>=========================================================
>Settler clues in cores
>
>MELBOURNE
>
>NEW data from core samples drilled from the seabed off Australia
>and Indonesia provide compelling evidence that Australia's first
>settlers began arriving more than 130,000 years ago.
>
>The findings support an earlier claim that Aboriginal people lived at
>the Jinmium site in northern Australia between 116,000 and 176,000
>years ago and are set to reignite a debate about the origins of modern
>people: did they walk out of Africa or did they evolve from archaic
>humans living in Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia?
>
Antiquity, Dec. 1996 I don't know if it is out yet or not. A great preview of
this is
Paul G. Bahn, "Further Back Down Under," Nature, Oct 17, 1996, p. 577-578,
>According to Peter Kershaw, a paleoecologist at Monash University
>in Melbourne, and doctoral student Patrick Moss, detailed analysis of
>the charcoal and pollen found in a core of sediment taken near the
>Great Barrier Reef shows that aboriginal people were setting fire to
>the landscape about 130,000 years ago
>
>The pair claimed that a huge "Peak" in charcoal, produced by
>burning, coincided with a shift in the vegetation from fire-sensitive
>plants, such as hoop and bunya pine, to fire-promoting eucalypts.
>
>Another peak appeared 38,000 years ago, suggesting a second wave
>of immigration.
>
>The pair found no other signs of such change in the 10-million year
>span covered by the core, despite big climate changes triggered by the
>advance and retreat of ice ages.
>
See Peter Kershaw, "Palynology, Biostratigraphy and human impact", The
Artefact, 1993, vol. 16 pp 12-18
>The findings fit neatly with new results from a core drilled off
>Lombok in Indonesia.
>
>And Mike Morwood, an archaeologist with the University of New
>England at Armidale, will report soon that archaic humans, Homo
>erectus, had voyaged to Flores Island in Indonesia more than 730,000
>years ago.
>
It has already been reported but it was not by Mike Morwood. Haven't heard of
him before:
~P.Y. Sondaar, et al., 1994. "Middle Pleistocene faunal turnover
and Colonization of Flores(Indonesia) by Homo erectus," Comptes Rendus de
l'Academie des Sciences. Paris 319:1255-1262
>If such supposedly primitive people were capable of sea travel, it was
>reasonable that humans were sailing to Australia more than 100,000
>years ago, said paleoanthropologist Alan Thorne, of the Australian
>National University in Canberra.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm