The First Boat People

The First Boat People concerns how people travelled across the world to Australia in the Pleistocene. It traces movement from Africa to Australia offering a new view of population growth at that time, challenging current ideas and underscoring problems with the ‘Out of Africa’ theory of how modern humans emerged. The variety of routes, strategies and opportunities that could have been used by those first migrants is proposed against the very different regional geography that existed at that time. Steve Webb shows the impact of human entry into Australia on the megafauna using fresh evidence from his work in Central Australia, including a description of palaeoenvironmental conditions existing there during the last two glaciations. He argues for an early human arrival and describes in detail the skeletal evidence for the first Australians. This is a stimulating account for students and researchers in biological anthropology, human evolution and archaeology.

STEVE WEBB is Professor of Australian Studies at Bond University, in Queensland, Australia. He has previously carried out a pioneering palaeopathological study of Aboriginal health patterns prior to European colonisation, and has previously published Palaeopathology of Aboriginal Australians (1995). His research now concentrates on Australian regional human evolution, reasons for the extinction of Australia's megafauna, Upper Pleistocene migration and the earliest human settlement of the continent. His particular focus is on palaeoenvironmental change accompanying the last two glaciations in Central Australia in order to understand more fully megafaunal extinction in the region and the timing of the first human entry into Australia.

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Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology

Series editors

HUMAN ECOLOGY
C. G. Nicholas Mascie-Taylor, University of Cambridge
Michael A. Little, State University of New York, Binghamton
GENETICS
Kenneth M. Weiss, Pennsylvania State University
HUMAN EVOLUTION
Robert A. Foley, University of Cambridge
Nina G. Jablonski, California Academy of Science
PRIMATOLOGY
Karen B. Strier, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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The First Boat People

S. G. WEBB

Bond University, Queensland

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521856560

© Cambridge University Press 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-85656-0 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-85656-6 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or
will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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This book is dedicated to the memories of Rhys Jones and Peter
Clark, two great friends who were immersed in the story of
Australia's human beginnings.

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Contents

List of plates		page viii
List of figures		x
List of maps		xi
List of tables		xii
Preface		xv
Introduction		1
1	Going to Sunda: Lower Pleistocene transcontinental migration	5
2	Pleistocene population growth	40
3	From Sunda to Sahul: transequatorial migration in the Upper Pleistocene	73
4	Upper Pleistocene migration patterns on Sahul	112
5	Palaeoenvironments, megafauna and the Upper Pleistocene settlement of Central Australia	134
6	Upper Pleistocene Australians: the Willandra people	183
7	Origins: a morphological puzzle	233
8	Migratory time frames and Upper Pleistocene environmental sequences in Australia	252
9	An incomplete jigsaw puzzle	271
Appendix 1		277
Appendix 2		279
Appendix 3		281
References		287
Index		304

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Plates

5.1–5.2	Human cranial vault from Lake Eyre basin	162–163
5.3–5.5	Various views of human right metacarpal	168–169
5.6–5.7	Burnt megafauna bone	170–171
6.1	The cremated cranium of WLH1	189
6.2	The cranium of WLH3	190
6.3A,B,C	WLH50, A – Lateral view, B – Frontal view, C – Superior view	192–193
6.4	Cross-section of three cranial vaults WLH22 (top), WLH28 (middle, cremated) and WLH63 (bottom)	195
6.5	Cranial thickness of WLH18 composed almost entirely of spongy bone	196
6.6	X-ray of WLH1 showing uniformly thin cranial vault structure	196
6.7	Cranial thickness along the sagittal suture of right parietal of WLH68 with calcination (white) from cremation	197
6.8	X-ray showing uniformly thick cranial vault structure of WLH50 with additional thickening at the superior occipital protuberance and at the prebregmatic region of the frontal bone	198
6.9	A section of the WLH50 vault (parietal) showing how it is almost entirely diploeic (spongy bone) with extraordinary thin cranial tables	199
6.10	Close up of the diploeic cranial vault bone of WLH50	200
6.11	Brow profile of WLH68 showing a bulbous forehead, a lack of any brow development, the arc of the left eye socket (bottom) and discolouration typical of cremated bone	203
6.12	Zygomatic trigones of WLH18 (top) and WLH69 (bottom)	206
6.13	Comparison of the malar bones of WLH1 (left) and WLH2 (right) with its prominent malar tuberosity and overall greater rugosity than that of WLJ1	211
6.14	Frontal sinus of WLH50, at top of picture	213
6.15	Thick humeral cortex in WLH110	218
6.16	Comparison of WLH7 tibia (centre) with a modern example (left)	220
6.17	Curved cracking, calcination and colour changes on tubular bones of WLH115, all typical indicators of the bone having been cremated in a high temperature fire	222
6.18	Cremated cranial sections of WLH68. At left is a view of the frontal and supraorbital region	223
6.19	Heavily charred pieces of the cranium of WLH28 (top)	224
6.20	WLH3 mandible showing both canine teeth missing, resorption of the alveolar bone, and a compensatory lean of adjacent teeth towards the gap	227
6.21	Parallel grooves on the lower, first molar of WLH3	228
6.22	Nanwoon occipital bone showing a hole of indeterminate origin on the right side	232

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Figures

1.1	Evolution of hominid cranial capacity	page 24
2.1	Standard world population growth trend over 1My	42
2.2	Proposed world population growth during the Pleistocene	56
3.1	Human migrations in the Upper Pleistocene	77
3.2	Increase in world reproduction rates in the Upper Pleistocene	78
3.3	Sea levels during the Upper Pleistocene	82
5.1	Upper Pleistocene oxygen isotope stages and equivalent palaeoenvironments in the Lake Eyre basin	138
5.2	Fluorine analysis of fossil and modern bone samples from the Lake Eyre region	167
5.3	Timing and process of the Australian megafaunal extinctions	177
5.4	Final process of megafaunal extinctions	178
6.1	Supraorbital modules for Willandra, Ngandong and Choukoutien fossils groups	204
6.2	Linear regression correlations between supraorbital module and cranial vault thickness	207
6.3	Linear regression correlations between malar size/length and robusticity modules	209
6.4A	Malar size/length module	210
6.4B	Malar robusticity module	210
6.5	Linear regression correlation between malar robusticity and cranial vault thickness	211
8.1	Upper Pleistocene megalake phases of Lake Eyre (hatched) compared to sea level change	253

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