Aboriginal History

Urda Blichfeldt, 28/3 2007

The history of the Aborigines

The Aborigines were the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands. The word “aborigin” comes from the latin expression “ab origine”, which means “from the origin”, or “from the beginning”. Today there are about 460 000 Aborigines in Australia.

Migration to Australia

The first Aborigines settled in Australia   between 40 000 and 70 000 years ago. There is no clear origin of the Aborigines, but most likely some of them came from south-east Asia. At that time the sea levels were low, and New Guinea and Australia were connected via a land bridge. This might have been how they migrated to Australia.   It is also possible that people came by boat across the Timor Sea.
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Before colonisation

The knowledge we have about the life of the Aborigines before the colonisation is found in archaeological evidence and Aboriginal oral traditions. For thousands of years the Aborigines lived isolated from the world around them, and their lifestyle did not change much. The technology they had was simple, but they adapted well to the Australian environment. Their diet, material cultures, hunting practices and technologies varied depending on the local environment. Most of the Aboriginal people were semi-nomadic, meaning that they moved in a regular cycle following seasonal food sources. They lived in small tribes, each with their own individual culture and language. The largest population density was in the southern and eastern regions of the continent.

European colonisation

In 1770 Lieutenant James Cook arrived on the eastern side of Australia and claimed New South Wales for Great Britain. The British colonisation of Australia began in 1788 in Sydney, and slowly spread throughout the entire continent.
When the colonists arrived the population of the Aboriginal people was between 250,000 and 1 million people. The first consequence of the colonisation was a wave of...