140 " ^' XHINSrON MK.MOIUAI. I.KCrrilK. 



Soundiners of the sea between the Malay Peninsula and Tas- 

 mania show that, but for a few relatively narrow deep straits, 

 such as those of Sunda, of Bali-Lonibok, and the trench be- 

 tween Timor and the Sahul bank, the ancestors of the Tas- 

 manian aborigines would have been able to cross over on dry 

 land from that famous tete-du-pont for migrations across 

 the Pacific of early man — the Malay Peninsula (if they ever 

 came from that quarter) — all the way to Tasmania. Obviously, 

 as Torres Strait is not more than sixty feet in depth, and Bass 

 Strait about 180 feet (along the line of shallowest ridge con- 

 necting it with the mainland), a fall of sea-level of 200 feet 

 would completely unite Tasmania with New Guinea. If the 

 Tasmanian aborigines arrived by such "strange roads" as now 

 "go down" beneath the sea, and if in the earlier stages of 

 their wanderings they followed the shore lines, and subsisted 

 largely upon shell-tish, the bulk, indeed perhaps by far the 

 greater portion, of their kitchen middens would now be sub- 

 merged, many of them under Bass Strait. This submergencb 

 would result from the gradual rise in sea level, due to the 

 thawing of the huge ice sheets of late Pleistocene geological 

 time. 



2. Next, the absence of any knowledge of makinir sea 

 going canoes on the part of the Tasmanian aborigines, such as 

 would tend to their negotiating safely a strait of the present 

 width of Bass Strait, strengthens the belief that they must 

 have crossed at a time when the straits were either far 

 narrower than now, or did not exist at all. We are now in a 

 position to estimate very approximate date in absolute time 

 for the arrival of our aborigines in Tasmania. The evidence 

 at Launceston pointing to a higher sea level than at present, 

 to the extent of about three to five feet, belongs probably 

 to the epoch of greater warmth than at present (about 4 deg. 

 Fah.), which followed on .soon after the final melting away 

 of the last of the great Pleistocene ice sheets. This rai.sed 

 the sea level apparently all over the world by about fifteen 

 feet. Subsequently, possibly through the resorption of sea 

 water by very recently expanding polar ice caps, sea level 

 has since been lowered by fifteen feet. If the maximum sea 

 level, namely fifteen feet above its present level, took place 

 .seven thousand years ago, the Regatta Point evidence may 

 indicate an antiquity of about 1,500 to 2,000 years. Ob- 

 viously, this is an absolute minimum date. Next, it has been 

 shown that the dingo was brought into Australia by the 

 Australian aboriginal, the dingo being a domesticated wolf 

 imported by th^ An-^t mlian .'ilinrifinnl from A.sia. This 



