How Aboriginal People Survived The Last Ice Age

Found on Sovereign Union's Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1083452677155134&set=a.642304697936603

A 2013 published study revealed how First Nations people coped with the last Ice Age, roughly 20,000 years ago.

"Population numbers plummeted due to harsh conditions at the peak of the last Ice Age", says the study.

Researchers say that when the climate cooled dramatically, Aboriginal groups sought refuge in well-watered areas, such as along rivers, and populations were condensed into small habitable areas.

Professor Sean Ulm, lead author of the research at James Cook University in Townsville, says the vast majority of Australia was simply uninhabitable at this time. "Forests disappeared, animals went extinct; major areas of Australia would have been deprived of surface water."

To understand how Aboriginal people responded to the conditions, a team of experts from Australia, England, and Canada used the radiocarbon dates of thousands of archaeological sites to study the distribution of people across the landscape over time.

The findings, published recently in The Journal of Archaeological Science[1], suggest that about 21,000 years ago, almost all people in modern-day Australia migrated into smaller areas, abandoning as much as 80 per cent of the continent.

"In Lawn Hill Gorge in northwestern Queensland, at the coldest point of the last glacial period, all of the stone, raw materials and food remains are exclusively from the Gorge area," says Sean. "This indicated very limited or no use of the surrounding broader landscape."

This massive consolidation had drastic effects on the population as well. "There was likely a birth rate decline of over 60 per cent," says Alan Williams, a PhD student at the Australian Nation University who worked on the study. "It would have been very ugly."

Can humans cope with climate change?

Sean says the next step would ideally be to study the resulting cultural shifts, however, this may prove to be difficult given that close to one third of what was Australia at the time of the Ice Age is now underwater. "By 10,000 years ago, sea levels were visibly rising, sometimes on a daily basis," says Sean.

Extreme changes in the environment continued for thousands of years, and Aboriginal life readjusted in the process. Sean says this makes it unlikely that researchers will ever know the full societal ramifications of the Ice Age.

What the study does reveal, however, is that humans have withstood massive climate change on this continent in the past, and this might prove vital for preparing for future events.

"A lot of the current climate reports that we read about in Australia...their records only go back a couple of hundred years," says Sean. "That's a very short time span to base our model for future climate change on."

Sean adds that, thanks to studies like this, archaeologists may soon have the potential to extend these data sets.

- Article - Reasearch Paper review by Wes Judd 'Australian Geographic' 27 September 2013

[1] RESEARCH PAPER: 'Human refugia in Australia during the Last Glacial Maximum and Terminal Pleistocene: a geospatial analysis of the 25–12 ka Australian archaeological record'

- By ALAN N.WILLIAMS James Cook University,
- ANDREW R.COOK University of New South Wales;
- MICHELLE C. LANGLEY University of Oxford, UK;
- MARK COLLARDE Human Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, British Columbia, Canada:

[ Academic Paper: https://bit.ly/34Atr6L ]

IMAGES:
Top: Southeast Asia and Australia during the last Ice Age.
Bottom: Estimations the areas in which Aboriginal groups congregated during the last Ice Age. (Source of both images - the above academic article)

Prehistoric civilisations - wiped out in the Younger Dryas?

An intriguing video on the evidence for much older civilisations that may have been wiped out in a global cataclysm some 12,900 years ago.

DNA shows rapid Aboriginal colonisation of E/W Australia

'Historic hair samples collected from Aboriginal people show that following an initial migration 50,000 years ago, populations spread rapidly around the east and west coasts of Australia.'

https://theconversation.com/dna-reveals-aboriginal-people-had-a-long-and-settled-connection-to-country-73958

Ancient Aboriginal trade routes of Australia

 

https://www.odysseytraveller.com/articles/ancient-aboriginal-trade-routes-of-australia/

'As far back as 1939, archaeologists could show that Australia was criss-crossed by Aboriginal trade routes (see map, above, for more detail on these routes). For Isabel McBryde – ‘the mother of Australian archaeology’ – these Aboriginal trade networks were ‘among the world’s most extensive systems of human communication recorded in hunter-gatherer societies’...

'The extent of cultural exchange between Aboriginal groups is indicated by the widespread Panaramitee rock art style – also known as ‘track and circle’ – which is found across mainland Australia and Tasmania'...

'In 1974, the archaeologist Lesley Maynard studied engravings in Laura in Queensland, Mount Cameron West in Tasmania, and Ingaladdi in the Northern Territory, each of which she believed to be part of the Panaramitee style. The Tasmanian find was particularly important, indicating that the style developed before the creation of the Bass Strait by rising seas at the end of the Ice Age.

