By: Graham Avery
Date: 8/1/2026
Date: 8/1/2026
Late Pleistocene - Sahulian Continent (60,000 to 10,000 years ago)
The ancestors of the First Nations peoples of Papua and Australia—including those from adjacent islands such as Aru, Tiwi, the Torres Strait, Rabaul, Kavieng, and Tasmania—arrived on the Sahul continent around 60,000 years ago, during a period of lower sea levels caused by extensive glaciation in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
Bibliography
Kasih Norman, Corey J.A. Bradshaw, Frédérik Saltré, Chris Clarkson, Tim J. Cohen, Peter Hiscock, Tristen Jones, Fabian Boesl, 2024, Sea level rise drowned a vast habitable area of north-western Australia driving long-term cultural change, Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 324, 108418, ISSN 0277- 3791, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379123004663 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108418, last viewed on 8/1/2026.
Kasih Norman, Corey J.A. Bradshaw, Frédérik Saltré, Chris Clarkson, Tim J. Cohen, Peter Hiscock, Tristen Jones, Fabian Boesl, 2024, Sea level rise drowned a vast habitable area of north-western Australia driving long-term cultural change, Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 324, 108418, ISSN 0277- 3791, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379123004663 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108418, last viewed on 8/1/2026.