New research maps the superhighways travelled by the first Australians on a 10,000-year journey through the continent. 

New research has revealed that the process of ‘peopling’ the entire continent of Sahul - the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today - took 10,000 years.

Experts at Flinders University have used sophisticated models combined with recent improvements in demography and models of wayfinding based on geographic inference to show the scale of the challenges faced by the ancestors of Indigenous people making their mass migration across the supercontinent more than 60,000 years ago.

The ancestors of Aboriginal people likely first entered the continent 75,000–50,000 years ago from what is today the island of Timor, followed by later migrations through the western regions of New Guinea.

According to the new research, this pattern led to a rapid expansion both southward toward the Great Australian Bight, and northward from the Kimberley region to settle all parts of New Guinea and, later, the southwest and southeast of Australia.

By combining two existing models predicting the routes they took - ‘superhighways’ - and the demographic structure of these first populations, the researchers were able to estimate the time for continental saturation more precisely.

Based on detailed reconstructions of the topography of the ancient continent and models of past climate, the researchers developed a virtual continent and programmed populations to survive in and move successfully through their new territory.

Navigating by following landscape features like mountains and hills and knowing where to find water led to successful navigation strategies. 

The first people of Australia soon passed along cultural knowledge to subsequent generations facilitating the peopling of the whole continent.

Yet the challenges put forth by the topography of Sahul led to a slower pace of migration. 

Previous models did not take into account the topographic constraints that this sophisticated model does, allowing for a more realistic estimation of the peopling of the continent. 

This new work also explains the slower progress Indigenous ancestors made in reaching Tasmania, which was only made possible when seawaters across Bass Straight receded - a finding only possible by combining these model results.

“The ways that people interact with terrain, ecology, and potentially other people alter our model outcomes, providing more realistic results,” says the study’s lead author, Professor Corey Bradshaw. 

“Therefore, models that incorporate only demographic information without considering the resources and needs of travellers, as well as the opportunities and constraints to their travel, are likely to underestimate the timing of expansion into new regions. 

“So, we now have a good prediction of the patterns and processes of how people first settled these lands tens of thousands of years ago.

“Our updated modelling shows that New Guinea was populated gradually over 5000 to 6000 years, with a focus initially on the Central Highlands and Arafura Sea area before reaching the Bismarck Archipelago in the east. 

“The peopling of the far southeast and Tasmania is predicted to have occurred between 9,000 and 10,000 years following initial arrival in Sahul.”

Professor Bradshaw says the innovative model developed by the researchers could be modified for other parts of the world to investigate the timing and patterns of initial peopling by humans.

“Examining comparable patterns in regions of the Middle East as humans left north-eastern Africa, entry and spread into Europe, expansion across southern Asia, and movements from Alaska to South America, are all now possible using the same modelling approach,” he said.

“Because our model incorporates local conditions, including the spatial and temporal patterns of the land’s ability to provide food, the distribution of water sources, and topography, our migration patterns would be highly relevant when applied to other parts of the world.”

The full study is accessible here.