Then, around 2120,2000 years ago, the group that populated Australasia branched off from Eurasians and made their way to Sahul.
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Aboriginal and Papuan ancestors then split from the single migrating group more than 58,000 years ago, reaching the supercontinent of Sahul (modern day Australia, Tasmania and Papua New Guinea) around 50,000 years ago.
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Probably the first group of humans to cross an ocean, they reached "Sahul"—the supercontinent that was made up of modern day Tasmania, Australia, and New Guinea together—and then split apart about 37,000 years ago.
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Until about 7,000 to 2148,275 years ago, these countries were connected by a land bridge to form a continent called Sahul — the source of the theory that ancient humans left Africa to populate the world in multiple waves.
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"We don't know who these people were, but they were a distant relative of Denisovans, and the Papuan/Australian ancestors probably encountered them close to Sahul," said Eske Willerslev, a professor at St John's College and the University of Cambridge.
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In 2000, Willerslev's analysis of a single, 2120-year-old lock of hair from an Australian Aboriginal man detected enough genetic differences from modern Asian populations that the researchers concluded Sahul must have been populated by a group of ancient humans who left Africa in an earlier wave, traveling south through India to eventually reach it.
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Sunda and Sahul. Geologically, the Sahul Shelf is part of the continental shelf of the Australian continent, lying off the northwest coast of mainland Australia.
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The Australian mainland, New Guinea, Tasmania and many smaller islands comprised a single land mass. This continent is now referred to sometimes as Sahul. Between Sahul and Sundaland – a peninsula of South East Asia that comprised present-day Malaysia and western and northern Indonesia – there remained an archipelago of islands known as Wallacea. The water gaps between these islands, Sahul and Sundaland were considerably narrower and fewer in number.
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Applications of the latter include recent work directed toward understanding the Pleistocene colonization of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia/New Guinea).O'Connell, J. F., & Allen, J. (2012). The restaurant at the end of the universe: modelling the colonisation of Sahul. Australian Archaeology, 74:5-17.
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Lydekker's Line, a biogeographical line, runs along the edge of Sahul Shelf where it drops off into the deep waters of the Wallacea biogeographical area. Wallacea sits in a gap between the Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf, part of the continental shelf of Southeast Asia.
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Map of Sunda and Sahul Sunda or Sundaland was a prehistoric landmass that consisted of mainland and western Maritime Southeast Asia. It was partially submerged starting around 18,000 years ago and continuing till about 5000 BC. Sahul and Sunda were points of early human migrations after leaving Africa.
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The Sahul Shelf proper stretches northwest from Australia much of the way under the Timor Sea towards Timor, ending where the seabed begins descending into the Timor Trough. To the northeast, the Sahul Shelf merges into the Arafura Shelf, which runs from the northern coast of Australia under the Arafura Sea north to New Guinea. The Aru Islands rise from the Arafura Shelf. The Sahul Shelf is sometimes taken to also include the Rowley Shelf to the southwest, girding the north coast of Western Australia as far as North West Cape.
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Al-Sahul region Al-Saḥūl () is both a town and a wadi located between the city of Ibb and al-Makhadir District in Ibb Governorate, Yemen. It was known as Mikhlaf as-Saḥūl. Al-Sahul was called Miṣr al-Yaman because of its wealth on corn. It is famous for its white cotton clothes, the Saḥūlīyya or Saḥūlī.
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Mainland Australia showing the continental Sahul Shelf (light blue) extending to the islands of New Guinea in the north, the island of Timor in the northwest, and Tasmania in the south The continent of Australia is sometimes known by the names Sahul, Australinea, or Meganesia to distinguish it from the country of Australia, and consists of the landmasses which sit on Australia's continental plate. This includes mainland Australia, Tasmania, and the island of New Guinea, which comprises Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea (a province of Indonesia). The name "Sahul" takes its name from the Sahul Shelf, which is part of the continental shelf of the Australian continent. The term Oceania, originally a "great division" of the world, was replaced by the concept of Australia as a continent in the 1950s.
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The continent of Australia, sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul (), Australinea, or Meganesia to distinguish it from the country of Australia, consists of the landmasses which sit on Australia's continental plate. The name "Sahul" takes its name from the Sahul Shelf, which is part of the continental shelf of the Australian continent. The continent includes mainland Australia, Tasmania, and the island of New Guinea, which consists of Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea (a province of Indonesia). Situated in the geographical region of Oceania, Australia is the smallest of the seven traditional continents.
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New Guinea is a large island located north of Australia, and south-east of Asia. It is part of the Australian Plate, known as Sahul, and once formed part of the supercontinent Gondwana. The origin of most New Guinea fauna is closely linked to Australia. Gondwana began to break up 140 million years ago, and Sahul separated from Antarctica 50 million years ago.
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The name "Sahull" or "Sahoel" appeared on 17th century Dutch maps applied to a submerged sandbank between Australia and Timor. On his 1803 map, Matthew Flinders noted the "Great Sahul Shoal" where Malays came from Makassar to fish for trepang (sea cucumber). The name Sahul Shelf () was coined in 1919 by G.A.F. Molengraaff, an authority on the geology of the then Dutch East Indies.
