The Peopling of Southeast Asia Australia (45¸000 to 15¸000 years ago)
Homo sapiens had appeared in South Asia¸ including Indonesia and the Philippines¸ by at least 50¸000 years ago. At the time¸ sea levels were much lower than today¸ so human settlement on Sahul¸ the exposed continental shelf¸ may have been concentrated in river valleys¸ along lake shores¸ and on the coasts. If there were technological changes associated with Homo sapiens¸ they probably involved more efficient ways of exploiting the rich and highly varied environments of the mainland and offshore islands. The coastlines that faced offshore were relatively benign waters that probably offered a bounty of fish and shellfish to supplement game and wild plant foods. Perhaps coastal peoples constructed simple rafts for fishing in shallows or used rudimentary dugout canoes for bottom fishing. At some point¸ some of these people crossed open water to Wallacea and Sahul. Saul was a landscape of dramatic contrasts¸ of rugged mountain chains and highland valleys in the north¸ and rolling semiarid lowlands over much of what is now Australia. Colonizing Sahul meant an open–water downwind passage of at least 62 miles (98 kilometers)¸ an entirely feasible proposition in simple watercraft in warm tropical waters and smooth seas.
The earliest documented human settlement of New Guinea comes from the Huon Peninsula in the southeastern corner of the island¸ where some 40¸000–year–old groundstone axes came to light. The Huon Peninsula faces New Britain Island¸ 30 miles (48 kilometers) offshore. Fishermen were living in caves on the island by at least 32¸000 years ago. Some 4000 years later¸ people had sailed southward between 81 to 112 miles (130 to 180 kilometers) to settle on Buka Island in the northern Solomon's. From Buka it would have been an easy matter to colonize the remainder of the Solomon chain¸ for the islands are separated by Sahul by at least 40¸000 years ago¸ using some form of quite effective watercraft.
Human occupation in what is now Australia is well documented by 35¸000 years ago¸ but may extend back 10¸000 to 15¸000 years earlier–the evidence is highly controversial. The Willandra Lakes region has yielded shell middens and campsites dating from perhaps as early as 37¸000 to about 26¸000 years ago. They included the skulls and limb bones of robustly built¸ anatomically modern people¸ the earliest human remains found in Australia. However¸ by 33¸000 years ago¸ human beings had crossed the low–lying strait that joined the island of Tasmania to the Australian mainland in the far south¸ to colonize the most southern region of the earth settled by Ice Age people. At the height of the glacial maximum¸ people lived in the rugged landscape of the Tasmanian interior¸ hunting red wallabies and ranging over a wide area for many centuries.
The ancient Australians adapted to a remarkable variety of late Ice Age environment¸ as did people living in northern China¸ Japan¸ and on coastlines bordering chilly Ice Age seas. We do not have the space to cover all the diverse societies of the late Ice Age world¸ but¸ on the other side of the globe from Australia¸ the hunter–gather societies of Europe and Eurasia offer insights into the remarkable adaptive and opportunistic skills of the inhabitants of this long–vanished world.
