# Australian Aboriginals - whence and who **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 5, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-aboriginals-whence-and-who/790569 "2017-07-05T22:53:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-aboriginals-whence-and-who/790569/1 "2017-07-05T22:53:45Z")
Today’s repeat [column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1394/where-did-australian-aborigines-come-from) from 1999. There has been a boatload of new information since then. PBS recently broadcast a series called First Peoples, and the [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Wa7W3nzEs) on Australian Aboriginal people was very interesting. Current theory seems to be that there were multiple exodus periods from Africa as the world was populated. There is now evidence that modern humans entered Australia at least 55,000 years ago, probably during an ice age so that the seas were lower and they could walk most or all of the way. There’s lots more in the 54 minute segment, including new evidence on the route(s) they may have taken. ---
**Author:** ![Remarkat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@Remarkat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Remarkat)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-aboriginals-whence-and-who/790569/2 "2017-07-06T00:46:16Z")
Usually love Straight Dope, but this article is really dated in its facts and in its terminology (“Negroid” and “Mongoloid”, for example, aren’t meaningful anymore and they harken back to some pretty ugly racist periods in anthro/biology). ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2017, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-aboriginals-whence-and-who/790569/3 "2017-07-07T00:32:53Z")
> [@remarkat](#): > > usually love straight dope, but this article is really dated in its facts and in its terminology (“negroid” and “mongoloid”, for example, aren’t meaningful anymore and they harken back to some pretty ugly racist periods in anthro/biology). … > [@george orwell](#): > > “the purpose of newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever”. … ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2017, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-aboriginals-whence-and-who/790569/4 "2017-07-07T03:57:47Z")
Aaanyway - getting away from semantics and back to the question at hand, here’s some [new archaeology](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/19/indigenous-australian-life-cave-wa-50000-years) to suggest we may have to push the starting date back somewhat further than thought, maybe to 50,000 years or more. I believe (someone with more knowledge can correct me ;)) that it’s considered likely that there was more than one wave of Aboriginal settlement in pre-colonial times. The first Europeans to explore Tasmania, for instance, considered the Tasmanian people to be quite distinct from mainland Aboriginals (there was no regular commerce between Tasmania and the mainland as far as I know - Bass Strait is rough, and it would have been an incredibly dangerous journey by canoe) and modern day Torres-Strait Islanders also look rather different from mainland Australians, with thinner noses and curlier hair. Talk of multiple waves of migration can get a little politically contentious however, since some indigenous Australians consider ‘there were people living here before your wave of migration’ to be a stepping stone towards ‘so what are you on about with the Land Rights talk?’