Amazing stuff! Perhaps, some of the claims about the population are more speculative than based on facts.
Defeats easily all that frequent alarmism and hysteria about rising sea levels due to the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion.
"For much of the 65,000 years of Australia's human history, the now-submerged northwest continental shelf connected the Kimberley and western Arnhem Land. This vast, habitable realm covered nearly 390,000 square kilometres, an area one-and-a-half times larger than New Zealand is today. ...
There is plenty of archaeological evidence humans once lived on continental shelves – areas that are now submerged – all around the world. Such hard evidence has been retrieved from underwater sites in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea, and along the coasts of North and South America, South Africa and Australia. ...
Around 18,000 years ago, the last ice age ended. Subsequent warming caused sea levels to rise and drown huge areas of the world's continents. This process split the supercontinent of Sahul into New Guinea and Australia, and cut Tasmania off from the mainland. ...
With descent into the last ice age, polar ice caps grew and sea levels dropped by up to 120 metres [meaning today's see levels are 120 meters higher]. This fully exposed the shelf for the first time in 100,000 years. ...
Our ecological modelling reveals the now-drowned Northwest Shelf could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people at various times over the last 65,000 years. The population would have peaked at the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, when the entire shelf was dry land.
This finding is supported by new genetic research indicating large populations at this time, based on data from people living in the Tiwi Islands just to the east of the Northwest Shelf. ..."
"... Around 18,000 years ago, the last ice age ended. Subsequent warming caused sea levels to rise and drown huge areas of the world’s continents. This process split the supercontinent of Sahul into New Guinea and Australia, and cut Tasmania off from the mainland. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• MIS4 lowstand exposed a vast archipelago off the northwest coast of Sahul.
• The island environment likely enabled staged human dispersal from Wallacea to Sahul.
• The NW Shelf contained a mosaic of habitable fresh and saltwater environments.
• Modelling reveals the drowned shelf could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people.
• Retreat ahead of sea level rise drove increasing occupation and new rock art styles.
Abstract
For most of the period of human occupation of Sahul (the combined Pleistocene landmass of Australia and New Guinea), lower sea levels exposed an extensive area of the northwest of the Australian continent, connecting the Kimberley and Arnhem Land into one vast area. Our analysis of high-resolution bathymetric data shows this now-drowned region existed as an extensive archipelago in Marine Isotope Stage 4, transforming in Marine Isotope Stage 2 into a fully exposed shelf containing an inland sea adjacent to a large freshwater lake. These were encircled by deep gorges and escarpments that likely acted as important resource zones and refugia for human populations at that time. Demographic modelling shows the shelf had a fluctuating potential carrying capacity through Marine Isotope Stages 4–2, with the capability to support 50–500 k people at various times. Two periods of rapid global sea level rise at 14.5–14.1 ka (Meltwater Pulse 1A), and between 12 ka and 9 ka, resulted in the rapid drowning of ∼50% of the Northwest Shelf. This likely caused a retreat of human populations, registering as peaks in occupational intensity at archaeological sites. We contend that the presence of an extensive archipelago on the Northwest Shelf in Marine Isotope Stage 4 facilitated the successful dispersal of the first maritime explorers from Wallacea, creating a familiar environment for their maritime economies to adapt to the vast terrestrial continent of Sahul."
People once lived in a vast region in north-western Australia – and it had an inland sea
Sea level rise drowned a vast habitable area of north-western Australia driving long-term cultural change (open access)
Fig. 1. Map of Sahul showing the extent of the now-submerged continental shelf (dark grey), with the area of the Northwest Shelf demarcated by a dashed black box, and the present-day distribution of the Köppen climate groups (seasonal precipitation and temperature) showing the extent of modern-day Australia and New Guinea.
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