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Although discovered in 1982 by Ray Leggett,Unmack PJ (2016) Fishes of Sahul, 30(3): 1025–1032 (September 2016) the species was never formally described as its taxonomy was unclear.Unmack PJ and Hammer MP (2015) Fishes of Sahul, 29(4): 933–936 (December 2015) However, genetic analysis supports the Running River rainbowfish as a distinct species, rather than a colour variety of the eastern rainbowfish.
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However, a 1999 study failed to find clear indications of a single shared genetic origin between the two populations, suggesting multiple waves of migration into Sahul with distinct ancestries.
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However, like marine farmed shrimp, M. rosenbergii is also susceptible to a variety of viral or bacterial diseases,Tonguthai, K.: Diseases of the Freshwater Prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii , AAHRI Newsletter 4(2), Aquatic Animal Health Research Institute, Bangkok University; December 1997. including white tail disease,Sahul Hameed, A. S.: White tail disease of Macrobrachium rosenbergii, NACA, 2003. also called "white muscle disease".Sahul Hameed, A. S.: White Tail Disease - Disease Card, NACA, 2005.
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The Australian continent and Sunda were points of early human migrations after leaving Africa. Recent research points to a planned migration of hundreds of people using bamboo rafts, which eventually landed on Sahul.
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The existence of an extensive Sahul Shelf was suggested in 1845 by George Windsor Earl who called it the "Great Australian Bank" and noted that macropods (kangaroos) were found on Australia, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands. Earl also suggested the existence of the Sunda Shelf (which he called the "Great Asiatic Bank") covering the eastern Malay archipelago and Malay peninsula. In the 1970s, biogeographers coined "Sundaland" and "Sahul" as contrastive names for the continental regions extending from the adjacent shelves.
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The Lancefield Swamp fossil site is important in the debate over the time of and causes of the extinction of Australian Megafauna. Humans are estimated to have arrived in Pleistocene Australia, or Sahul, at anything from 60 ka to about 45 ka. Initial radiocarbon dates yielded estimates of 31ka, a comparatively young age approaching the Last Glacial Maximum. Horton therefore claimed Lancefield as a decisive example of the survival of Australian Megafauna for many thousands of years after the arrival of modern humans in prehistoric Sahul.
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Sailors of Melanesia in the Pacific Ocean, 1846 Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific The people of Melanesia have a distinctive ancestry. Along with the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, the Southern Dispersal theory indicates they emigrated from Africa between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago and dispersed along the southern edge of Asia. The limit of this ancient migration was Sahul, the continent formed when Australia and New Guinea were united by a land bridge as a result of low sea levels. The first migration into Sahul came over 40,000 years ago.
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Pigs, several additional species of rats, and the ancestor of the New Guinea singing dog were introduced with human colonization. Prior to the 1970s, archaeologists called the single Pleistocene landmass by the name Australasia, although this word is most often used for a wider region that includes lands, such as New Zealand, which are not on the same continental shelf. In the early 1970s, they introduced the term Greater Australia for the Pleistocene continent. Then, at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, they extended the name Sahul from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent.
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In 2017, Farr was awarded a European Research Council Horizon grant (2018-2022), Australasian Colonization Research: Origins of Seafaring to Sahul, for a multidisciplinary study on the earliest evidence of seafaring and the colonization of Australasia. Farr's current research focuses on the continental shelf off northwest Australia.
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When sea levels were low during the last glacial maximum, the Arafura Shelf, the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait formed a large flat land bridge connecting Australia and New Guinea and easing migration of humans from Asia into Australia. The combined landmass formed the continent of Sahul.
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At the end of the last glacial maximum and the associated rise in sea levels, Tasmania became separated from the Australian mainland 12,000 YBP, and New Guinea 6,500–8,500 YBP by the inundation of the Sahul Shelf. Fossil remains in Australia date to around 3,500 YBP and no dingo remains have been uncovered in Tasmania, so the dingo is estimated to have arrived in Australia at a time between 3,500 and 12,000 YBP. To reach Australia through the Malay Archipelago even at the lowest sea level of the last glacial maximum, a journey of at least 50 km over open sea between ancient Sunda and Sahul was necessary, so they must have accompanied humans on boats.
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Before the 1970s, the single Pleistocene landmass was called Australasia, derived from the Latin , meaning "southern", although this word is most often used for a wider region that includes lands like New Zealand that are not on the same continental shelf. In the early 1970s, the term Greater Australia was introduced for the Pleistocene continent. Then at a 1975 conference and consequent publication, the name Sahul was extended from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent. In 1984 W. Filewood suggested the name Meganesia, meaning "great island" or "great island-group", for both the Pleistocene continent and the present-day lands, and this name has been widely accepted by biologists.e.g.
