Understanding the history of Aboriginal Australians, their origins and how their population changed over some 50,000-plus years has always been an enormous challenge. Many Aboriginal people have their own origin…
The last 100,000 years of human evolution
How did we evolve? We’ve all heard of Neanderthals but how many people know that modern humans lived with two other kinds of humans 100,000 years ago? Internationally renowned palaeoanthropologist…
First Peoples were truly first
Griffith University researchers have found evidence that demonstrates Aboriginal people were the first to inhabit Australia, as reported in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this…
Did farming cause a bottleneck of male diversity?
When people abandoned a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and became agriculturalists, initially some 10,000 years ago, they gave up a lot of things. This significant shift in the way they obtained their…
Who we should recognise as First Australians in the constitution
Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm recently said Australia should not recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Australians in legislation because the evidence was only “conjecture”. He raised his…
Ancient DNA sheds light on the origin of Europeans
Much of the evidence of where the first Europeans came from was originally derived from comparisons of skulls but our work looking at ancient DNA is revealing new insight, with…