Why do aborigines look like neanderthals

Changing sea levels have significantly affected the geography of South-east Asia and Australia and the migration patterns of prehistoric peoples. During times of low sea levels the travelling distance between Timor and Sahul would have been reduced to about 90 kilometres. Present sea levels are higher than they have been for most of the last million years. When water is locked up in the polar ice caps known as an Ice Age the sea level drops.

When the climate becomes warmer, the ice melts and the sea level rises again. The settlement of Australia is the first unequivocal evidence of a major sea crossing and rates as one of the greatest achievements of early humans. However the motive and circumstances regarding the arrival of the first Australians is a matter for conjecture.

It may have been a deliberate attempt to colonise new territory or an accident after being caught in monsoon winds. The lack of preservation of any ancient boat means archaeologists will probably never know what kind of craft was used for the journey.

None of the boats used by Aboriginal people in ancient times are suitable for major voyages. The most likely suggestion has been rafts made of bamboo, a material common in Asia. The earliest accepted dates for human occupation of Australia come from sites in the Northern Territory. Over the last few decades, a significant number of archaeological sites dated at more than 30, years old have been discovered.

By this time all of Australia, including the arid centre and Tasmania, was occupied. The drowning of many coastal sites by rising sea levels has destroyed what would have been the earliest occupation sites. Recently published dates of , years ago for the site of Moyjil in Warrnambool, Victoria, offer intriguing possibilities of much earlier occupation Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria , Much of our knowledge about the earliest people in Australia comes from archaeology.

The physical remains of human activity that have survived in the archaeological record are largely stone tools, rock art and ochre, shell middens and charcoal deposits and human skeletal remains. These all provide information on the tremendous length and complexity of Australian Aboriginal culture.

The oldest human fossil remains found in Australia date to around 40, years ago — 20, years after the earliest archaeological evidence of human occupation. Nothing is known about the physical appearance of the first humans that entered the continent over 60, years ago. What is clear is that Aboriginal people living in Australia between 40, and 10, years ago had much larger bodies and more robust skeletons than they do today and showed a wide range of physical variation.

Stone tools in Australia, as in other parts of the world, changed and developed through time. Some early types, such as wasted blades, core tools, large flake scrapers and split pebble choppers continue to be made and used right up to today. About years ago, new and specialised tools such as points, backed blades and thumbnail scrapers became common. Significant variation between the tool kits of different regions also appeared.

Prototypes for this technology appeared earlier in Asia, suggesting this innovation was introduced into Australia. The ground stone technique produces tools with a more durable and even edge, although not as sharp as a chipped tool.

The oldest ground stone tools appear in Australia about 10, years before they appear in Europe, suggesting that early Australians were more technologically advanced in some of their tool manufacturing techniques than was traditionally thought. Rock art, including painted and carved forms, plays a significant role in Aboriginal culture and has survived in the archaeological record for over 30, years. In age and abundance Australian Aboriginal rock art is comparable to world-renowned European cave sites such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain.

It is probable that rock art was part of the culture of the first Australians. Its exact purpose is unknown but it is likely that from the earliest times rock art would have formed part of religious ritual activity, as is common in modern hunter-gatherer societies. Mineral pigments, such as ochre, provide the oldest evidence for human arrival in Australia.

Used pigments have been found in the earliest occupation levels of many sites, with some pieces dated at about 55, years old. This suggests that art was practised from the beginning of colonisation. Natural pigments were probably used for a range of purposes including burials, cave painting, decoration of objects and body art.

Such usage still occurs today. Ochre is an iron oxide found in a range of colours from yellow to red and brown. Red ochre is particularly important in many desert cultures due to the belief that it represents the blood of ancestral beings and can provide protection and strength. Ochre is used by grinding it into a powder and mixing it with a fluid, such as water, blood or saliva. Archaeological evidence for living sites of Ancient Aboriginal peoples comes in a variety of forms including fishing traps and weirs, stone-base huts, possible fireplaces and remains of meals and cooking activities.

The evidence indicates that lifestyle practices varied across the continent and differed depending on climate, environment and natural resources.

