A long-lost continent that was nearly twice the size of the UK has been discovered off the coast of northern Australia. The vast landmass was home to up to half a million people around 70,000 years ago but is now submerged around 100 meters deep. According to Live Science, this Australian "Atlantis" comprised a large stretch of continental shelf that, when above sea level, would have connected the regions of Kimberley and Arnhem Land, which today are separated by a large ocean bay.
Kasih Norman, an archeologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and lead author on the study, said, ''We reveal details of the complex landscape that existed on the North West Shelf of Australia. It was unlike any landscape found on our continent today.''
The study published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews noted that the humans who lived there spoke similar languages and created similar styles of rock art to those living in the surrounding areas. It was a "vast, habitable realm" and a "single cultural zone" with similarities in ground stone-axe technology, styles of rock art, and languages, as per the study.
The study's models show the continent or vast archipelago off the northwest coast of Sahul may have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people. Sahul, the ancient land bridge comprised not only Australia but also New Guinea and Tasmania.
To draw their conclusions, the researchers projected past sea levels onto high-resolution maps of the ocean floor. They found that low sea levels exposed a vast archipelago of islands on the Northwest Shelf of Sahul, extending 500 kilometres towards the Indonesian island of Timor.
"Our ecological modelling reveals the now-drowned North West Shelf could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people at various times over the last 65,000 years. The population would have peaked at the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago when the entire shelf was dry land. Many large islands off Australia's coast – islands that once formed part of the continental shelves – show signs of occupation before sea levels rose,'' the study said.
However, at the end of this Ice Age, rising sea levels drowned the shelf, forcing its residents to flee.
''Retreating populations would have been forced together as available land shrank. Rising sea levels and the drowning of the landscape is also recorded in the oral histories of First Nations people from all around the coastal margin,'' researchers added.
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