Landscape burning facilitated Aboriginal migration into Lutruwita/Tasmania 41,600 years ago
journal contribution
posted on 2025-01-31, 02:24authored byMatthew A. Adeleye, F Hopf, SG Haberle, Georgia RobertsGeorgia Roberts, DB Mcwethy, S Harris, DMJS Bowman
The establishment of Tasmanian Palawa/Pakana communities ~40 thousand years ago (ka) was achieved by the earliest and farthest human migrations from Africa and necessitated migration into high-latitude Southern Hemisphere environments. The scarcity of high-resolution paleoecological records during this period, however, limits our understanding of the environmental effects of this pivotal event, particularly the importance of using fire as a tool for habitat modification. We use two paleoecological records from the Bass Strait islands to identify the initiation of anthropogenic landscape transformation associated with ancestral Palawa/Pakana land use. People were living on the Tasmanian/Lutruwitan peninsula by ~41.6 ka using fire to penetrate and manipulate forests, an approach possibly used in the first migrations across the last glacial landscape of Sahul.
Funding
This research was made possible through an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage support grant CE170100015 (to S.G.H.) and in-country support from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
History
Publication Date
2024-11-15
Journal
Science Advances
Volume
10
Issue
46
Article Number
eadp6579
Pagination
9p.
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science