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The Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf today. The area in between is called "Wallacea". A less rigid version of the earlier wave migration theory is the Core Population Theory first proposed by anthropologist Felipe Landa Jocano of the University of the Philippines. This theory holds that there weren't clear discrete waves of migration.
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The continental coastline therefore extended much further out into the Timor Sea than it does today, and Australia and New Guinea formed a single landmass (known as Sahul), connected by an extensive land bridge across the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait. It is theorised that these original peoples first navigated the shorter distances from and between the Sunda Islands to reach Sahul; then via the land bridge to spread out through the continent. Archaeological evidence indicates human habitation at the upper Swan River, Western Australia by about 40,000 years ago; Tasmania (also at that time connected via a land bridge) was reached at least 30,000 years ago. The ancestral Australian Aboriginal peoples were thus long established and continued to develop, diversify and settle through much of the continent.
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To the north and east of New Guinea, the islands of Near Oceania (the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons) were likewise never connected to Sahul by dry land, for deep-water trenches also separate these from the Australian continental shelf. It seems that human colonization of this region was most likely effected during the interval between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, although some researchers would push the possible dates earlier. But the key point is that even when the oceans were at their lowest levels, there were always significant open-water gaps between the islands of Wallacea, and therefore, the arrival of humans into Sahul, necessitated over- water transport. This was also the case of the expansion of humans beyond New Guinea into the archipelagoes of Near Oceania.
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Sahul. Geologically, the Sunda Shelf is a southeast extension of the continental shelf of Southeast Asia. Major landmasses on the shelf include the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Madura, Bali and their surrounding smaller islands.Zvi Ben-Avraham, "Structural framework of the Sunda Shelf and vicinity" Structural Geology (January 1973) abstract; It covers an area of approximately 1.85 million km2.va Bemmelen, R.W. (1949).
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Present sea levels submerge a number of Pleistocene paleo river systems that drained much of Sundaland during the last glacial maximum 18,000 to 20,000 years ago. To the east of the Sunda Shelf is the Sahul Shelf. Separating these two regions of shallow seas is Wallacea, which encompasses Sulawesi and the thousands of smaller islands making up Nusa Tenggara and Maluku.
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In 1910, Sahul from Saint Lucia arrived in the area and discovered gold. His discovery resulted in the establishment of the village of Saül whose population peaked at 800 people. Between 1930 and 1946, Saül was part of the Territory of Inini which did not provide education for its inhabitants. Saül was one of the first villages to receive a primary school.
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Reaching Kilu Cave required crossing the Wallace Line, reaching the Sahul and making further sea crossings to reach Greater Bougainville. Archaeologically, the people at Greater Bougainville appeared to live in relative isolation after arriving at the island, with the isolation possibly punctuated by the external introduction of Phalanger orientalis and Canarium indicum. This relative isolation ended with the arrival of the Lapita people.
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It has been estimated that from a population of 2,000 to 5,000 individuals in Africa, only a small group, possibly as few as 150 to 1,000 people, crossed the Red Sea. The group would have travelled along the coastal route around Arabia and Persia to India relatively rapidly, within a few thousand years. From India, they would have spread to Southeast Asia ("Sundaland") and Oceania ("Sahul").
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Migration of Haplogroup C (Y-DNA) Haplogroup B-477 took South route after the Out of Africa through Indian subcontinent to Sahul Shelf.崎谷満『DNA・考古・言語の学際研究が示す新・日本列島史』（勉誠出版 2009年）(in Japanese) C-M38 was born 49,600 years before present around New Guinea.
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However, Wall et al. (2013) stated that they found no evidence for Denisovan admixture in East Asians. Findings indicate that the Denisovan gene flow event happened to the common ancestors of Aboriginal Filipinos, Aboriginal Australians, and New Guineans. New Guineans and Australians have similar rates of Denisovan admixture, indicating that interbreeding took place prior to their common ancestors' entry into Sahul (Pleistocene New Guinea and Australia), at least 44,000 years ago.
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The Arafura Sea is bordered by the Torres Strait and through that the Coral Sea to the east, the Gulf of Carpentaria to the south, the Timor Sea to the west and the Banda and Ceram seas to the northwest. It is long and wide. The depth of the sea is mainly , with the depth increasing to the west. The sea lies over the Arafura Shelf, part of the Sahul Shelf.
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Andrew B. G. Bush and Richard G. Fairbanks, "Exposing the Sunda shelf: Tropical responses to eustatic sea level change", Journal of Geophysical Research 108 (2003). W. Earle in 1845 was the first to describe the general features of the Sunda and Sahul Shelves, which he termed the "Great Asiatic Bank" and the "Great Australian Bank" respectively.Earle, W. (1845). On the physical structure and arrangement of the Indonesian Archipelago.
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Danaus petilia, the lesser wanderer, is a species of butterfly in the nymphalid Danainae subfamily. It is a migratory species which is found in AustraliaDanaus petilia, Tree of Life Project and in tropical countries. Previously considered a subspecies of Danaus chrysippus, this species came about through allopatric speciation. The deep sea barrier called Lydekker's Line, located by the Molluccas and the Sahul Shelf, was what separated Danaus petilia from Danaus chrysippus cratippus.
