r.Y i>uoi"i;ssou sm t. \v. e. daviu, k.b.e., etc. j3f) 



PART III. 

 SUMMARY. 



The table herewith is only a very tentative and pro 

 visional attempt to approximate to the relative antiquity of 

 the various evidences adduced as to the age of abori^-inal 

 man in Tasmania and Australia. 



From the ar<i:uments already deduced the followinp; con- 

 clusions may be provisionally drawn: — 



(1) That *:he limitinpr of the date of arrival of the. 

 first Tasmanian aborigines to some such period as about five 

 thousand to seven thousand years, en the evidence of the 

 size of the refuse mounds or kitchen middens, left by the 

 aborigines, is apt to mislead for the following reasons: — 



First, the kitchen middens are liable to be considerably 

 reduced in bulk through being dismantled by floods, winds, 

 etc., as well as solution by rain water, so that they are very 

 much smaller now than they formerly were. 



Secondly, a large proportion of the aboriginal inhabitants 

 of the island did not dwell along the coast, but subsisted on 

 animals and plants, which they found useful for food, in the 

 inland areas. Thus out of the total population of aborigines 

 in Tasmania in 1803 of two thousand, as estimated by Dr 

 N^oetling, perhaps only one-half inhabited the coastal_ai'eas, 

 and so contributed to the kitchen middens. If this has been 

 so in past time, the limit assigned by Dr. Noetling of seven 

 thousand years would have to be doubled. 



Thirdly, that while the evidence of aboriginal flaked im- 

 plements, in situ, in the cemented raised beach at Regatta 

 Point, near Launceston, points to the aborigines having in 

 habited the northern part of Tasmania at a time when sea 

 level was perhaps some three to five feet higher than it is al 

 present (perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 years ago), the remarkable 

 evidence of the Chalcedonic flake (beautifully finished by re- 

 touching by the aborigines) in situ, in a deposit probably of 

 fluvio-glacial origin, near Gladstone, in N.E. Tasmania, car- 

 ries the date back probably to an epoch approximately con- 

 temporaneous wi^h some important phase of Pleistocene glaci- 

 ation. If aboriginal man in Tasmania was really contemporan- 

 eous with one of the last great ice ages, he must have witnessed 

 a sea level, perhaps no less than 200 feet lower than it is at 

 present. This lowering of sea level was due to the locking 

 up of enormous volumes of sea water which went to form 

 some eleven millions of square miles of Pleistocene ice sheets. 



