January 15, 2013 2:59 pm
Indians Made It to Australia More Than 4,000 Years Before the British
Did ancient Australians witness a similar scene? Photo: Gunter Senft/MPI for Psycholinguistics
Outside of Africa, Australia holds some of modern humans’ earliest archeological evidence, with relics dating back to about 45,000 years ago. In other words, Australian aboriginals are the oldest continuous population of humans on the planet, besides those found in Africa. But these populations did not remain quite as isolated as researchers originally thought.
Anthropologists and historians always assumed that from the time the first human settlers stumbled upon Australia to the moment European sailors arrived in the late 1800s, Australia remained unknown to the rest of the world. But new research refutes this commonly held belief with evidence of substantial gene flow between Australian and Indian populations millennia ago.
Genetic variation across aboriginal Australians’ genomes point to influence from India around 4,230 years ago, well before Europeans could even dream of exploring the far-off continent. Around the same time, the researchers noticed, archeological changes occur in the Australian record, including shifts in the way ancient humans processed plants and created stone tools. At this time, spears and dingos also first appeared in the fossil record. People from the Indian subcontinent may have arrived, bringing with them new species, technologies and cultures.
How they managed to make that approximately 5,000 mile journey, however, remains a mystery, at least for the time being.
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Is this right?
http://truthdive.com/2013/01/16/australian-aborigines-genetic-links-with-tamils.html
Comment by thilagavathy — January 16, 2013 @ 7:43 am
The wild dingo does resemble the Asiatic dhole, but the Indian presence in the East Indies is much stronger than that. Architecture, Hinduism — cremating the dead was adopted by tribal people, such as the Dyaks, and shadow puppets. But in Australia, the Indian presence is extremely vague. None of the Aborigines ever adopted ritual submersion, nor Hindu burial practices.
Comment by Tim Upham — January 20, 2013 @ 6:49 pm
@ Time Upham
Was Hinduism or related practises being performed as far back as 4000 years ago?
Comment by Arul — January 30, 2013 @ 9:05 pm
Our modern idea of Hinduism as a single religion was not there at the time of the deduced links. Idea of India and HIndus as a single group can be traced to Aadi Shankara born in Kerala, South India in the 8th century. While the ideas of Hinduism are much much older, various Hindu sects used to fights and communal violence between Shaivites and Vaishnavites were not uncommon (like we now have between Hindus and Muslims) testifying that lack of a sense of one ness. The export of Hindu culture to far east can be traced to the Chola period (11th/12th century) which is time of peak temple building activity in South India and Far East (Angkor Wat)
Comment by Able Lawrence — February 1, 2013 @ 6:12 am
Hearing that early inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent reached Australia 4000 years ago doesn’t surprise me, given that there is a continuous string of land and islands down through Indonesia. From Indonesia it is only a couple of hundred miles to Australia. One must take into consideration that the Torres Strait Islanders (who are of Melanesian stock and live between Queensland and New Guinea) have been culturally influenced by the Australian Aborigines. This points to cultural contact and probably genetic mixing as well. Travel from India within sight of land is not out of the question in relatively primitive boats. Travelling across 5000 miles of sea would require more sophisticated vessels such as those possessed by the
Indonesian peoples who travelled all the way to Madagascar and across the Pacific in Catamarans.
Comment by Jim Bullanger — February 4, 2013 @ 6:55 pm
Correction: Indians made it to Australia more than 4,000 years before the Dutch. The British first came here in 1770, the Dutch had been here since 1606. Willem Janszoon, Dirk Hartog, Frederick de Houtman, Abel Tasman, Willem de Vlamingh, anyone?
Comment by Diederik Hussein Manderfeld — February 10, 2013 @ 11:56 am
Heartbreaking – after thriving for 4000 years, they were driven to the edge and almost obliterated by European “settlers” whose descendants are still in denial of the extent of these crimes. The genocide perpetrated by Australia’s whites on a helpless Aboriginal population should never be forgotten.
Comment by freedman — March 21, 2013 @ 6:07 pm