AUSTRALIAN QUATERNARY CLIMATES AND MIGRATION 71 



A good deal of interest attaches to the means of transport as 



the most primitive craft known are recorded from north-west 



Australia. Pitt-Rivers (1906) traces back the development of 



sea-going craft to the pointing of the ends of a solid tree-trunk — 



the first stage of the dug-out canoe. He cites Gregory who relates 



that when his ship was off the north-west coast of Australia in 



1861, it was visited by two natives who came on logs about 7 feet 



long and a foot thick shaped like canoes, not hollowed out, but 



very buoyant, which they propelled with their hands only, their 



legs resting on a little rail made of small sticks driven in on each 



side. Pitt-Rivers corroborates Gregory's statement with a 



description of such craft from another source. He also mentions 



the dug-outs used by the aborigines on the shore of south-eastern 



Australia near Cape Howe seen by Captain Cook in 1770. The 



dug-out reached Britain before the Neolithic industry. Childe 



(1929) mentions that deep-sea ships sailed between the Indus and 



the Euphrates over 6,000 years ago. No certain representations of 



these are known, but some depicted on a Babylonian vase suggest 



that they evolved from river craft. 



VII. Critical Millennia. 



Elkin (1938) commenting on the arrival and migrations of the 

 aborigines states: 



They landed in northern Australia, probably on Cape York Peninsula and 

 perhaps also at different times on other parts of the coast. From there they 

 gradually spread across the continent, though we cannot speak with certainty 

 about the routes followed. They probably spread around the north and down 

 the east and west coasts; down the Queensland rivers on to the Diamantina 

 and Cooper and so into South Australia; from the Queensland coast on to the 

 headwaters of the Barwon and along the Darling River system and on to the 

 Murray right to its mouth; and gradually across the deserts from north to 

 south until the Bight was reached. 



These are, for the most part, the routes suggested by the vicissi- 

 tudes of the Postglacial climate. 



Although the tropical rain-forest reached the Cape York Penin- 

 sula (Fig. 13) approximately 15,000 years ago, its advancing edge 

 was probably not sharply defined and it was preceded by forest 

 country merging into savannah ; this the jungle-people penetra- 

 ted. "Desert and dense forest are the extremes," says Marett, 

 "between them — anywhere in fact between open steppe and park- 

 land, lies the happy mean, not only for the hunters but likewise 

 for the food-raising peonies." But the Proto-Indics were essen- 