'This led her to develop a chronology of Australian rock art. The first was ancient ‘deep cave art’, produced in the last Ice Age; then the homogenous and widely distributed forms of the Panaramitee, also dating to the Pleistocene (Ice Age); and finally the regionally diverse styles of the Holocene (post-Ice Age), both ‘simple figurative styles’, and ‘complex figurative styles’, including the striking Wandjina of the Kimberley, and the intricate X-ray art found in Arnhem Land and Kakadu.'

Ancient news roundup

Africa (Olduvai Gorge):

Research suggests that early man (c. 2 million years ago) was able to manage in a changing environment for 200,000 years. 

https://www.shh.mpg.de/1935810/petraglia-oldupai-gorge 

'The findings uncovered at Oldupai Gorge and across eastern Africa indicate that early human movements across and out of Africa were possible by 2 million years ago, as hominins possessed the behavioural ability to expand into novel ecosystems.' 

Part of this may be due to the use of stone tools, technology which (it is speculated) may have been employed by other hominin species such as australopithecines:

'... we know that the genus Paranthropus was present in Oldupai Gorge at this time.'

Tibet:

DNA from the hominin species knows as Denisovans has been found in sediment in Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan plateau - the first such find outside Siberia. The specimens date from c. 100,000 years ago, again from 60,000 years ago, and possibly also 50k-30k ya; in the latter case that may have overlapped with the arrival of modern humans and interbreeding there or elsewhere could explain why 'present-day Tibetans carry a gene variant that aids high-altitude survival'.

• https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-denisovan-dna-outside-siberia-found-tibetan-plateau-cave
• https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/dna-tracks-mysterious-denisovans-chinese-cave-just-modern-humans-arrived-nearby
• https://theconversation.com/how-midnight-digs-at-a-holy-tibetan-cave-opened-a-window-to-prehistoric-humans-living-on-the-roof-of-the-world-148927
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baishiya_Karst_Cave

https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B026'53.0%22N+102%C2%B034'17.0%22E/@32.0753123,90.6411118,4.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d35.448056!4d102.571389?hl=en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan#/media/File:Early_migrations_mercator.svg

Conflict between Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals

An academic at Bath University suggests there was a 100,000-year war between the two species that pitched modern humans against the Neanderthals that had preceded them out of Africa and were already thriving in Europe and Asia:

• https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1355432/archaeology-news-human-history-neanderthals-earth-evg
• https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201102-did-neanderthals-go-to-war-with-our-ancestors
• https://theconversation.com/when-did-humans-first-go-to-war-149637
• a revised view of Neanderthals: https://time.com/5904203/neanderthals-myths/

South Africa

Article on early man in southern South Africa 200,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower - the hunting grounds since partially inundated following the end of the Ice Age:

• https://eos.org/features/a-lost-haven-for-early-modern-humans
• https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/05/drowned-paleo-agulhas-plain-was-an-eden-for-early-humans/129190

Peru

It seems prehistoric women could be hunters, as well as gatherers:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions/

Dogs and humans

Parallel DNA research into human and canine genomes is sketching an 11,000-year-long (or more) history of their relationship. The five separate dog genomes have expanded to 32:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/how-dogs-tracked-their-humans-across-ancient-world

Dingoes, on the other hand, seem to have arrived in western Australia some 3,500 years ago - far later than humans - and although some were recorded living with aboriginals in 1788 they don't feature much in ancient rock art; perhaps for roving hunter-gatherers dingoes were an unaffordable luxury?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo

MADAGASCAR: Ancient site threatened by climate change

The Conversation reports the threat to African heritage sites posed by climate change:
https://theconversation.com/these-african-world-heritage-sites-are-under-threat-from-climate-change-144140

'Villages and towns associated with the historic Swahili Indian Ocean trading networks are all forecast to suffer significant loss from sea-level rise and coastal erosion in the coming decades...

'A host of unique heritage locations are built on coral, sand or mud – all at elevations less than 10 metres above sea level.'

Among these sites is Mahilaka, the first major urban center and trading port in Madagascar, which was settled by Austronesians in the first millennium CE. Mahilaka is on the northwest coast. Archaelogical evidence is in the form of human artefacts, but also crop species not native to Africa, and maybe even linguistic traces in the Bantu language. There are indications that the neighbouring Comoros islands may have shared some of this Pacific (among others) immigration history.
https://www.pnas.org/content/113/24/6635

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Overview-of-the-inferred-history-of-Madagascar-Descriptions-and-dates-are-given-in-A-D_fig6_318500759

AUSTRALIA: Ancient aboriginal land management

Civilised people (i.e. from the culture of towns and cities) came to Australia, America etc and saw wilderness. They didn't see a managed environment; but it was there.

