challenging the Aboriginal First Occupancy Claim, By Brian Simpson and Paul Walker

A journal article in Quaternary Science Reviews has reported the discovery of a "lost" civilisation which was 1.6 times the size of Britain, off the coast of Australia. One of the key things for our political purposes in opposing the Aboriginal land rights ideology is the crucial date of the civilisation: people, presumably humans, Homo sapiens lived there up to 2.5 million years ago. That is important, since the main argument for the Aboriginal land rights claims, and the whole package of ideologies we see being rolled out in the state "Voice" in Victoria, assumes that the 60,000 year figure of continuous occupation gives some sort of prior, irrefutable right. Even so, that 60,000 figure has been challenged by genetic evidence, discussed previously at Alor.org.

The archipelago, which was under water, is located off the coast of the northern region of Kimberley on a landmass that connects to New Guinea. Before its drowning, it is thought that it may have supported between 50,000 to 500,000 people.

The academic authors do not spell out the consequences of this, but such population numbers could not be supported merely from hunting game. Some sort of agriculture would have been practiced, quite unlike the culture of Australian Aborigines. This would justify the hypothesis that the people differed racially from Aboriginals. And as the land mass was a part of Australia, this therefore refutes the claim of Aboriginals being the first occupants of Australia! We can wonder what other discoveries lie out there for open-minded archaeologists to discover!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lost-civilization-discovered-off-kimberley-coast-of-australia

"A lost civilization more than 1.6 times the size of the United Kingdom has been discovered off the coast of Australia, according to a new study from the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

According to the journal, "this now-drowned region," which "existed as an extensive archipelago," was very likely to have provided crucial resources and refuge to human populations living more than 2.5 million years ago.

According to the research compiled by the journal, study of the now-submerged continental shelf found evidence of an inland sea, saltwater and freshwater lakes.

The shelf is located off the coast of the northern region of Kimberley on a landmass that connects to New Guinea.

"We contend that the presence of an extensive archipelago on the Northwest Shelf… facilitated the successful dispersal of the first maritime explorers from Wallacea, creating a familiar environment for their maritime economies to adapt to the vast terrestrial continent of Sahul," the journal says.

The shelf, once thought to be a desert, could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people and may have served as a bridge for people to walk to Australia before it became the massive island it is today."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379123004663

For most of the period of human occupation of Sahul (the combined Pleistocene landmass of Australia and New Guinea), lower sea levels exposed an extensive area of the northwest of the Australian continent, connecting the Kimberley and Arnhem Land into one vast area. Our analysis of high-resolution bathymetric data shows this now-drowned region existed as an extensive archipelago in Marine Isotope Stage 4, transforming in Marine Isotope Stage 2 into a fully exposed shelf containing an inland sea adjacent to a large freshwater lake. These were encircled by deep gorges and escarpments that likely acted as important resource zones and refugia for human populations at that time. Demographic modelling shows the shelf had a fluctuating potential carrying capacity through Marine Isotope Stages 4–2, with the capability to support 50–500 k people at various times. Two periods of rapid global sea level rise at 14.5–14.1 ka (Meltwater Pulse 1A), and between 12 ka and 9 ka, resulted in the rapid drowning of ∼50% of the Northwest Shelf. This likely caused a retreat of human populations, registering as peaks in occupational intensity at archaeological sites. We contend that the presence of an extensive archipelago on the Northwest Shelf in Marine Isotope Stage 4 facilitated the successful dispersal of the first maritime explorers from Wallacea, creating a familiar environment for their maritime economies to adapt to the vast terrestrial continent of Sahul.