Evidence of pre-Aboriginal Australians?

The Times Online ^ | July 26, 2006

[chichilarue]

The suggestion that the artists who painted the Bradshaws were not the ancestors of the current aboriginal owners of the land has sparked consternation among the latter...Many aboriginal people also dislike the pictures, some referring to them as “rubbish art”, and for generations many have made efforts to paint over them or to obliterate them...

This is a treasure of which Australia should be very proud, yet when I went there this year I found people surprisingly reluctant to talk about it, almost as though they were ashamed. This may be understandable coming from the aborigines, who may be concerned that their own art is somehow diminished by Bradshaw art. I can understand that art experts and gallery owners, many of whom see the burgeoning market for aboriginal art as part of the last great artistic phenomenon of the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, may feel that Bradshaw art, which no one is painting any more, is irrelevant. Even scientists and historians, who will be made to look a bit silly if it is proved that they have been wrong for so long in maintaining that man only arrived in Australia with the first aborigines some 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, can be excused a certain reluctance to rewrite history. But I did find it strange how hostile both the media and the government seemed to be to the subject of Bradshaws. ***The Rothwell article was the only manifestation of what appears to be a conspiracy to play the whole story down, either from misguided embarrassment or political correctness.*** Advances in dating techniques will one day provide the truth, but meanwhile it is far too good a story to ignore. Above all, the art itself is delightful and should be known to a wider audience.

[Fred Nerks]

http://australianmuseum.net.au/the-spread-of-people-to-australia

Kow Swamp

This ancient burial site in northern Victoria was excavated between 1968 and 1972. The human skeletons discovered here were extremely significant because they were accurately dated between 9500 to 14,000 years ago and demonstrated substantial differences between ancient and more recent Aboriginal people.

The remains of over forty individuals have been found at Kow Swamp and include those of men, women and children. This burial site is one of the largest from this time period anywhere in the world. Many of the skeletons have a greater skeletal mass, more robust jaw structures and larger areas of muscle attachment than in contemporary Aboriginal men. The female skeletons from this region also show similar differences when compared with modern Aboriginal women.

[blam]

Thanks for the link Fred.

The Spread Of People To Australia

Archaeological evidence shows that modern humans had reached South-east Asia by 70,000 years ago.

(snip)

The ‘Multiregional’ Model

Some scientists interpret the variation found in the fossil record of early Indigenous Australians as evidence that Australia was colonised by two separate genetic lineages of modern humans. One lineage was believed to have been the evolutionary descendants of Indonesian Homo erectus while the other lineage had evolved from Chinese Homo erectus. Modern Aboriginal people are the result of the assimilation of these two genetic lineages.

(snip)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[Fred Nerks]

I suppose that’s just a fancy way of saying that they came from the regions most accessible during the period that the sea levels were lower and the numerous islands of what we know as Indonesia, the Phillipines and the Malay Archipelago had footpaths...to Australia

[blam]

Check this out:

Sundaland

Click and drag.

[Fred Nerks]

That’s brilliant, thanks...

[gleeaikin]

I first became interested in the Kow Marsh people after attending the David Koch evolution exhibit at the Smithsonian in DC. there is a wall of skulls from about 6 million years ago to recent times tending to show the evolution from early hominids to modern homo sapiens. There are many skulls on this wall. One of the last in the lower right hand corner was labeled homo sapien from Kow Marsh. I looked at it carefully and said to myself, no way this is homo sapien. I then compared it with the several Neanderthal skulls exhibited. No, it didn’t look like Neanderthal either, although more like them than modern man. Then I compared with Heidelbergensis, and decided that it looked quite similar to them. I came home and Googled Kow Marsh and found the interesting story that these remains were only about 10 to 12,000 years old, therefore MUST be homo sapiens. So now we find very old rock painting in the far north where new homonids would first land in Australia and gradually move south. Then we find primitive remains that are only 12,000 years old in the far south. Logical conclusion, this may have been a remnant population that was finally killed off by the more recent Aboriginal people. Just like the Clovis first scientists, apparently, the folks in Australia also are lacking in imagination as well as respect for our ancient ancestors. Here are images of old skulls, the early ones being Kow Swamp. For more articles use Kow Swamp, not Kow Marsh.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Kow+Swamp+Australia,+ancient+remains+found&biw=1600&bih=799&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1zpOo_9jNAhUF0oMKHYlsBdkQsAQIbA

Here is the Smithsonian “mis”identifying? the skull as homo sapiens: http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/kow-swamp

[Fred Nerks]

And then there’s Mungo Man:

Mungo man skull reconstruction

Lake Mungo is a dry lake in south-western New South Wales, Australia. Many important archaeological findings have been made at the lake, most significantly the discovery of the remains of Mungo Man, the oldest human remains found in Australia, and Mungo Lady, the oldest human remains in the world to be ritually cremated.

Aboriginal use of Lake Mungo in historical times

The Nanya family or tribe lived in the general area of Lake Mungo in the second half of the 19th Century.

[blam]

Let's throw this in the mix too:

'First Americans Were Australian'

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks glee'. The Kow Swamp skull is also dated "13,000 - 9,000 year old", sounds more like a relative of a group that, like the Homo Floriensis, persisted in Australia for a long time. Australia has a bigger isolationiist mindset than does Japan or possibly even the Clovis-First-and-Only crowd here in the Americas. I think we're still number one in that department. ;')