@Paul 1405,

It looks like someone beat me to it. But the Indian/Dingo connection has been known for some time.

I lived in India for some years and was struck by how Dravidian or southern Indians were the spitting image of some groups of Aborigines and how their native dog looked like the Dingo.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/australia/four-thousand-years-ago-indians-landed-in-australia.aspx

rhoss,

I had the same experience, whilst in Ooty (Udagamandalam, Tamil Nadu, India.), I saw an Aboriginal bloke that I knew well, went over to speak to him and as I got closer realized that I'd made a mistake as it wasn't him.
The bloke that I'd approached was talking in Tamil but having seen me approach, looking directly at him and then stop, he switched to English and asked could he help.
I explained what had happened and he and his friends laughed and said that I wasn't the first one to make the same mistake.

My good friend the late Guboo Ted Thomas, an Elder of the Yuin tribe, had a somewhat similar experience, he was visiting Southern India and people wouldn't believe that he wasn't an Indian.

Robroy & RhRoss,

Yes, it's possible that different groups of people have been migrating into Australia since the beginning - there's no reason to think why migration from the Malay Peninsula down through PNG ever stopped. And maybe even back up again. I think John Clark had a skit about those movements in the late seventies.

East-coast India (the Coromandel Coast) and S-E Asia have been connected by traders and seamen for many thousands of years. Such seamen, being able to stay at sea for months in more recent times, would have been likely to have at least visited intermittently all along our north coast, from south of Broome (desert) across to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

What is interesting is how much (or how little) influence they may have had on the technology etc. of the Aboriginal groups along the north coast. They would have been familiar with much of the plant-life of northern Australia and how to make more use of it by boiling in pots, for example (which they could do on-board their ships).

But I don't think Aboriginal groups in the north (or anywhere) ever took up pottery-making, either from Torres Strait people or more distant visitors - and so, a huge range of otherwise edible plants were not available to traditional diets. If people here had taken up pottery-making, they could have made use of the leaves of kangaroo-grass, for example, which are far more nutritious than their seed. And if they had been able to make better use of kangaroo-grass, their population could have exploded.

Cheers,

Joe

@Joe,

Yes, smaller populations for whatever reasons would have removed the impetus for change and development. Most humans would just keep doing what they are doing if they can get away with it. Less effort involved.

@IsMise,

Well, it is ridiculous to think that the many diverse groups of peoples here in 1788, without a common language and often no common language source, would all be descended from the same group of Homo Sapiens who first set foot in the place. In fact, none of them may have been.

The longevity of these groups, first called Indians by the British, then Natives and then Aboriginal, is unknown and where claimed, simply guestimate.

Not that it matters in the least in a modern democracy where all citizens are equal and their race and ancestral longevity are irrelevant.

RhRoss,

The thing about technology, i.e. any advances from Old Stone Age to Middle and/or New Stone Age, is that the means to get food improve. We forget that until very recently, the seas and rivers were teeming with fish and whales and seals, etc., and the forests with bears and wolves (in Europe) and all manner of other creatures everywhere. As the technology for catching/killing prey improve, human populations can grow. These days of course, technology has started to out-strip supply, enabling fishing fleets to stip oceans, for example.

So with very low levels of technology (sorry, Paul), Aboriginal people - for all their own perceptions otherwise - probably had little impact on the animal/fish/bird/plant populations. So while early observers here might have made the mistake of estimating Aboriginal populations by the plentifulness of animal life, they had the wrong end of the stick: animal populations vary with the ability of predators, like us, to diminish their size, i.e. their hunting technology, not the other way around. You can catch only so many fish by wading through the shallows with a spear, even if the rivers are full of them.

As well, of course, Aboriginal people did not develop any means to preserve food although they could have done, if they had twigged to salting meat and fish. Plenty of salt lakes in Australia :) That would have tided people over for the quieter winter months, when animals are sheltering and fish are semi-comatose in the depths.

Joe