AUSTRALIAN QUATERNARY CLIMATES AND MIGRATION 79 



and fertile have become desert, and desert areas have become 

 fertile. This deterioration and amelioration in the climate sug- 

 gests that regions that have relapsed from fertility into aridity 

 mav well contain remnants of the first-comers to the mainland, and 

 those that have passed from aridity into a condition of fertility 

 may be peopled by later migrations. The coastal corridor, oro- 

 graphic rainfall-belt, and south-east Australia have always been 

 more or less fertile, and in these areas we should find the earlier 

 migrants. 



Evidence of antiquity from the south-east — Victoria and South 

 Australia — points to a Postglacial age for the appearance of the 

 aborigine. The following are the estimated ages of some arte- 

 facts, comprising Neolithic, Mesolithic, and Palaeolithic types, 

 found in the south-east: Altona. 3,000 years; Colongulac Bone, 

 3,000 years; Pejark Marsh Millstone. 3,000 years; Bushfield Axe, 

 6,000 years. The age of the Buninyong Bone and Maryborough 

 Axe, the Myrniong implements, and the earliest industry of 

 Tartanga cannot be given in years but they are believed to belong 

 to the lower half of the Postglacial or Recent. 



If the first wave of migrants came just before the tropical rain- 

 forest, say 18,000 years ago, they passed over a land-bridge that 

 8,000 years ago became the floor of Torres Strait. During the 

 intervening 10,000 years, other waves of migrants, no doubt, 

 entered Australia by this land-route, but the Australoids have 

 been cut off from contact with other ethnic types, except by sea, 

 since Torres Strait was formed. 



It has been stated that they were originally a jungle-people. 

 This is inferred from communities elsewhere, the Proto-Indics 

 of southern India— the Kadir, the Irulas, the Vedans (identical 

 with the Yeddahs) and others who live in the forest on its produce 

 and the wild animal-life in it. The Veddahs of Ceylon and the 

 communities in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, the Malay Peninsula, 

 and Siam differed little in their pristine state from the southern 

 Indian Proto-Indics; they, too, were essentially jungle-peoples. 

 They came to Australia as such and, doubtless, remained so until 

 they were compelled to migrate to the savannah and the steppe ; 

 when these relapsed into aridity with the march of the climatic 

 belts, those who could not pass on remained to become a "broken 

 people, battered vessels seeking harbour where they could." 



References 



1898 Hewitt, A. W. On the Origin of the Aborigines of Tasmania and Aus- 

 tralia. Pres. Add. Aust, Ass. Adv. Sci. VII. 



1900 De Vis, M.A. Remarks on a Fossil Implement and Bones of an Extinct 

 Kangaroo. Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria 12 (N.S.) I. 