One aspect of aboriginal land management was and is 'cool burning' - the periodic deliberate starting of grass fires to clear away flammable debris and so prevent the kind of mega-blazes we saw recently in Australia, which killed perhaps 3 billion animals.



This has also been an ancient practice among Native Americans:



Similarly, in both countries there are sacred areas, some of which would seem to the ignorant eye to be simply wild places, missing the point that they are carefully kept that way:

https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/australia/articles/the-11-most-sacred-places-in-indigenous-australian-folklore/

https://www.indian-affairs.org/sacred-sites.html

There is the archaeology of relics, but there is also the archaeology of the human mind and its cultures. How old, for example, are the stories of the Dream Time?

As Yeats said:

'I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'

Having said that, an archaeological dig in the Torres Strait has recently found concrete evidence of cultivation of bananas 2,000 years ago:

'Lead researcher Robert Williams said... the Torres Strait had been historically viewed as a "separating line" between Indigenous groups in New Guinea - now part of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea - who practiced agriculture, and those in Australia who were labelled "hunter gatherers".

'But the findings show that the strait was "more of a bridge or a filter" for horticultural practices across both regions.'

TAIWAN, bridge to the Pacific islands; and the multiple impacts of climate change

Aside from archaeological finds, there are several other threads connecting prehistoric Taiwan with the spread of humans through the Pacific island chains.

One is the paper mulberry tree, native to Taiwan and Japan, which the Austronesian migrants took with them because they used its fibrous bark to make their cloth. A 2015 study of its genes supports the hypothesis that the species in Oceania are descended from those in Asia.
  https://raskisimani.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/broussonetia-paper-mulberry.pdf
  https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?post=26541&unit=20%2C29%2C35&unitname=Taiwan-Review&postname=Austronesian-Roots&fbclid=IwAR0rEsePB0aR71MtPstwKguoqx-ZFsHNlw9r5JM0N0h1PbGW1kfIk849PF4

Another is linguistics. Professor Robert Blust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Blust sorts the many languages of Taiwan into ten groups, only one of which (Malayo-Polynesian) developed into the Austronesian family of tongues.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages#Blust_(1999)
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayo-Polynesian_languages#Major_languages

A third is the study of human genes. A 2014 study of mitochondrial DNA from a c. 8,000-year-old skeleton unearthed on an island off the Chinese mainland links China to Taiwan and Austronesia.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951936/

Figure 1: The Liangdao Man Skeleton (picture from here)

The same study suggests a prehistoric migration route as illustrated below, from an area where foxtail millet began to be cultivated (around what is now modern Beijing), to the region where rice was domesticated (surrounding modern Shanghai), to what is now Fuzhou on the mainland (1), on to Liangdao island (2), across to Taiwan (3) and then down to the Philippines (4) and beyond:

(Ibid., adapted from Figure 5)

How did these humans cross over from the mainland? At its narrowest, the Taiwan Strait is about 130 kilometres (80 miles) between Fujian and Taiwan.

Things were different in the last Ice Age. The Strait is now some 100 metres deep, but:
'Pleistocene glaciations lowered [the] sea level 140m in the East China Sea 15,000 years ago, forming a land bridge between Taiwan and the mainland, with Palaeolithic artifacts on both sides. In the initial Holocene 10,000 years ago, melting ice raised the East China Sea 100m, quickly forming the Taiwan Strait.' 
- from 'The Neolithic Taiwan Strait', by Kuang-chih Chang (1989)
https://web.archive.org/web/20120418153210/http://http-server.carleton.ca/~bgordon/Rice/papers/App.18ChangKC89.pdf

'Permafrost covered Asia as far south as Beijing,' says Wikipedia, so perhaps early humans were motivated to go further south, and some willing and able to walk over the exposed land between China and Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum#Asia

The end of the Ice Age saw rising sea levels: 'After the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, sea level initially rose due to the melting of the glaciers. That peaked around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago,' says geologist Chip Fletcher in this 2017 interview:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-seas-rise-tropical-pacific-islands-face-a-perfect-storm

One might think that this flooding was a spur to the development of boats, but although the earliest found by archaeological excavation date back 7,000 - 10,000 years, other evidence suggests that they existed tens of thousands of years earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat#History
Indeed, recent finds in Central America suggest that homo sapiens may have arrived by sea 20,000 - 30,000 years ago and spread north and south from there, rather than coming though the Alaskan/Canadian ice corridor as previously thought:
http://polynesiantimes.blogspot.com/2020/07/origins-americas-first-colonised-in.html

