No region, as this one between Asia and Australia, shows such evident signs of environmental change during the last geological epoch. In Java and the neighboring islands are the most active volcanoes in the world. Here are the most notable examples of raised coral reefs, especially in the eastern part closest to New Guinea. It is almost certain that after the last glacial period a region as large as India was covered by the sea. This Sunda Land disappeared as ocean waters rose from the melting of the great ice masses of Antarctica and the northern circumpolar regions at the end of the last glacial phase. Daly et al have calculated that as a result of this, the waters rose by at least 60m; Molengraaf shows that the beds of submerged rivers can still be traced to the bottom of the Sunda Sea, while the freshwater fish of eastern Sumatra are similar to those of western Borneo, so recent is the separation of these rivers. The indications of a high antiquity of man in Australia are, on the other hand, very numerous. The Talgai skull, of the Australian or proto-Australian type, found at 56 km. north-west of Warwick in southern Queensland, it was associated with the bones of extinct marsupials, and, like these, was in a condition of marked mineralization; it is generally considered to be of the Pleistocene age. In Cohuna, on Murray (64 km. North-west of Echuca), another primitive skull has recently been found, but its age is not yet well defined; the canines are in it 2 mm. wider than those of England’s Piltdown skull. The fossil skulls of Wadjak (Java) also confirm that in the Pleistocene period Australoid human forms lived between Asia and Australia. Other very ancient traces of man in Australia are listed by Sir Edgeworth David. A human tooth was found with extinct Pleistocene marsupials near Wellington; at Botany Bay (New South Wales) four stone axes and dugong bones (now unknown to Sydney) were found on a beach which must have dropped 3 meters from the time these axes were abandoned there; near Fultam (South Australia) a number of artifacts were found in situ two and a half meters below the high tide level; in Newcastle an indigenous club found itself 1.5 meters deep in a clayey layer. For Australia culture and traditions, please check calculatorinc.com.
We can therefore conclude that man’s entry into Australia must most likely be placed in the Pleistocene era. This passage from the north seems to have been, at different times, sometimes easier and sometimes more difficult than it is now. G. Taylor, based on many data which cannot be relied upon here, believes that the Papuans left Asia long before the Australoids, and perhaps before all the Negrite tribes left the continent. They were a human form prior to the Australian, and probably came to New Guinea when it was easy to reach, while it was difficult to touch Australia; they found the pygmy Negrites in the region and drove them back to the mountains. After a long time another group of Australoids came out of Asia by the same route, populating the islands of the East Indies. They must have owned some kind of boat, because there has always been a good stretch of sea between Asia and Australia. (We cannot admit otherwise, otherwise the tapir and other Asian animals would also have arrived in Australia). If this Australoid migration occurred during the last Ice Age, then the ocean would have been 60 m. lower than it is today, and the Straits of Timor perhaps only 100 km wide. instead of 560. Subsequent hordes of better-armed enemies would then drive the Australians out of the East Indies, forcing them to take refuge in the great territory to the south. In the Ice Age Northern Australia must have been much less attractive than it is now, as, due to the northward displacement of the tropical high pressure zone, the desert extended to the northern coast and in this case no race, if not reduced to the extreme, would have taken refuge in this inhospitable region. This would also explain why the Papuans have always remained in their relatively fertile territory, without attempting to invade the Australian dominions.
The Taylor (Environment and Race) places the entry of Australians in Australia in an era roughly corresponding to that in which the Mousterian lithic culture arrived in Europe, which has many similarities with the Australian lithic industry: and therefore in the last interglacial. However, the dog reached western Europe only at the dawn of Neolithic times, while in Australia bones of the dingo associated with extinct marsupials were found in the quarries of Wellington (NG d. S.). This type of dog, according to Wood Jones, seems more to the Syrian dogs than to any other species of the intermediate region: it did not reach Tasmania at all and in Australia itself it must have arrived with man, and on boats.
