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SYDNEY (AFP) - The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals. < > He said that it was likely that hunting killed off Tasmania's mega-fauna -- including the long-muzzled, 120 kilogram (264 pound) giant kangaroo, a rhinoceros-sized wombat and marsupial 'lions' which resembled leopards. < > The finding of the latest study has already been contested, with Judith Field of the University of Sydney saying the idea that humans killed the giant creatures was "in the...

Mega-tsunami theory disputed February 03, 2008 SUPPOSED evidence Australia has been subject to prehistoric tsunamis up to 20m in height over the past 10,000 years could just be the result of Aboriginal occupation, a major conference is set to hear tomorrow. Archaeologists from the Australian National University say the theory about the mega-tsunamis, which has influenced the development of emergency service plans in Western Australia, is not supported by evidence. In 2003 Australian geological researchers suggested prehistoric tsunamis over the past 10,000 years were much larger than those recorded since European settlement, including findings of surges up to 20m in...

As the only member of his clan, Jeffrey Lee controls the fate of Koongarra, writes Lindsay Murdoch. Custodian … Jeffrey Lee at an outcrop sacred to his clan. "I can go fishing and hunting. That's all that matters to me." Custodian … Jeffrey Lee at an outcrop sacred to his clan. "I can go fishing and hunting. That's all that matters to me." "It's my belief that if you disturb that land bad things will happen … there will be a big flood, there will be an earthquake and people will have a big accident." Mr Lee said there were...

The first humans to arrive in Australia destroyed the pristine landscape, probably by lighting huge fires, the latest research suggests.The evidence, published in Science magazine, comes from ancient eggshells. These show birds changed their diets drastically when humans came on the scene, switching from grass to the type of plants that thrive on scrubland. The study supports others that have blamed humans for mass extinctions across the world 10-50,000 years ago. Many scientists believe the causes are actually more complex and relate to climate changes during that period, but, according to Dr Marilyn Fogel, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington,...

Contact: Gifford Miller gmiller@colorado.edu 303-492-6962 Jim Scott 303-492-3114 University of Colorado at Boulder Arid Australian interior linked to landscape burning by ancient humans The image of a controlled burn in the interior of Australia today, featured on the cover of the January 2005 issue of Geology, illustrates how Australia might have looked 50,000 years ago. Photo courtesy Gifford Miller, University of Colorado at Boulder Click here for a high resolution photograph. Landscape burning by ancient hunters and gatherers may have triggered the failure of the annual Australian Monsoon some 12,000 years ago, resulting in the desertification of the country's interior...

SYDNEY: An Australian Aboriginal 'Dreaming' story has helped experts uncover a meteorite impact crater in the outback of the Northern Territory. Duane Hamacher, an astrophysicist studying Aboriginal astronomy at Sydney's Macquarie University, used Google Maps to search for the signs of impact craters in areas related to Aboriginal stories of stars or stones falling from the sky. One story, from the folklore of the Arrernte people, is about a star falling to Earth at a site called Puka. This led to a search on Google Maps of Palm Valley, about 130 km southwest of Alice Springs. Here Hamacher discovered what...

The first complete sequences of the Y chromosomes of Aboriginal Australian men have revealed a deep indigenous genetic history tracing all the way back to the initial settlement of the continent 50 thousand years ago, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology today (25th February 2016). The study by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and collaborators at La Trobe University in Melbourne and several other Australian institutes, challenges a previous theory that suggested an influx of people from India into Australia around 4-5 thousand years ago. This new DNA sequencing study focused on the Y...

In modern society dogs are often referred to as "man's best friend" but according to an archaeological review early Aboriginal society sported a similar relationship between women and dingoes (Canis lupus dingo). The study by UWA and ANU suggests people formed close bonds with dingoes soon after the dogs' arrival on the mainland roughly 4000 years ago, with the dogs enabling women to contribute more hunted food. UWA archaeologist Jane Balme, who led the research, says it is thought the first dingoes arrived on watercraft with people from South East Asia. "What they're doing on the boat is not clear...

The new genetic analysis takes aim at the theory that just one founding group settled the Americas =========================================================================================================== Brazil's Surui people, like the man pictured above, share ancestry with indigenous Australians, new evidence suggests. (PAULO WHITAKER/Reuters/Corbis) ==================================================================================================================== More than 15,000 years ago, humans began crossing a land bridge called Beringia that connected their native home in Eurasia to modern-day Alaska. Who knows what the journey entailed or what motivated them to leave, but once they arrived, they spread southward across the Americas. The prevailing theory is that the first Americans arrived in a single wave, and all Native American populations...

