The HC One-Nutters will NOT like this at all ...

This all took place before we had Coal Powered Stations and Cars !!

Map shows Australia before humans arrived

This is what Australia looked like 75,000 years ago when seafarers entered into what’s now Australia through the ancients land of “Sahul”.

April 30, 2024

And when the first hunter-gatherers crossed the narrow strait from East Timor – then at the tip of a much larger Southeast Asian landmass – they found a land unlike any other they had previously experienced.

It was inhabited by giant beasts. And it offered some 2 million square kilometres of hospitable coastal plains than it has now.

But it was already – slowly but steadily – changing. ...

An interdisciplinary team from the University of Sydney, Southern Cross University, Flinders University and Université Grenoble-Alpes has been tracking this change.

Their computerised landscape evolution model identifies shifts in climate, the impact this had on regional ecologies – and how that may have shaped human migration patterns across tens of thousands of years.

At first, much of the world’s oceans were locked up in the north and south poles. Landlocked glaciers were far larger than they are today.

That meant sea levels were not high enough to spill across the continental shelf linking mainland Australia to Tasmania and Papua New Guinea. This single connected continent has been dubbed “Sahul”.

But, starting about 25,000 years ago, the sea began its steady – but relentless – march forward...

Giant iguanas. Giant kangaroos. Giant koalas.

These were scattered across the landscape. But scientists believe their numbers had already long been in decline because of increasing aridity. And the arrival of a new predator – humans – may have sped up their demise...As Australia’s climate gradually shifted over the millennia, its Aboriginal settlers were forced to adapt. Sea levels rose. Temperatures warmed. The land began to dry out...

“We found that human settlers would have dispersed across the continental interior along rivers on both sides of Lake Carpentaria (the modern Gulf of Carpentaria).”The first communities would have mainly been foraging along the way, following water streams. They also travelled along the receding coastlines as sea levels rose once more.”
A separate study by James Cook University indicates fire management techniques were invented at least 11,000 years ago. And this further shaped Australia’s environment – shifting the pattern away from one of seasonal high-intensity fires started by lightning to less damaging patchwork burning.
“The Girraween record is one of the few long-term climate records that covers the period before people arrived in Australia 65,000 years ago, as well as after,” Prof Bird said.

Much of this traditional fire management ceased after the arrival of European settlers in the 1800s.

And that’s led to the return of high-intensity late dry season bushfires.“

This ecosystem-scale shock altered a carefully nurtured biodiversity established over tens of thousands of years and simultaneously increased greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

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