HUMAN EVOLUTION × TECHNOLOGY

The First Sea Crossing to Sahul

~65,000 years ago

Phanerozoic · Cenozoic · Quaternary · Pleistocene · Late Pleistocene

People reached Sahul, the continent that then joined Australia and New Guinea, about 65,000 years ago, by crossing at least eighty kilometres of open sea with no land in sight.

The first sea crossing to Sahul brought people to the continent that then joined Australia and New Guinea. Even when the sea was at its lowest level, the crossing covered at least eighty kilometres of open water, and the destination stayed out of sight throughout. The people who arrived carried ground-edge axes, whose cutting edge was sharpened by grinding. They also carried ochre, a natural earth pigment. Clarkson and colleagues (2017) obtained the age at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia. Tens of thousands of worked stones lie below the dated level there. They indicate an occupation of substantial duration and not a single visit.

Why it matters

The crossing to Sahul is the oldest evidence that people planned a journey to a destination they could not see. All earlier movements of people can be explained by travel on foot over a long enough distance. For this crossing, people had to be convinced that land existed beyond the horizon, and to build a craft for it.

Dating & uncertainty

The date of the crossing comes from luminescence dating of sand grains at Madjedbebe. This method measures when the grains were last exposed to light. Tens of thousands of worked stones lie beneath the dated layer. O'Connell and colleagues (2018) re-examined the regional evidence. They interpret the deposit differently and judge any age above 50,000 years unlikely, which would place the arrival close to 50,000 years ago.

Earth history as one day

23:59:581.2 s before midnight

if Earth’s 4.54 billion years were compressed into a single day