Contrary to what one might assume, the post-glacial flooding was not uniform in all times and places. As the vast weight of ice was lifted from the land the continental plates started to shift about and rise up further from the Earth's mantle, like a ship being emptied of cargo. 'At the same time that Polynesians were undergoing their journeys of exploration and discovery, 1,000 to 3,000 years ago, sea level was falling and exposing coastal plains that then became habitable, where previously the sea was up against clay banks or cliffs,' says Fletcher. 'In the Pacific region [after c. 4,000-5,000 years ago], sea level started to fall until a few centuries ago. And now global warming is causing sea levels to rise again.'
https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-seas-rise-tropical-pacific-islands-face-a-perfect-storm

Although falling sea levels may have made it easier to land boats, 'around AD 1300 there was rapid global cooling, which was followed shortly by rapid sea-level fall – perhaps as much as 50-70 cm within 100 years in the Pacific [...]
   'In almost every island group in the Pacific - from Solomon Islands and Fiji in the west to Rapa and Easter Island in the east – the first signs of collapse appear around AD 1300 with almost all hill forts beginning to be occupied around AD 1400. [...] 
   'Rapid sea-level fall along Pacific island coasts would have lowered coastal water tables, slowed water circulation within lagoons and killed (through exposure) the most productive parts of coral reefs. A food crisis would have resulted for coastal dwellers. Conflict followed. So people fled inland where they stayed, more or less, for several hundred years.'
https://theconversation.com/rise-and-fall-social-collapse-linked-to-sea-level-in-the-pacific-56268

So the interaction between geography, climate and human history is unexpectedly complex.

NEANDERTHALS: Fact sheet, genetic contribution to melanesians

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315924/archaeology-history-news-ancient-humans-science-news-paleolithic-france-spt

The graphic above is from a recent article in the Daily Express, reporting on Old Stone Age humanoid remains and cave art found in central France:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1315924/archaeology-history-news-ancient-humans-science-news-paleolithic-france-spt

The illustrated geographical range obviously leaves gaps to be filled in, and there seems to be evidence of interbreeding during the upper Palaeolithic between Neanderthals, homo sapiens and 'Denisovans' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans:

So to some extent the genes of Homo Neanderthalensis' descendants are also represented in the Pacific region:

'Some recent studies suggest that all humans outside of Africa have inherited some genes from Neanderthals, and that Melanesians are the only known modern humans whose prehistoric ancestors interbred with the Denisova hominin, sharing 4%–6% of their genome with this ancient cousin of the Neanderthal,' says Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesians.

RAPA NUI: Tattooed torsos of the ancient 'heads'

In Rapa Nui aka Easter Island, archaeologists have uncovered the buried torsos of the ancient stone 'moai', revealing carvings (petroglyphs) representing Polynesian canoes:

Source: Daily Express
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1314641/archaeology-news-easter-island-head-statues-bodies-found-moai-rano-raraku-spt

It's theorised that the moai were funerary headstones for members of different tribes on the island, as there are human remains found around these statues.

Story: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1314641/archaeology-news-easter-island-head-statues-bodies-found-moai-rano-raraku-spt

ORIGINS: Americas first colonised in Central America, NOT across the Bering Strait?

Recent archaeological discoveries in Mexico and Brazil put the arrival of humans there back to 20,000 - 30,000 years ago, when the land corridor through what is now Alaska/Canada was blocked by ice https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02137-3 :

Image from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02137-3

In a book published last year, British writer on ancient mysteries Graham Hancock theorises that the history goes back much further, by around another 100,000 years:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/america-before-the-key-to-earths-lost-civilization/graham-hancock/9781473660588

Perhaps Thor Heyerdahl was on the right track when he built Ra and Ra II to show that a papyrus boat could sail from Africa to the Americas - though why not a Polynesian type outrigger?

PHILIPPINES: 709,000-year-old evidence of hominin activity found in Luzon

Archaeological evidence found in Luzon, Philippines suggest that a species of human came to the island long before homo sapiens left Africa:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ancient-humans-settled-philippines-700000-years-ago-new-fossils-reveal

The evidence is the fossilised remains of a butchered rhinoceros, though no humanoid skeleton has yet been found there.

"So who were these ancient people? They couldn’t have been our own species, Homo sapiens, which evolved in Africa hundreds of thousands of years later. The most likely bet is H. erectus, an archaic human species that first evolved nearly 2 million years ago and may have been the first member of our genus to expand out of Africa. [...]