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The Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf today. The area in between is called "Wallacea". Sundaland (also called the Sundaic region) is a biogeographical region of Southeastern Asia corresponding to a larger landmass that was exposed throughout the last 2.6 million years during periods when sea levels were lower. It includes the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, as well as the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra and their surrounding small islands.
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The lowland rainforest of the Western New Guinea The region is from east to west and from north to south. It has an area of , which equates to approximately 22% of Indonesia's land area. The border with Papua New Guinea mostly follows the 141st meridian east, with one section defined by the Fly River. The island of New Guinea was once part of the Australian landmass and lies on the continent of Sahul.
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It eventually resulted in modern humans migrating from Sunda over Wallacea to Sahul (Southeast Asia to Australia). Since then, waves of migration have resettled people and, clearly, the Indian Ocean littoral had been inhabited long before the first civilisations emerged. 5000–6000 years ago six distinct cultural centres had evolved around the Indian Ocean: East Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia, the Malay World, and Australia; each interlinked to its neighbours.
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The ethnic Tagahas, warlike and aggressive claim they are the descendants of soldiers. Additionally, the local native women were themselves descendants of previous waves of migrations of Austronesian people from mainland China and Taiwan to Sahul, and also during the Mongol Empire Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan, in 1292, during which Sulu and Northern Borneo became a province under the Mongol Empire.Rutter, Owen (1922).British North Borneo: An Account of its History, Resources and Native Tribes.
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The snubfin dolphin is considered endemic to Australia. In the Pacific Ocean off Townsville, about 200 individual snubfin dolphins were found. The range of the species is expected to extend to Papua New Guinea; that is, O. heinsohni is endemic to the northern half of the Sahul Shelf, but the majority live in Australian waters. They are found all along the northern coasts of Australia, from Broome, Western Australia, to the Brisbane River in Southeast Queensland.
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During the early-mid Oligocene, the genus Varanus dispersed in two directions. The southeastern dispersion into Indo-Australia likely occurred shortly after the collision of the Asian and Australian tectonic plates, which created a connection between Sahul and Sundaland, i.e., an Indonesian land bridge that would have facilitated the dispersal of monitor lizards into Australia. The existence of this land bridge also likely allowed the Indo-Australopapuan clade including many Odatria species to disperse back into Indonesia.
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Borneo and Bali lie on the western, Asian side. A second biological dividing line is Lydekker's Line, which similarly separates islands isolated by surrounding deep water from those associated with the Sahul Shelf of the Australian continent. Islands between the two lines (e.g. Sulawesi, the Moluccas and Lombok through Timor) form the biogeographical area of Wallacea, a transition zone between the Indomalayan and Australasian realms populated entirely by aerial or oceanic dispersal (although defined here as part of the Australasian realm).
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It is sparsely populated, with a population of only 245,353, fewer than half as many people as Tasmania. The archaeological history of the Northern Territory may have begun over 60,000 years ago when humans first settled this region of the Sahul Continent. Reportedly the Makassan traders began a relationship with the indigenous people of the Northern Territory around the trading of trepang from at least the 18th century. The coast of the territory was first seen by Europeans in the 17th century.
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This indicates that there was marked reproductive separation between Denisovan populations. Based on the modern distribution of Denisovan DNA, Denisovans may have crossed the Wallace Line into Wallacea and also Sahul (New Guinea and Australia), with little back-migration to west of the line. These Denisovans may have needed to cross large bodies of water. Using exponential distribution analysis on haplotype lengths, Jacobs calculated introgression into modern humans occurred about 29,900 years ago with the second population; and 45,700 years ago in the third population.
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The Australian humpback dolphin (Sousa sahulensis) is a species of humpback dolphin and the fourth recognized humpback dolphin species chronologically. The specific name sahulensis is derived from the Sahul Shelf, located between northern Australia and southern New Guinea, where the Australian humpback dolphins occur. The species was scientifically described on 31 July 2014 in the journal Marine Mammal Science. As of August 2014, there is no population estimate for the Australian humpback dolphin, but based on available sighting data it is put to "a few thousand".
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The origin of flora in Indonesia is heavily affected by geographical and geological events in Asian continent and 8Australasian continent (now Australia). The present New Guinea island was connected with the present Australia continent, forming a supercontinent called the southern supercontinent Gondwana. This supercontinent began to break up 140 million years ago, and the New Guinea region (previously known as Sahul) moved towards the equator. As a result, animals from New Guinea travelled to Australian continent and vice versa, creating many different species living in different ecosystems.
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Wallacea is a transitional region between Asia and Australia. It has a flora of mostly Indomalayan origin, with elements from Australasia, with a reptile and bird fauna of mainly Australian origin and no large mammal fauna. The Aru Islands and the Indonesian portion of New Guinea are connected by the shallow Sahul Shelf to the Australian continent, and were connected by land during the ice ages. New Guinea has a flora of chiefly Asian origin with many Australasian elements, and a fauna similar to that of Australia.
