Indigenous People
Aboriginal Australians arrived approximately 50-60,000 years ago by boat or land bridge across Torres Strait, presumably from Southeast Asia. They travelled over most of the continent in the ensuing 10,000 years. Before Europeans arrived 200 of the 600-700 Australian Aboriginal nations lived in Queensland with at least 90 language groups.
Around 25,000 years ago a sudden drop in global temperature of about 8C led to an ice age lasting over 10,000 years during which much of the abundant landscape became harsh and desolate. In this period the search for food was difficult, leading to the world's first seed-grinding technology. A land bridge existed both to south east Asia and to Tasmania but these land bridges were harsh and inhospitable. About 15,000 years ago warming global temperatures and high rainfall along the eastern coast caused the spread of tropical rainforest and at the same time the shrinking of available coastal land due to sea level rises. The inland, receiving rainfall, again became habitable. The Kalkadoon, in the inland central gulf region, dug wells 10m deep to maintain their supply of freshwater. The good conditions, lasting for at least 10,000 years prior to the arrival of Europeans, allowed the development of semi-permanent villages in the northern rainforests, the far western regions and Moreton Bay. Along the Barron River, and on the Moreton Bay Islands, large huts (djimurru) capable of housing 30-40 people were built. But for the most part the unpredictable climate with severe droughts and floods made the dominant hunter-gatherer lifestyle the most sensible. Queensland assumed its present shape around 6000 years ago.
The peak population of Aboriginal people prior to European colonisation is contentious. Numbers have probably been underestimated due to the shame felt by white historians about the drastic fall in the numbers of Aboriginal people, due to smallpox in particular, but also to many other causes including direct conflict. There may have been 200-500,000 Aboriginal people in Queensland prior to white settlement. However, covering more than one third and in some estimates up to forty percent, Queensland was by all accounts the most populated section of pre-contact Aboriginal Australia.
Read more about this topic: History Of Queensland
Famous quotes containing the words indigenous and/or people:
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Don’t you realize that as long as you have to sit down to pee, you’ll never be a dominant force in the world? You’ll never be a convincing technocrat or middle manager. Because people will know. She’s in there sitting down.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)