Lots of settlements ended up constructed in places that had been on dry land at the end of the Ice Age, when sea amounts have been reduced, but ended up submerged as the sea rose, in accordance to a review revealed in the journal PLOS 1 Wednesday.
The Australian coastline prolonged 100 miles even more out to sea than it does now, say a team of researchers led by archaeologist Jonathan Benjamin of Flinders College in Adelaide, so it is probable that lots of ancient web-sites are underwater.
Researchers despatched divers to investigate probable websites and also used a number of methods, this kind of as aerial and underwater remote sensing.
They uncovered two internet sites off northwestern Australia. The to start with, in Cape Bruguieres Channel, contained artifacts that are at least 7,000 years old. At the second web site, Flying Foam Passage, they identified a single artifact that is 8,500 decades old.
Quite a few of the artifacts experienced maritime life developing on them, but the staff were ready to determine a amount of labored stone resources, which includes two achievable grinding stones.
The conclusions exhibit that these exploratory tactics are helpful in detecting underwater archaeological internet sites, mentioned the authors, who hope they can be applied to systematically recover and investigate historic artifacts.
The team also urged the Australian government to enact legislation that would guard and manage Aboriginal websites along the coastline.
“Handling, investigating and understanding the archaeology of the Australian continental shelf in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander standard proprietors and custodians is a single of the final frontiers in Australian archaeology,” Benjamin stated.
“Our final results depict the first stage in a journey of discovery to explore the likely of archaeology on the continental cabinets which can fill a major hole in the human historical past of the continent,” he extra.
In 2016, a genomic analyze uncovered that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest regarded civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back approximately 75,000 yrs.
The findings indicate Aboriginals diverged from Eurasians 57,000 decades ago, subsequent a solitary exodus from Africa all over 75,000 many years in the past.
The information might exhibit Aboriginal Australians came to the continent as early as 31,000 decades in the past.
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