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People appear to have arrived by sea during a period of glaciation, when New Guinea and Tasmania were joined to the continent of Australia. The continental coastline extended much further out into the Timor Sea, and Australia and New Guinea formed a single landmass (known as Sahul), connected by an extensive land bridge across the Arafura Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria and Torres Strait. Nevertheless, the sea still presented a major obstacle so it is theorised that these ancestral people reached Australia by island hopping. Two routes have been proposed.
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Tessellated basalt rock platforms lie at the base of the cliff because The Gap is bordered to the south and west by an older sequence of largely low-grade metamorphic and granitic rocks of the Lachlan Fold Belt. Northwards these rocks pass into the Hunter Region sequence that is transitional between the Sydney Basin and New England Fold Belt. The Gap itself forms a sequence that continues offshore to the edge of the Sahul Shelf. The total maximum thickness of rock formations within the Sydney Basin are in depth ranges of .
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To reach Australia through the Malay Archipelago even at the lowest sea level of the Last Glacial Maximum, a journey of at least 50 km over open sea between ancient Sunda and Sahul was necessary, indicating that the dingo arrived by boat. In 2016, a literature review found that: In 2020, the first whole genome analysis of the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog was undertaken. The study indicates that the ancestors of these two dogs arose in southern East Asia, migrated through Island Southeast Asia 9,900 YBP, and reached Australia 8,300 YBP.
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The Gap itself forms a sequence that continues offshore to the edge of the Sahul Shelf. Sydney features two major soils; sandy soils (such as red, brown and yellow podsols, grey and brown tenosols, lithosols, kandosols and kurosols) which originate from the Hawkesbury sandstone and have low fertility, and clay soils (which are from shales and volcanic rocks), though some soils may be a mixture of the aforementioned soils (such as sandy clay loams and silty clay loam).Gray, J.M. & Murphy, B.W. (2002), Predicting Soil Distribution, Joint Dept. of Land & Water Conservation (DLWC) & Aust.
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At these times New Guinea, Tasmania, the Aru Islands, and some smaller islands were joined to the Australian mainland. Biogeographers call this enlarged Greater Australian continent Sahul (Ballard, 1993) or Meganesia. West of Wallacea, the vast Sunda Shelf was also exposed as dry land, greatly extending the Southeast Asian mainland to include the Greater Sunda Islands of Sundaland. However, the islands of Wallacea (primarily Sulawesi, Ambon, Ceram, Halmahera and the Lesser Sunda Islands) always remained an island world, imposing a barrier to the dispersal of terrestrial vertebrates, including early hominids.
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The continent of Sahul before the rising ocean sundered Australia and New Guinea after the last ice age. The first inhabitants, from whom the Papuan people are probably descended, adapted to the range of ecologies and, in time, developed one of the earliest known agricultures. Remains of this agricultural system, in the form of ancient irrigation systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, are being studied by archaeologists. Research indicates that the highlands were an early and independent center of agriculture, with evidence of irrigation going back at least 10,000 years.
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The remainder of the sea is much shallower, much of it averaging less than deep, as it overlies the Sahul Shelf, part of the Australian continental shelf. The Big Bank Shoals is an area on the sloping seabed between the continental shelf and the Timor Trough where a number of submerged banks are located. The ecosystem of the shoals differs significantly from the deeper waters surrounding them. In May 2010, it was announced that a crater about wide has been discovered on the seabed of the Timor Sea.
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When sea levels fell during the Pleistocene ice age, including the last glacial maximum about 18,000 years ago, the Sahul Shelf was exposed as dry land. Evidence of the shoreline of this time has been identified in locations which now lie 100 to 140 metres below sea level. A Flash-based interactive timeline of sea level changes was developed by Monash University in the 2000s. The Arafura Shelf formed a land bridge between Australia, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands, and these lands share many Marsupial mammals, land birds, and freshwater fish as a result.
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He was influential in the science of biogeography. In 1895 he delineated the biogeographical boundary through Indonesia, known as Lydekker's Line, that separates Wallacea on the west from Australia-New Guinea on the east. It follows the edge of the Sahul Shelf, an area from New Guinea to Australia of shallow water with the Aru Islands on its edge. Along with Wallace's Line and Huxley's Line it indicates the definite effect of geology on the biogeography of the region, something not seen so clearly in other parts of the world.
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Beck was appointed a lecturer at the University of New England in 1986, within the Department of Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology. A major area of research of Beck has been on plants and gender archaeology, drawing on archaeological fieldwork, ethnographic study, and archaeological science. Beck co-edited the first book to deal with archaeobotanical studies in Sahul, Plants in Australian Archaeology, with Anne Clarke and Lesley Head. Her significant contributions to archaeology are the study of plants and gender in archaeology, place studies, work on archaeology and Higher Education, and service to the archaeological profession.
