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About 70,000 years ago , a Brobdingnagian swathe of land that ’s now submerge off the coast of Australia could once have supported a universe of half a million people . The undersea territory was so large it could have operate as a stepping Harlan Fisk Stone for migration from advanced - twenty-four hour period Indonesia to Australia , finds a young subject print Dec. 15 in the journalQuaternary Science Reviews .
" We ’re talking about a landscape that ’s quite inundate , over 100 meters [ 330 feet ] below ocean level today,“Kasih Norman , an archaeologist at Griffith University in Queensland , Australia , and conduct author on the new study , told Live Science . This Australian " Atlantis " make up a large stretch of continental ledge that , when above sea level , would have connected the region of Kimberley and Arnhem Land , which today are separated by a large ocean Laurus nobilis .
Scientists have discovered a lost landmass off the coast of Australia that could have supported a population of up to half a million people.
This ancient expound Australian land mass once shape part of a palaeocontinent that connected modern - day Australia , New Guinea , and Tasmania into a individual unit of measurement know as Sahul .
A habitable, populated landscape?
Despite its scale , until now there ’s been little research into whether humans could have inhabited the now - slide down shelf . " There ’s been an underlying assumption in Australia that our continental margins were belike unproductive and were n’t really used by masses , despite the fact that we have grounds from many persona of the world that people were definitely out on these continental shelves in the past , " Norman say .
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Her new study turn that presumption on its head . It brings regional information on ocean levels between 70,000 and 9,000 geezerhood ago , together with elaborated mapping of seafloor features from the underwater continental ledge , provided by sonar mapping from ships . This combination painted a picture of dramatically changing shape on that shelf over the studied period .
The sunken continental shelf sits off the northern coast of Australia.
Firstly , the data show up that between 71,000 and 59,000 eld ago , sea level were roughly 130 foot ( 40 m ) broken than they are today , a dip that exposed a curving necklace of islands at the Australian continent ’s outer northwestern edge . This archipelago place within reach out aloofness , by voyaging gravy holder , of the Southeast Asian island of Timor , which itself is not far from Indonesia .
Then , between 29,000 and 14,000 years ago , there was another more hasty dip in sea layer , coincide with the superlative ofthe last icing years . This was a fourth dimension when with child amounts of water became suspended in ice , which further lour ocean levels . These plummeting levels exposed a magnanimous wrapping of continental ledge right beside forward-looking - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. Australia . " We ’re really await at a land mass that was about 1.6 time the sizing of the UK , " Norman said .
This , combined with the antecedently expose hoop of island , " would have meant that there was basically a contiguous archipelago environs to move from the Indonesian archipelago , across to Sahul , and then from that archipelago into the supercontinent itself , " Norman said . This could have enabled what she called a " tell on migration " between forward-looking - 24-hour interval Indonesia and Australia .
The shelf stretched all the way to the island of Timor.
Meanwhile , the sonar mapping revealed a landscape painting where humanity could well have thrived : a marvelous , sheltering escarpment , containing an inland sea side by side to a tumid fresh water lake . There was also evidence of winding river bed carved across the land .
Norman calculated that the big shelf , with these lifetime - supporting feature article , could have harbored anywhere between 50,000 and half a million hoi polloi . " It ’s important to bear in mind these are n’t existent universe numbers we ’re talking about , it ’s just a subject of project the carrying content of our landscape , " she said . " We ’re basically say it could have had that many people . "
Retreat and migration
However , there are clues from other research that this once exposed tableland was indeed home to 100 of thousands of people . Ironically , these come from a time when the possible inhabitants of this Atlantis would have been forced by by rising tides from their new found land .
As the last methamphetamine hydrochloride years began to taper off , melting Methedrine cap shed piss into a uprise ocean , Between roughly 14,000 and 14,500 years ago , sea level rose at an speed up charge per unit , get going from about 3.2 understructure ( 1 m ) per year to a meter [ 3.2 feet ] over the course of 100 years , to 16 feet . " In this 400 year period , over 100,000 solid kilometre of land go underwater , " Norman said . Between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago , that figure repeated , and another 100,000 square kilometers were swallowed up by the ocean . " the great unwashed would have really seen the landscape change in front of them , and been pushed back in the lead of that encroaching coastline quite apace , " Norman sound out .
This possibility is supported by other enquiry . A recent studypublished in the daybook Natureanalyzed the genetics of hoi polloi living in the Tiwi Islands , which sit around on the edge of the shelf today . It reveal that at the end of the last glacial period , there was variety in genetic touch argue an inflow of new population there . What ’s more , about 14,000 geezerhood ago , and then again between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago , the archeological book at edge region of advanced - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. Australia shows an increment in the deposit of stone tools — " which is normally render to mean that there ’s a lot more people suddenly in that area , " Norman said .
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Around this time in Kimberly and Arnhem Land , cave artwork also exchange to incorporate new styles and study , admit more human figures in the premix . This may have been from new people get in in the area , Norman say .
She hopes her research will motivate others to pay closer attending to the archeological importance of Australia ’s sunken continental shelf .
" It ’s quite fascinating to calculate at how multitude dynamically respond to effect in the past tense and obviously hold out them and thrived . I would go for that there might be something we can take from that , that we can apply to future climate change and sea tier ascent in the next few hundred years . "