THE Aboriginal leader who backed a $40 billion gas plant in the Kimberley as a way of creating indigenous jobs has attacked “extreme nutter” environmentalists who he says derailed the plan but have since done nothing to help the region’s impoverished people. Wayne Bergmann, a businessman and former head of the Kimberley Land Council, told an oil and gas conference in Perth yesterday that suicide rates and unemployment were rising in the Kimberley due to a paucity of jobs, especially for younger people. Telstra director Geoff Cousins and singers Missy Higgins and John Butler were among those who opposed the...

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott were escorted by police and bodyguards from a Canberra restaurant after Aboriginal Tent Embassy protesters surrounded them. SO THIS is what reconciliation looks like on Australia Day, after so many concessions over so many useless years. Reconciliation means Prime Minister Julia Gillard being trapped by furious Aboriginal protesters inside a Canberra building yesterday for half an hour. It means Gillard and guests at the Australia Day function being heckled and abused as racists. It means Gillard, fear on her face, being monstered and falling in the melee as police rushed her...

Cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines are present in hundreds of skulls that have been uncovered in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago. Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of São Paulo, whose findings are reported in a cover story in the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, has examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argues that there is now a mass of evidence indicating that at least two different populations colonised the Americas.He and colleagues in the United States, Germany and Chile argue that first population was closely related to the Australian...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- An Aboriginal-themed routine by two Russian ice dancers has stirred up a pre-Olympic controversy, with some indigenous Australians blasting the "rip off" of their culture and Canadian native leaders worrying about the insensitivity of the skaters. World champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin are doing an Aboriginal routine for their original dance -- complete with brown-toned costumes adorned with leaves and white Aboriginal-style markings. Their music includes a didgeridoo riff. In the original dance, couples can create any kind of dance that falls within an assigned theme. This year's theme is country/folk, and skaters are doing...

... Four decades ago, Australia enacted wide-ranging reforms to uplift its long-oppressed Aboriginal citizens. The laws mandated equal wages with whites, access to the country's generous welfare system and the eventual transfer of vast chunks of land to near-total Aboriginal control. Since then, Aboriginal society has experienced a dramatic decline -- partly a result of these very reforms. Australia's government has proclaimed the upsurge of violence, child abuse and alcoholism among Aborigines a national emergency. It is responding with controversial new policies that critics decried as racist, such as restricting welfare payments to Aborigines but not to whites or other...

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's outback Aborigines will be among the worst affected by climate change as soaring temperatures likely cause more disease and spur distress about the changing landscape, a new report shows. The expert report, published in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, argues that the country's remote indigenous communities are the most vulnerable to changing environmental conditions. "Their vulnerability to climate change is intensified by the social and economic disadvantage they already experience -- the result of factors that include decades of inadequate housing and public services, and culturally inappropriate medical services," the journal said...

October 22, 2008--Paintings of sailboats, ocean liners, and biplanes adorn newfound rock shelters in the remote Aboriginal territory of Arnhem Land in northern Australia. Researchers working with Aboriginal elder Ronald Lamilami discovered thousands of the paintings--including the largest rock-art site in Australia--during an expedition in August and September 2008. (See full story.) "It is the most important … rock art in the whole world" that shows contact with other cultures, said lead researcher Paul Tacon of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.

'First Americans were Australian' This is the face of the first known American, Lucia The first Americans were descended from Australian aborigines, according to evidence in a new BBC documentary. The skulls suggest faces like those of Australian aborigines The programme, Ancient Voices, shows that the dimensions of prehistoric skulls found in Brazil match those of the aboriginal peoples of Australia and Melanesia. Other evidence suggests that these first Americans were later massacred by invaders from Asia. Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and...

Aboriginal children in Outback Australia are so neglected by their alcoholic parents that some have suckled from dogs' teats in a desperate search for food, it has been reported. The shocking revelation came from a coroner investigating the appalling rates of suicide among Aborigines living in the remote and beautiful Kimberley region of Western Australia. Earlier this month the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, delivered a much-publicised apology to Aborigines for past injustices, but critics questioned whether his words would lead to any practical improvement in the wretched lives of indigenous people. "The plight of the little children was especially pathetic...

IF the Rudd Government apologises to the Stolen Generations it should not stop at mere words. It should pay a substantial sum in compensation. This was the central recommendation of the Human Rights Commission's Bringing Them Home report in 1997. The charge that justified this, the report said, was genocide. This allegedly took place from the 1910s until the late '60s right across Australia. In some parts of the commonwealth it was still going on in the '80s. None of the politicians who plan to apologise next Wednesday can avoid the term genocide. It is embedded in the very meaning...

SYDNEY, Australia — The new Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will apologize for past mistreatment of the country’s Aboriginal minority when Parliament convenes next month, addressing an issue that has blighted race relations in Australia for years. In a measure of the importance Mr. Rudd attaches to the issue, the apology will be the first item of business for the new government when Parliament first convenes on Feb. 13, Jenny Macklin, the federal minister for indigenous affairs, said Wednesday. Ms. Macklin said she had consulted widely with Aboriginal leaders, but it was still not clear what form the...