Outback discovery suggest humans reached Australia 18,000 years earlier than thought
The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians may have reached Australia 18,000 years earlier than originally thought, according to research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
A team of archaeologists led by Chris Clarkson, an associate professor at the University of Queensland School of social sciences, found thousands of artifacts at an excavation site at the bottom of a rock shelter called Madjedbebe near Kakadu National Park. Researchers found axheads and grinding stones among other artifacts at the site.
“The site contains the oldest ground-edge stone ax technology in the world, the oldest known seed-grinding tools in Australia and evidence of finely made stone points which may have served as spear tips,” Clarkson said in a statement.
While many archaeologists previously believed humans arrived in Australia around 47,000 years ago, the new research places humans in the area at the same time giant animals were roaming, according to the statement.
Researchers used radiocarbon dating on the sediment layer where the artifacts were buried, and luminescence, which uses laser beams, to determine the age of the artifacts, Reuters reported.
The Madjedbebe rock site has been excavated four times since the 1970s, but until recently researchers did not have the same dating methods used today, Andy Herries, Professor of Paleoanthropology and Geoarchaeology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, told Reuters.
"The problem previously was that there were some old dates and stones, but it was just a couple of them, whereas this research shows a significant occupation," Melbourne, who was not associated with the study, told Reuters.
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