History of Tasmania - Indigenous People

Indigenous People

Tasmania was inhabited by an indigenous population, the Tasmanian Aborigines, and evidence indicates their presence in the territory, later to become an island, at least 35,000 years ago. The Aboriginal population at the time of British settlement in 1803 has been estimated at 5 000 but through persecution (see Black War and Black Line) and disease much of the population was eradicated. The impact of introduced diseases, prior to the first European estimates of the size of Tasmania's population, means that the original indigenous population could have been somewhat larger than 5,000. Until the 1970s, most people thought that the last surviving Tasmanian Aborigine was Trugernanner, who died in 1876. However this 'extinction' was a myth, as documented by Lyndall Ryan in 1991