Archaeology, DNA, and the Colonization of Pleistocene Sahul

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pleistocene Sahul, the continent created when falling sea levels opened a dry land connection between New Guinea and Australia, was first colonized by anatomically modern Homo sapiens c. 47-51 ka. A small number of sites beyond this age in the north, south and west of Australia, including two claimed to be >100,000 BP, have all been shown to be archaeologically dubious. Analyses of Indigenous DNA point to colonizing populations including at least three, possibly more than a dozen mitochondrial lineages arriving within a few thousand years of one another >45 ka. Demographic calculations based on DNA data suggest minimum founding populations numbering in the thousands. These results have implications for ideas about the marine technological capabilities of early H. sapiens in SE Asia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51348