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A carved face The Lena Hara cave is the main cave of a system of solutional caves in the Lautém District at the eastern tip of East Timor (Timor-Leste), close to the village of Tutuala. Others are Ile Kére Kére and Jerimalai. Lene Hara has provided evidence that Timor has been occupied by humans since at least 35,000 years BP and thus is evidence that humans crossed the waters of Wallacea between the Pleistocene continents of Sunda and Sahul. The cave was first investigated in 1963 by Portuguese anthropologist Antonio de Almeida, when Timor Leste was still under Portuguese rule.
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The Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf during the past 12,000 years: Tasmania separated from the mainland 12,000 YBP, and New Guinea separated from the mainland 6,500–8,500 YBP. Whole genome sequencing indicates that dogs are a genetically divergent subspecies of the grey wolf, the dog is not a descendant of the extant grey wolf, but these are sister taxa which share a common ancestor from a ghost population of wolves that disappeared at the end of the Late Pleistocene. The dog and the dingo are not separate species. The dingo and the Basenji are basal members of the domestic dog clade.
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This supercontinent began to break up 140 million years ago, and the new Australia-New Guinea continent (previously known as Sahul) moved towards the equator. During this period, animals from New Guinea travelled to Australia and vice versa, creating many different species living in different ecosystems. The influence of the Asian continental landmass, on the other hand, was the result of the reformation of the Laurasian supercontinent, which existed after the break-up of Rodinia around 1 billion years ago. Around 200 million years ago, Laurasia split up, forming the continents of Laurentia (now North America) and Eurasia.
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The island of New Guinea lies to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo- Australian Archipelago. Geologically it is a part of the same tectonic plate as Australia. When world sea levels were low, the two shared shorelines (which now lie 100 to 140 metres below sea level), and combined with lands now inundated into the tectonic continent of Sahul, also known as Greater Australia. The two landmasses became separated when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the end of the last glacial period.
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Pig-based trade between the groups and pig-based feasts are a common theme with the other peoples of southeast Asia and Oceania. Most societies practice agriculture, supplemented by hunting and gathering. Kurulu Village War Chief at Baliem Valley Current evidence indicates that the Papuans (who constitute the majority of the island's peoples) are descended from the earliest human inhabitants of New Guinea. These original inhabitants first arrived in New Guinea at a time (either side of the Last Glacial Maximum, approx 21,000 years ago) when the island was connected to the Australian continent via a land bridge, forming the landmass of Sahul.
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The oldest modern human remains found on the islands are from the Tabon Caves of Palawan, U/Th-dated to 47,000 ± 11–10,000 years ago. The Tabon Man is presumably a Negrito, who were among the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, descendants of the first human migrations out of Africa via the coastal route along southern Asia to the now sunken landmasses of Sundaland and Sahul. The first Austronesians reached the Philippines at around 2200 BC, settling the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon from Taiwan. From there, they rapidly spread downwards to the rest of the islands of the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
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With a total land area of , the Australian continent is the smallest, and second-lowest human inhabited (after Antarctica) continent on Earth. The continental shelf connecting the islands, half of which is less than deep, covers some , including the Sahul Shelf and Bass Strait. As the country of Australia is mostly on a single landmass, and comprises most of the continent, it is sometimes informally referred to as an island continent, surrounded by oceans. Geological forces such as tectonic uplift of mountain ranges or clashes between tectonic plates occurred mainly in Australia's early history, when it was still a part of Gondwana.
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They reached Tasmania approximately 40,000 years ago by migrating across a land bridge from the mainland that existed during the last ice age. It is believed that the first early human migration to Australia was achieved when this landmass formed part of the Sahul continent, connected to the island of New Guinea via a land bridge. The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea. The earliest definite human remains found in Australia are that of Mungo Man, which have been dated at about 40,000 years old.
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Kerepunu women at the marketplace of Kalo, British New Guinea, 1885 Female gable image, , Oceanic art in the Bishop Museum. British annexation of southeast New Guinea in 1884 Archaeological evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea around 42,000 to 45,000 years ago. They were descendants of migrants out of Africa, in one of the early waves of human migration.O’Connell, J. F., and J. Allen. "Pre-LGM Sahul (Australia-New Guinea) and the archaeology of early modern humans," Rethinking the human revolution: new behavioural and biological perspectives on the origin and dispersal of modern humans (2007): 395–410.
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Geomorphologists believe that the island of New Guinea is part of the Australian continent, both lies on Sahul Shelf and once joined via a land bridge during the Last glacial period. The tectonic movement of the Australian Plate created towering, snowcapped mountain peaks lining the island's central east-west spine and hot, humid alluvial plains along the coasts. The New Guinea Highlands range some east to west along the island, forming a mountainous spine between the northern and southern portion of the island. Due to its tectonic movement, New Guinea experienced many earthquakes and tsunamis, especially in its northern and western part.
