"To recognise the aboriginal and Torres Straight islanders."
"First Peoples Day"
Which peoples came here first and more importantly who cares?
Humans alive today in Australia are all the same species: homo sapiens
and also the same sub species: homo sapiens sapiens.
So why seek to divide us? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Australians Origins
Scholars had disagreed whether their closest kin outside Australia were certain South Asian groups or African groups. The latter would imply a migration pattern in which their ancestors passed through South Asia to Australia without intermingling genetically with other populations along the way.[21]
In a 2011 genetic study by Ramussen et al., researchers took a DNA sample from an early 20th century lock of an Aboriginal person's hair with low European admixture. They found that the ancestors of the Aboriginal population split off from the Eurasian population between 62,000 and 75,000 BP, whereas the European and Asian populations split only 25,000 to 38,000 years BP, indicating an extended period of Aboriginal genetic isolation.
These Aboriginal ancestors migrated into South Asia and then into Australia, where they stayed, with the result that, outside of Africa, the Aboriginal peoples have occupied the same territory continuously longer than any other human populations.
These findings suggest that modern Aboriginal peoples are the direct descendants of migrants who left Africa up to 75,000 years ago.[22][23]
This finding is compatible with earlier archaeological finds of human remains near Lake Mungo that date to approximately 40,000 years ago.
The same genetic study of 2011 found evidence that Aboriginal peoples carry some of the genes associated with the Denisovan (a species of human related to but distinct from Neanderthals) peoples of Asia; the study suggests that there is an increase in allele sharing between the Denisovans and the Aboriginal Australians genome compared to other Eurasians and Africans.
Examining DNA from a finger bone excavated in Siberia, researchers concluded that the Denisovans migrated from Siberia to tropical parts of Asia and that they interbred with modern humans in South-East Asia 44,000 years ago, before Australia separated from Papua New Guinea approximately 11,700 years BP.
They contributed DNA to Aboriginal Australians along with present-day New Guineans and an indigenous tribe in the Philippines known as Mamanwa.
This study makes Aboriginal Australians one of the oldest living populations in the world and possibly the oldest outside of Africa, confirming they may also have the oldest continuous culture on the planet.
The Papuans have more sharing alleles than Aboriginal peoples The data suggest that modern and archaic humans interbred in Asia before the migration to Australia.[25]
One 2017 paper in Nature evaluated artifacts in Kakadu and concluded "Human occupation began around 65,000 years ago".[26]
A 2013 study by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology found that there was a migration of genes from India to Australia around 2000 BCE. The researchers had two theories for this: either some Indians had contact with people in Indonesia who eventually transferred those genes from India to Australian Aborigines, or that a group of Indians migrated all the way from India to Australia and intermingled with the locals directly.
Their research also shows that these new arrivals came at a time when dingoes first appeared in the fossil record, and when Aboriginal peoples first used microliths in hunting. In addition, they arrived just as one of the Aboriginal language groups was undergoing a rapid expansion.
In a 2001 study, blood samples were collected from some Warlpiri members of the Northern Territory to study the genetic makeup of the Warlpiri Tribe of Aboriginal Australians, who are not representative of all Aboriginal Tribes in Australia. The study concluded that the Warlpiri are descended from ancient Asians whose DNA is still somewhat present in Southeastern Asian groups, although greatly diminished. The Warlpiri DNA also lacks certain information found in modern Asian genomes, and carries information not found in other genomes, reinforcing the idea of ancient Aboriginal isolation.
"These findings suggest that modern Aboriginal peoples are the direct descendants of migrants who left Africa up to 75,000 years ago."
So, aren't we all direct descendants of those OoA [Out of Africa] migrants?
