Excellent article. We have republished a book 'Cape York - the Savage Frontier' which documents the history of Cape York since European settlement. In that location, mainland Aboriginal tribes fought mainland tribes to the death, and Torres Strait Islanders fought mainlanders, and New Guinea tribes similarly fought. This of course challenges the concept of Native Title (there was no such thing before the concept was introduced by English-speaking lawyers), and the author was subjected to hate mail as his honest history challenged the myths of Arcadian Bliss and the Noble Savage. An ancient Arab Proverb states 'He who speaks the truth must also own a fast horse'. But eventually truth will emerge and maybe we can recognise that everyone who lives today should be thankful to our forebears whoever they were (a wonderful amalgam of good and bad), stop living in the past, work towards a better future, and change our national anthem to something even our sportsmen and women can sing 'We're here because we're here because we're here, because we're here ...' repeated as the mood dictates.

This is a fascinating and timely article, the gist of which ought to be self-evident - that ancient Australia was visited, and perhaps partly settled, by many people from other regions over the past ten thousand years or so. For example,

* For forty out of the past fifty thousand years, Australia and Papua-New Guinea were one continuous land-mass. Perhaps the Torres Strait was still barely navigable only four or five thousand years ago - early seamen would have been nagivating a huge Arafuran bay. Note also:

- the sugar plant was developed by hybridising two grasses, one from New Guinea, the other from Sri Lanka,thanks to Austronesian seamen;

* Austronesian sailors, from the coastal areas of south-east Asia, have been cruising around the coast-lines across our region - from southern China throughout the island countries, to the coasts of India - for thousands of years. Over gthe past two thousadn years, they colonised the Pacific, reaching New Zealand around seven hundred years ago. After all, as we know, they were trading with Aboriginal groups, in trepang and sandalwood, for perhaps the last thousand years, from Macassar and Java and Timor.

* Chinese pottery and coins have been found along the north coast of Australia, dating back more than a thousand years.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that people have been bumping up against Australia for perhaps thousands of years. Those visits and colonisations may not continue in folk memory, but they may very well have left more intimate evidence in the ancestries of northern Aboriginal people.

Yes, perhaps Papua-New-Guineans, Macassarese, Timorese, Indians and Sri Lankans are the brothers and sisters - or at least the distant cousins - of many Aboriginal people today. Let's celebrate our diversity !

This may be a coincidence but in the 1970's a friend of my father was living up at Tennant Creek, we went on a driving holiday to the "Red Centre" and stopped to spend a few days with him on the way to Darwin.
As a treat he'd hired a very elderly Aboriginal couple he knew to guide us around the local area, show us the bush tucker and the wildlife etc.
Anyway there was a Men's site which we had to skirt around because we didn't have permission to go there, the explanation given was that this old guy wasn't allowed in there because even though he was a local he was thought to be part Indonesian and therefore not accepted by the other elders.
Now this guy was around 80 years old so he was at most one generation away from tribal, his wife even had part of her finger missing from a mourning ceremony, as I said it might be just a coincidence but it makes you think.

I agree with Loudmouth for once.Celebrate our diversity and have a unified nation.

The West has committed a lot of atrocities.I think the rise the BRICS Nations which includes India is a good foil to the unfetted aggression shown by NATO at the moment.We need a balance of powers and not this UN inspired one world Govt.

These type of discoveries are highly offensive to the aboriginal community and therefore will be illegal under Ms Roxon's new 'free speech' regime. And a good thing too....how dare mere facts get in the way of what we want to be true.

Yes, mhaze, I wonder how soon we will get to the point where truth is an offense ?

As I was reading somewhere today, an old Arab proverb observes that if you want to adhere to the truth, you need a fast horse.

Truth and reality - as objectively assessed in a Popperian sense - are full of surprises, and tend to beat manufactured stories, finely crafted and varnished as they may be, hands down.

Thank you, Binoy.

I am not sure where I read or heard the information below but believe it may have some merit which adds to the argument in the post.

I believe that certain Western Australian Aborigines have genetic material that was recently traced back to around the 16 and 1700's that have strong Dutch DNA material, this was most strongly correlated to Indigenous Australian's in the Mid West and Pilbara region, if I remember correctly, this was most likely attributed to ship wrecked Dutch survivors inter-breeding and known cases of Dutch sailors being abandoned by their Captain's along the west coast in years of old.

Similar DNA traits have also been noted in Central Australian Aborigine's with Portugese DNA from similar times.

A recent chinese map discovery (the map was said to be from around 1200AD) and based on an even earlier map sources from pre BC times also shows a land mass (Australia) and both Northern and Southern America adds to the mystery.

