Sahul
As Sahul or Meganesien the contiguous land mass is known that during the last ice age from Australia , the northern island of New Guinea with the Aru Islands , large parts of the Arafura Sea and the southern island of Tasmania was. Today's isolation of the islands from mainland Australia took place after the end of the last Ice Age, when the sea level rose more than a hundred meters due to the melting inland ice. In contrast, Sunda and Sahul were never connected by a land bridge.
The ensuing Strait between the Australian state of Queensland belonging Cape York Peninsula and New Guinea's Torres Strait and 140 kilometers wide. The Bass Strait between the island of Tasmania and the Australian continent is around 250 km wide and has an average water depth of around 90 m. The Torres Strait was flooded about 8,000 years ago and the Bass Strait about 12,000 years ago. The sea level rose to today's level until about 6000 years ago.
This separation of Sunda and Sahul is also reflected in the different fauna of both regions today , the delimitation of which is described by the Weber, Wallace and Lydekker lines . In contrast, the fauna on the now isolated islands within the former Sahul region is very similar. So come marsupials in New Guinea, Tasmania, Australia and some western islands up to Sulawesi before and some species of rainbow fish both in northern Australia and New Guinea in the south.
Human settlement
The earliest settlement phase in Sahul is assumed to be 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Since the radiocarbon method no longer works during this period , luminescence was used to determine the age .
It is currently widely accepted that Sahul was settled 35,000 years ago. Humans had reached the highlands of New Guinea almost 50,000 years ago, and the temperate forests of the southwest of the continent more than 40,000 years ago. About 5000 years later, traces of settlement can be found in the dry and hot center as well as under rock overhangs in the mountains of Tasmania. The different habitats were conquered with a stone technology that did not show any standardized shapes during the entire Pleistocene .
The route taken by the first settlers of Sahul cannot be reconstructed, as the existing dates in New Guinea and Australia are almost all significantly older than those in Southeast Asia . In 2017 there were reports of finds in the Laili Cave on the north coast of East Timor . They document a settlement up to 44,600 years ago. They are currently the oldest known traces of human habitation in Wallacea . Finds in the Jerimalai cave on the eastern tip of Timor have been determined to be up to 42,000 years old . Rock carvings in Lene Hara Cave show similarities with finds in Australia, further reinforcing the Timor Route theory.
literature
- J. Allen, Jack Golson, Rhys Jones (Eds.): Sunda and Sahul. Academic Press, London 1977
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Stuart Hawkins, Sue O'Connor, Tim Maloney, Mirani Litster, Shimona Kealy, Jack N. Fenner, Ken Aplin, Clara Boulanger, Sally Brockwell, Richard Willan, Elena Piotto, Julien Louys: Oldest human occupation of Wallacea at Laili Cave, Timor-Leste, shows broad-spectrum foraging responses to late Pleistocene environments. In: Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 171, 2017. pp. 58-72. 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2017.07.008.
- ↑ Irina Pugach, Frederick Delfin, Ellen Gunnarsdóttir, Manfred Kayser, Mark Stoneking: Genome-wide data substantiate Holocene gene flow from India to Australia. PNAS 2013, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1211927110
- ↑ Michelle C. Langley, Sue O'Connor, Elena Piotto: 42,000-year-old worked and pigment-stained Nautilus shell from Jerimalai (Timor-Leste): Evidence for an early coastal adaptation in ISEA
- ↑ Christopher D. Standish, Marcos García-Diez, Sue O'Connor, Nuno Vasco Oliveira: Hand stencil discoveries at Lene Hara Cave hint at Pleistocene age for the earliest painted art in Timor-Leste , Archaeological Research in Asia, March 18, 2020 .