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His discoveries as leader of the Siboga Expedition led him to propose Weber's line, which encloses the region in which the mammalian fauna is exclusively Australasian, as an alternative to Wallace's Line. As is the case with plant species, faunal surveys revealed that for most vertebrate groups Wallace’s line was not the most significant biogeographic boundary. The Tanimbar Island group, and not the boundary between Bali and Lombok, appears to be the major interface between the Oriental and Australasian regions for mammals and other terrestrial vertebrate groups. page 3-82 With G.A.F. Molengraaff, Weber gave names to the Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf in 1919.
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The Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf during the past 12,000 years. Tasmania separated from the mainland 12,000 YBP, New Guinea separated from the mainland 6,500–8,500 YBP. Whole genome sequencing indicates the domestic dog to be a genetically divergent subspecies of the gray wolf; the dog is not a descendant of the extant gray wolf, but these are sister taxa which share a common ancestor from a ghost population of wolves that went extinct at the end of the Late Pleistocene, and the dog and the dingo are not separate species. The dingo and the Basenji are basal members of the domestic dog clade.
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The islands of Wallacea have few land mammals, land birds, or freshwater fish of continental origin, which find it difficult to cross open ocean. Many bird, reptile, and insect species were better able to cross the straits, and many such species of Australian and Asian origin are found there. Wallacea's plants are predominantly of Asian origin, and botanists include Sundaland, Wallacea, and New Guinea as the floristic province of Malesia. Similarly, Australia and New Guinea to the east are linked by a shallow continental shelf, and were linked by a land bridge during the ice ages, forming a single continent that scientists variously call Australia-New Guinea, Meganesia, Papualand, or Sahul.
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This study makes Aboriginal Australians one of the oldest living populations in the world and possibly the oldest outside of Africa, confirming they may also have the oldest continuous culture on the planet. A 2016 study at the University of Cambridge by Christopher Klein et al. reported that Papuan and Aboriginal peoples developed distinct markers around 58,000 years BP that distinguished them from the original out-of-Africa migration around 72,000 years BP, pointing to a single migration henceforth untouched by other groups. The study suggests that it was about 50,000 years ago that these peoples reached Sahul (the supercontinent consisting of present-day Australia and its islands and New Guinea).
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Papuans in the Yahukimo Regency Children dressed up for sing-sing. The indigenous peoples of New Guinea, commonly called Papuans,From the Malay word pəpuah 'curly hair'. are Melanesians. There is genetic evidence for two major historical lineages in New Guinea and neighboring islands: #a first wave from the Malay archipelago perhaps 50,000 years ago when New Guinea and Australia were a single landmass called Sahul, #and, much later, a wave of Austronesian people from the north who introduced Austronesian languages and pigs about 3,500 years ago, and who left a small but significant genetic trace in many coastal Papuan peoples (only a minority of Austronesian-speaking Papuans have detectable Austronesian ancestry).
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The Torres Strait itself was previously a land bridge which connected the present-day Australian continent with New Guinea (in a single landmass called Sahul, Meganesia, Australia-New Guinea). This land bridge was most recently submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice-age glaciation approximately 12,000 years ago, forming the Strait which now connects the Arafura and Coral seas. Many of the western Torres Strait Islands are the remaining peaks of this land bridge which were not completely submerged when the ocean levels rose. The islands and their surrounding waters and reefs provide a highly diverse set of land and marine ecosystems, with niches for many rare or unique species.
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Sahul continent Situated in the geographical region of Oceania, Australia is the smallest continent in land area. The continent includes a continental shelf overlain by shallow seas which divide it into several landmasses—the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between mainland Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the Last Glacial Maximum about 18,000 BC, they were connected by dry land. During the past 18,000 to 10,000 years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania.
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The country is situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire, at the point of collision of several tectonic plates. Geologically, the island of New Guinea is a northern extension of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate, forming part of a single land mass which is Australia-New Guinea (also called Sahul or Meganesia). It is connected to the Australian segment by a shallow continental shelf across the Torres Strait, which in former ages lay exposed as a land bridge, particularly during ice ages when sea levels were lower than at present. As the Indo-Australian Plate (which includes landmasses of India, Australia, and the Indian Ocean floor in between) drifts north, it collides with the Eurasian Plate.
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The Wallacea region situated between the Wallace Line (after Ernst Mayr or Thomas Henry Huxley) and the Lydekker Line Understanding of the biogeography of the region centers on the relationship of ancient sea levels to the continental shelves. Wallace's Line is visible geographically when the continental shelf contours are examined; it can be seen as a deep-water channel that marks the southeastern edge of the Sunda Shelf which links Borneo, Bali, Java, and Sumatra underwater to the mainland of southeastern Asia. Australia is likewise connected by the Sahul Shelf to New Guinea. The biogeographic boundary known as Lydekker's Line, which separates the eastern edge of Wallacea from the Australian region, has a similar origin to the Wallace line.
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The tectonics of Indonesia are very complex, as it is a meeting point of several tectonic plates. Indonesia is located between two continental plates: the Eurasian Plate (Sunda Plate) and Australian Plate (Sahul Shelf); and between two oceanic plates: the Philippine Sea Plate and Pacific Plate. The subduction of the Indian oceanic plate beneath the Eurasian continental plate formed the volcanic arc in western Indonesia, one of the most seismically active areas on the planet with a long history of powerful eruptions and earthquakes. This chain of active volcanoes formed Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Nusa Tenggara islands, most of which, particularly Java and Bali, emerged within the last 2–3 million years.