Reading the attacks on Walsh and accusations of being financed by
graziers etc rang bells for me in the similarity of the attacks on
those scientists that do not agree with AGW.
You have heard it, they are in the pay of oil companies and various odd
organisations.

It seems science is peopled by ordinary failable humans after all !

So, what is the author's point.

Is he trying to say that Indians were amongst the many visitors or migrants to Australia before the British colonised it? Or, is he trying to use small pieces from a scientific journal to claim that Indians were the first peoples in Australia as I have heard some migrants from India claim (not in an open forum and usually in an informal setting)? Opportunistic use of selective bits of debatable science does not make a fact.

Have a look at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-23/aboriginal-dna-dates-australian-arrival/2913010 where they date the arrival of Aboriginal people at 70,000 years ago minimum. The finds of artifacts in Tasmania that are claimed to be 40,000 years old - Mungo man's remains have been agreed to be at least 40,000 years old.

Walsh's funding by the pastoralists and media moguls indicates that whoever pays the piper gets to pick the tune. The tobacco industry was great at using selective and well remunerated scientists report to push their own agenda. The same goes for the asbestos industry.

The intent behind this article is not clear. What is the author trying to say - and whats in it for him?

Hi, Aka, it's great to hear from you again. i miss our 'discussions' ;)

I think the author is trying to say that Australia has been part of international links and interactions for a long time, certainly for four or more thousand years. Austronesians may have brought dingoes to Australia around 4-5,000 years ago. Various Asian sea-faring peoples, as well as people from Papua-New Guinea, may have been making landfall in Ausgtralia for perhaps even longer.

But nobody is suggesting that anybody was 'here' before Aboriginal people, who may have been here sixty, fifty, forty thousand years or more - it doesn't really matter. Maori have been in New Zealand for perhaps less than seven hundred years, yet are of course the Indigenous people of New Zealand, the first people, humans, to arrive there. Just as the Vikings are the Indigenous people of Iceland, having colonised it twelve hunded years ago.

We all have come out of Africa, a high proportion of our ancestors drifting out some fifty or sixty thousand years ago, (some much more recently) and slowly spreading along the southern Asian shores, across the Asian plains towards the east coast, some even into Europe. None of it could have been planned, of course, it just happened that way, imperceptibly, over tens of thousands of years.

What the author may have been alluding to is that, apart from all that, we are all humans, all capable of inter-mixing - our DNAs are all compatible and none of us are so unique or 'different' as to be outside the bounds of what it is to be human.

Let's celebrate our commonalities as well as our differentiations :)

Joe

I have read that genes found in Bangladeshis matched those of Aborigines. When you consider that as late as 1802 Maccassans as seen by Flinders visited the North of Australia then it is not implausible that the very first humans in Australia came via Asia. What puzzles me so much is why there hasn't been any development here as there had everywhere else.
Even the closest neighbours, the people of New Guinea built houses & canoes & artefacts. Was the isolation of Australia so sudden that time literally stood still ? It is indeed highly interesting.

Individual, I recommend you read Bill Gammage's book, 'The biggest estate on earth' if you are genuinely curious. It is a good starting point.

Anna Haebitch's book 'Broken Circles' is also a good start for the social aspects of colonsiation.

History has been heavily edited to fit within the coloniser's political intention but the early European explorers journals show that there was indeed developement, houses, villages, granaries, farming etc. These accounts have just been left out of the popular historical accounts.

Google can also shed some enlightenment.

Happy reading.

@AKA,

<<History has been heavily edited to fit within the coloniser's political intention ..>>

Yes, but in recent times the editing has been all the other way--to fit in with activists ambitions.

Which might explain why certain groups/individuals get very uncomfortable when they hear of findings that reveal successive waves of early Australians.

Hi Aka,

With respect, you do write some rubbish sometimes. And the point of the article has nothing whatever to do with colonisation.

If we can draw any generalisations from it, they may touch on the obvious point that even though the Australian landmass was more isolated from other human interactions and developments over fifty or more thousand years, it still eventually benefited from minimal contacts with Austronesians, Papua-New-Guineans and perhaps others, in the long years leading up to the incorporation of the first Australians into the activities of the rest of the world by the British.

And perhaps it is suggesting that nobody is unique, or their culture so perfect that they have not benefitted from interaction with other people.

Including their relations from Africa and India ;)

Joe

"The biggest estate on Earth"
Aka,
I am reading that now, will get back when finished, has some valid points right at the start.

I think you will find it very informative individual.

I found it very heavy on solid references that are so important when presenting something that challenges common myths.