Indigenous Australians most ancient civilisation on Earth, DNA study confirms

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by Plazma Inferno!, Sep 22, 2016.

  1. Plazma Inferno! Ding Ding Ding Ding Administrator

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    Claims that Indigenous Australians are the most ancient continuous civilisation on Earth have been backed by the first extensive study of their DNA, which dates their origins to more than 50,000 years ago.
    Scientists were able to trace the remarkable journey made by intrepid ancient humans by sifting through clues left in the DNA of modern populations in Australia and Papua New Guinea. The analysis shows that their ancestors were probably the first humans to cross an ocean, and reveals evidence of prehistoric liaisons with an unknown hominin cousin.
    The findings give an unprecedented insight into how humans first migrated out of the African continent, splintered into distinct populations and spread across the globe. These findings, based on a new population analysis of 83 Indigenous Australians and 25 Papuans, shows that these groups can trace their origins back to the very first arrivals on the continent about 50,000 years ago and that they remained almost entirely isolated until around 4,000 years ago.

    https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ient-civilisation-on-earth-dna-study-confirms
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    As I wrote in my previous note, there's no controversy over the arrival of the Native Australians after their long journey walking and sailing from Africa.

    However, let's try to remember to use our language correctly! The essence of the word "civilization" is "the building of cities." No one argues with the accomplishments of the Australians, but no scholar is going to say with a straight face that they developed a "civilization." Until foreigners began to visit Australia, they were still in the Stone Age!

    It's possible to build a city with Paleolithic technology (i.e., the only tools available were made of stone and wood), and in fact the world's first cities were indeed built that way. But this never happened in Australia. Before the invasion of people from other continents, with their sophisticated metal tools, Australia was very much like the Western Hemisphere north of the Rio Grande: no metals, no wheels, no draft animals, subsistence farming augmented by hunting.
    This is correct. There was population movement all over Eurasia and Africa, but it took place on land. People learned to build wooden boats, but it was much more recently that the boats were big and sturdy enough to be used to island-hop--the method the San used to get to Australia.
    Dr. Cavalli-Sforza was the first anthropologist to trace the migration routes of our ancestors in great detail.

    One of the more interesting bits of information that he discovered is bits of the DNA that identifies the San and the Native Australians--on the very southern coast of India. Apparently, as the San kept walking through Asia, some of the tribe's members got tired of the journey and managed to establish settlements along the way. Obviously, India's seacoast is many kilometers inland from where it was 50,000 years ago, but these people kept moving inland over the centuries. When the Indic people came down from the north, the two populations met and intermarried.
     
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