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There are indications as stone tools and traces left on a rhinoceros skeleton that suggest early hominids crossed the sea and colonized the Philippine island of Luzon in a time frame as early as 777,000 to 631,000 years ago. The earliest sea crossings by anatomically modern humans occurred around 53,000 to 65,000 years ago, when Australo- Melanesian populations migrated into the Sahul landmass (modern Australia and New Guinea) from the now underwater Sundaland peninsula. However, the distances crossed are relatively short, and it is unlikely that true marine vessels were used. Rather the crossings may have been done with primitive floats or rafts, or by accidental means, especially since Australo-Melanesians never reached Island Melanesia beyond interisland visibility until after Austronesian contact.
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Dortch 2004:Formal Report Thus it is hoped that dates assigned to the Lancefield bones are reliable and therefore represent their true age since burial. If age estimates turn out to be on the high side, say 60ka or greater, the Lancefield bones may contribute little to our understanding of the effects of human activities upon the Australian Megafauna since such an age would pre-date the arrival of modern humans in Sahul by a wide margin. On the other hand, if the dates are comparatively recent, say less than 35 ka, then humans would be exculpated as the causative agent. If however the estimate falls somewhere close to 46ka then human arrival and the final demise of the Megafauna would appear to be closely associated.
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Herein lies one of the most exciting and intriguing aspects of Pacific prehistory: that we are likely dealing with the earliest purposive voyaging in human history. :The settlement of Manus — in the Admiralty Islands — may represent a real threshold in voyaging ability as it is the only island settled in the Pleistocene beyond the range of one-way intervisibilty. Voyaging to Manus involved a blind crossing of some 60-90 km in a 200-300 km voyage, when no land would have been visible whether coming from the north coast of Sahul or New Hanover at the northern end of New Ireland. These would have been tense hours or days on board that first voyage and the name of Pleistocene Columbus who led this crew will never been known.
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For a long time unsuccessful attempts were made to detect a link between Australian and Papuan languages, the latter being represented by those spoken on the coastal areas of New Guinea facing the Torres Strait and the Arafura Sea. In 1986 William A. Foley noted lexical similarities between Robert M. W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the East New Guinea Highlands languages. He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass (called the Sahul continent) for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. Dixon, in the meantime, later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal.
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A recent genetic study shows that the lineage of those dingoes found today in the northwestern part of the Australian continent split from the lineage of the New Guinea singing dog and southeastern dingo 6,300 BC, followed by a split between the New Guinea singing dog lineage from the southeastern dingo lineage 5,800 BC. The study proposes that two dingo migrations occurred when sea levels were lower and Australia and New Guinea formed one landmass named Sahul that existed until 6,500–8,000 years ago. The dingo's habitat covers most of Australia, but they are absent in the southeast and Tasmania, and an area in the southwest (see map). Dingoes prey on mammals up to the size of the large red kangaroo, in addition to birds, reptiles, fish, crabs, frogs, insects, and seeds. The dingo's competitors include the native quoll, the introduced European red fox and the feral cat.
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Mitochondrial genome sequences indicates that the dingo falls within the domestic dog clade, and that the New Guinea singing dog is genetically closer to those dingoes that live in southeastern Australia than to those that live in the northwest. The dingo and New Guinea singing dog lineage can be traced back through the Malay Archipelago to Asia. Gene flow from the genetically divergent Tibetan wolf forms 2% of the dingo's genome, which likely represents ancient admixture in eastern Eurasia. At the end of the Last glacial maximum and the associated rise in sea levels, Tasmania became separated from the Australian mainland 12,000 YBP, and New Guinea 6,500–8,500 YBP by the inundation of the Sahul Shelf. Fossil remains in Australia date to approximately 3,500 YBP and no dingo remains have been uncovered in Tasmania; therefore, the dingo is estimated to have arrived in Australia at a time between 3,500-12,000 YBP.
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In a recent polemic, Keith Windschuttle and Tom Gittin observed that the model had dropped from view, and attributed political motives to its disappearance off the popular and academic radar. McNiven and Russell argue that the trihybrid theory was discarded as the natural outcome of advances in archaeological work on the populating of the Australian continent, and that Birdwell's theory's initial popularity was due to the old colonial mentality informing opinion, which saw in the successive wave theory support for the dispossession (in a fourth wave) of Aboriginal people and to undermine native title claims. In his seminal paper of 1977, "The recalibration of a paradigm for the first peopling of Greater Australia", he examined the standard models for the origins of Aboriginal Australians regarding how human migration from Southeast Asia could cross the Sahul barrier. Birdsell theorized a distinctive model challenging the accepted view, outlining three variants for a northerly model positing a route through Sulawesi, and two for a conduit to the southern continent via Timor.
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