Shell middens are the most obvious remains of meals and are useful because they provide insight into ancient Aboriginal diets and past environments and can also be radiocarbon dated to establish the age of a site.

The Coobool Creek collection consists of the remains of individuals excavated from a sand ridge at Coobool Crossing, New South Wales, in After their excavation, they became part of the University of Melbourne collection until they were returned to the Aboriginal community for reburial in The remains date from to 13, years old and are significant because of their large size when compared with Aboriginal people who appeared within the last years. They are physically similar to Kow Swamp people with whom they shared the cultural practice of artificial cranial deformation.

This ancient burial site in northern Victoria was excavated between and A group of them crossed into Asia and from them, a single founding population arrived in Australia 50, years ago, back when Australia was still connected to New Guinea, says the team. This group split, moving around the east and west coasts of Australia, says the team. Probably true, though being sedentary is definitely not the exclusive fief of the original Australians.

In one Adrian Targett , a history teacher in the English village of Cheddar, Somerset, learned that he is a direct matrilineal descendent of a 9,year old skeleton found in a cave right there. So there was another family that didn't get about much. Getting back to the Australian aborigines, separate research has shown that they have roughly the same Neanderthal DNA component as non-Africans, which indicates they split off after at least the first interbreeding between the two species. All populations tested so far except for Africans have tested positive for Neanderthal DNA , to some degree.

In addition, previous research has shown that the aborigines, and population of New Guinea, have a very high proportion of Denisovan DNA. And that in turn supports the theory that the Denisovan hominin species was widely spread in Asia, though so far their remains have only been found in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, and very few remains at that. The most logical place for the ancestors of the aborigines to have mixed with Denisovans is south east Asia, Cooper suggests.

The traces of Denisovan genes found in the aborigines shows they're not the same Denisovans as were found in the Altai Mountains. Or maybe that genetic signal is something else entirely. Earlier this month, speculation exploded about two hominin crania at least , years old that had been found in central China, which appear to have traits of homo sapiens , archaic hominins and Neanderthals. Everyone was telling us that we were all identical, all the modern science.

Indeed, when the Neanderthal connection was revealed by geneticists, personal ancestry-testing companies were quick to sell services offering paying members of the public the opportunity to find out how much Neanderthal ancestry they have, presumably in the expectation that this might mean something to them.

The finding also had a peculiar effect on scientific research. Fairly soon after it was found that it was modern-day Europeans who have the closer association to Neanderthals—not, as it turned out, Aboriginal Australians—the image of the Neanderthal underwent a dramatic makeover.

When their remains were first discovered in , the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel had suggested naming them Homo stupidus. But now these same Neanderthals, once the dictionary definition of simple-minded, loutish, uncivilized thugs, became oddly rehabilitated. And this was accompanied by plenty of speculation from others. One team of scientists claimed that the tiny peppering of Neanderthal DNA may have given Europeans different immune systems from Africans.

In the space of a decade, once the genetic link to modern Europeans was suspected, that all changed. In the popular press, there was a flurry of excitement about our hitherto undervalued relatives. Meanwhile a piece in the New Yorker whimsically reflected on their apparent everyday similarity to humans, including the finding that they may have suffered from psoriasis.

Poor things, they even itched like us. In the popular imagination, the family tree had gained a new member. And not just accepted, but elevated to the celebrity status of sadly deceased genius cousin? In the nineteenth century Aboriginal Australians had been lumped together with Neanderthals as evolutionary dead ends, both destined for extinction.

But now that common ground had been found between Europeans and Neanderthals, now we were all people! Now we had found our common ground! If it had turned out that Aboriginal Australians were the ones to possess that tiny bit of Neanderthal ancestry instead of white people of European descent, would our Neanderthal cousins have found themselves quite so remarkably reformed?

Would they have been welcomed with such warm hugs? In this case Neanderthals have been drawn into the circle of humankind by virtue of being just a little related to Europeans—forgetting that a century ago, it was their supposed resemblance to indigenous Australians that helped cast the latter, actual living human beings, out of the circle.

Reprinted with permission by Beacon Press.