Cultural innovation and megafauna interaction in the early settlement of arid Australia

Abstract

Elucidating the material culture of early people in arid Australia and the nature of their environmental interactions is essential for understanding the adaptability of populations and the potential causes of megafaunal extinctions 50-40 thousand years ago (ka). Humans colonized the continent by 50 ka, but an apparent lack of cultural innovations compared to people in Europe and Africa has been deemed a barrier to early settlement in the extensive arid zone. Here we present evidence from Warratyi rock shelter in the southern interior that shows that humans occupied arid Australia by around 49 ka, 10 thousand years (kyr) earlier than previously reported. The site preserves the only reliably dated, stratified evidence of extinct Australian megafauna, including the giant marsupial Diprotodon optatum, alongside artefacts more than 46 kyr old. We also report on the earliest-known use of ochre in Australia and Southeast Asia (at or before 49-46 ka), gypsum pigment (40-33 ka), bone tools (40-38 ka), hafted tools (38-35 ka), and backed artefacts (30-24 ka), each up to 10 kyr older than any other known occurrence. Thus, our evidence shows that people not only settled in the arid interior within a few millennia of entering the continent, but also developed key technologies much earlier than previously recorded for Australia and Southeast Asia.

Genome of the Tasmanian tiger provides insights into the evolution and demography of an extinct marsupial carnivore

“…2b). The population decline appears to have begun before the human colonization of Australia (> ~50 ka) 20 and overlaps with climate changes associated with the beginning of the penultimate glacial cycle 21 . Mutation rates for the thylacine and Tasmanian devil were conservatively estimated (see Methods), and we expect that the true thylacine and Tasmanian devil mutation rates may be slower.…”

Humans rather than climate the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Australia

“…Nowhere is the issue more acute than in Australia, where 85% of the continent's large mammal species went extinct sometime shortly after 50 kyr ago9101415, approximately the same time that humans established their first firm presence around the continent1416. Dating both human colonisation and megafaunal extinction in Australia has been hampered by the occurrence of both events at or beyond the reliable limits of radiocarbon dating15171819.…”

Early signs of human presence in Australia

“…So our estimates of the 'earliest' occupation might underestimate its actual timing. A paper 8 published in 2016 showed that early Australians had penetrated the harsh arid interior of Australia by around 49,000 years ago, and those researchers found the earliest definitive evidence for megafaunal fossils in association with tool-like artefacts in Australia. Taking this work together with the findings of Clarkson and colleagues now provides compelling evidence that humans were in Australia early enough to cause many of the megafaunal extinctions.…”

“…These differences could have dramatic consequences for the surfaces of the insulating materials, and are intimately related to -in fact, determined by -topological properties of the electronic states in the bulk of the materials. The field of topological insulators was born [5][6][7][8] . Pioneering work in the 1970s and 1980s that led to the current explosive growth in our understanding of topological materials (those that have a non-trivial topology) was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.…”

“…Or perhaps the two black holes don't start out as a pair at all. Long after the stars have collapsed into black holes, interactions with other stars in a dense stellar cluster might bring them into an orbit close enough to enable a merger that is driven by the emission of gravitational waves 8,9 (Fig. 1c).…”