"Like most researchers, Antón isn’t convinced that ancient humans were deliberately crossing Southeast Asian seas so long ago. More likely, they were carried to distant islands by tsunami waves, or arrived there via floating islands of land and debris detached during typhoons."

The original article in Nature (£) is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0072-8

MADAGASCAR: How (why) did Austronesians come to Madagascar?

The eastward migration - taking place around the year 500, it is thought - is a mystery:

'One can only assume that the island of Madagascar played an important role in trade, particularly that of spice trade (especially the cinnamon) and timber between Southeast Asia and Middle East, directly or through the African coast and Madagascar.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar#First_inhabitants_and_settlements_(500_BCE%E2%80%93700_CE)

Source: Wikipedia

FRENCH POLYNESIA: C13th Polynesians migrated east, Colombians west, met in French Polynesia?

'After a detailed DNA analysis of the genomes of more than 800 Polynesians and Native Americans, both modern and prehistoric, researchers have found evidence of contact between the two groups as far back as 1200 CE...

"Our analyses suggest strongly that a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely related to the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Colombia," the researchers explain in their paper.

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-evidence-shows-prehistoric-contact-between-native-americans-and-polynesians

See also this article from 2017, reporting a study supporting the theory that the Native American / Polynesian interbreeding occurred before the colonisation of Rapa Nui:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/did-early-easter-islanders-sail-south-america-europeans

AUSTRALIA: Flooded pre-Ice Age aboriginal sites discovered in NW Australia

So much history yet to be learned:

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-aboriginal-artifacts-reveal-ancient-underwater.html

ORIGINS: Neanderthal builders in France...

... 176,000 years ago: https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/a-cave-in-france-changes-what-we-thought-we-knew-about-neanderthals

Taken from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/the-astonishing-age-of-a-neanderthal-cave-construction-site/484070/

which was based on
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18291

and also reported by
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/05/neanderthals-caves-rings-building-france-archaeology/

Bruniquel Cave is in south-west France, more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruniquel_Cave

Related:

The common ancestors of the humanoids known as Neanderthals and Denisovans spread across Europe and Asia over half a million years ago, and split into the two branches, with fossils of Neanderthals found in western countries and of Denisovans in the East. What is thought to have been the first wave of Homo Sapiens came from Africa c. 270,000 years ago and some may have mated with Neanderthals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/science/neanderthals-dna-homo-sapiens-human-evolution.html

ORIGINS: Walking protohumans started in Europe?

According to research published in Nature, the first bipedal ancestor of modern humans may have come from southern Europe. Dubbed Danuvius Guggenmosi, the remains were found in Bavaria and date from c. 11.5 million years ago.

Only a few weeks before this discovery, another research team speculated that a 10-million-year-old pelvis belonging to another species called Rudapithecus Hungaricus may have enabled it to walk upright, too.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03418-2

Before now, says the Daily Mail's report, the earliest evidence of two-legged hominids came from Kenya - the 6 million-year-old remains of Orrorin Tugenensis -  and some fossilised footprints on the island of Crete.

"The discovery of Danuvius may shatter the prevailing notion of how bipedalism evolved: that perhaps 6 million years ago in East Africa a chimpanzee-like ancestor started to walk on two legs after environmental changes created open landscapes and savannahs where forests once dominated."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-7658067/Prehistoric-ape-Germany-pioneer-two-legged-walking.html

So rather than coming from Africa, it's possible that some of humanity's ancestors may have gone there before re-migrating northwards.

ORIGINS: New fossil discovery moves back date of African exodus

A 210,000-year-old skull found in Greece shows that migration from Africa began >50,000 years earlier than previously thought:

https://theconversation.com/oldest-human-skull-outside-africa-identified-as-210-000-years-old-120188

PHILIPPINES: Prehistoric Hobbits in Luzon

Archaeological remains of a butchered rhino suggest that midget humanoid ancestors came to the Philippines far earlier than we thought:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/04/butchered-rhino-suggests-humans-were-in-the-philippines-700000-years-ago

MAP: Historic expansion of Austronesian speakers

As China vies with the USA for control of the Pacific*, Japan Forward offers this map of the spread of Austronesian languages:

* "In 2008 Admiral Keating of the United States Pacific Command (PACOM) gave a warning that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is interested in dividing the Pacific Ocean between China and the U.S.":

- http://japan-forward.com/8th-pacific-islands-leaders-meeting-what-should-be-on-the-agenda/