The colonisation of Australia prior to European settlement.

Abstract

This thesis presents a view of multiple human contacts with Australia, using a variety of data from the literature; linguistic, ethnographic, geographic, physical anthropology and art history. It will be shown that successive groups of people arrived in Australia before its settlement by Europeans. These people made their presence felt in various ways, which have been considered. Some in ancient and later times may have arrived from Africa, perhaps being blown off course and carried by the currents and winds of the Indian Ocean. Later migrations came from Asia, and finally technologically advanced peoples of Indonesia and China came to Australia. Some of these people left artefacts, practices and language that became part of some Aboriginal languages and some religious beliefs and practice, along with some physical biological traces. The peoples named “Aborigines” by European settlers were a diverse set of groups with a diverse set of physical and cultural influences. In particular the Batak people of Sumatra over a period of time contributed a large component of these diverse influences.