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35,000
Carved tools discovered in Riwi Cave in the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia are thought to be between 35,000 and 46,000 years old which would make them the oldest artifacts of their type found in Australia. Archaeologists excavated eight tools made from kangaroo bone in the early 1990s. They might have been used as spear tips or for weaving -
37,000
Papuan and Aboriginal groups split, long before the continents are finally cut off from each other (around 8,000 years ago). -
43,000
Age of ‘Mungo Man’ (also known as Lake Mungo 3 human remains, or LM3), a hunter gatherer who lived in western NSW. His skeleton is the oldest known remains in Australia. Named after Lake Mungo National Park, NSW, 987 km west of Sydney, where his remains were found. Footprints discovered at Lake Mungo are believed to be 23,000 years old -
45,000
Research by the Australian National University suggests the most likely route taken by the first people to come to Australia was from southeast Asia to the Australian mainland. It identifies the least-cost route as going from Borneo to Sulawesi and through a series of smaller islands to Misool Island off the coast of West Papua. It follows roughly the same path as the northern route described by US anthropologist Joseph Birdsell in 1977. Proof for that route is still lacking because the islands. -
50,000
A study of ancient Aboriginal hair samples reveals distinct Aboriginal populations were present in Australia with little geographical movement for up to 50,000 years. The research found that Aboriginal people are the descendants of a single founding population that arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago, while Australia was still connected to New Guinea. Populations then spread rapidly – within 1,500 to 2,000 years – around the east and west coasts, meeting somewhere in South Australia.