How did the indigenous get to Australia when the continents drifted apart much earlier?

Question

How did the indigenous get to Australia when the continents drifted apart much earlier?

In: 4730

Answer 1

The short answer: we don’t know. There was never a point where you could walk from southeast asia to australia (or rather, the land-group it’s a part of). There were always significant (like 70-80 miles at least) open-water crossings no matter how low the sea level got, so how’d they do it?

We don’t know, but it’s taken to indicate that humans had non-trivial watercraft at 60,000 years ago at least. It’s a hell of an implication but it’s hard to see what other answer there could be.

There are implications for other cases as well, with bodies of water that we (apparently) didn’t cross. We just don’t know.