AboutJohn Shea Expertise Questions about Old World prehistoric archaeology (especially Stone Age) of Europe, Africa, and Western Asia, prehistoric human and hominid behavior, primitive technology, origin of modern humans, extinction of the Neandertals.
Experience
Publications Journal of Field Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Lithic Technology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Mitekufat HaEven (Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society), Paléorient, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, American Anthropologist, Geoarchaeology.
Education/Credentials Ph.D (Anthropology) Harvard University, 1991.
BA (Archaeology) Boston University, 1982.
Question I am interested to know how the aboriginal people got to Australia. I am familiar with the 'out of Africa' theory, that the ancestors of all humanity originated in sub-saharan Africa. I can see how people would have migrated to everywhere else in the world except Australia, as everywhere else can be reached on foot. Did the aboriginies have boats that long ago?
Answer Dear James
Australia was populated by a dispersal of humans who left Northeast Africa, probably around 50,000-100,000 years ago. This is most strongly suggested by studies of variation among recent human DNA. There is not a lot of archaeological evidence for this dispersal because a lot of the coastline of south Asia has been flooded by sea level rise over the last 20,000 years. There are, however, archaeological sites in New Guinea and New Ireland in excess of 40,000 years that suggest that by that time humans had effective watercraft capable of voyages in the tens of kilometers. (New Guinea and New Ireland are to the East of "Wallace's Line" a biogeographic frontier consisting of a deep trench that has not separated the islands east of it from mainland Eurasia for tens of millions of years. The oldest evidence for a human presence in Australia dates to around 35,000-40,000 years ago. Just to be clear, though, this dispersal was probably not a case of planned expeditions like the European colonization, but rather small movements of hunter-gatherer-fisher communities played out over prolonged time periods. Need a quick overview? Josephine Flood's Archaeology of the Dreamtime is a good read. For more authoritative overviews see Johan Kamminga and John Mulvaney's Prehistory of Australia.
Aborigines in Australia had relativley simple watercraft at the time Europeans encountered them, but it is always possible that more complex ocean-faring technologies were abandoned in favor of a focus on more terrestrial resources in recent time periods.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
John Shea
