Aboriginal ǀ Australoid
The term Northern Australia is generally known to include two states and territories, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Indigenous Australian people make up 30% of the Northern Territory’s population.Australia’s Indigenous population — mainland Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders—was counted at 670,000 (3 percent of the total population) in 2011. Historically most Aboriginal groups were nomadic hunters and gatherers with no permanent place of residence. They had a strong dependence on the land and also the water. The Aboriginal groups are believed to be among the earliest human migrations out of Africa. Despite most likely migrating to Australia through Southeast Asia, they do not appear to be demonstrably related to any known Asian or Polynesian populations. However evidence shows that there was genetic and linguistic interchange between Aboriginal Australians and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea.
There are two data sets that have been incorporated into DNA Consultants’ method.
Aboriginal – Northern Australia represents 5,378 individuals, self-identified as Aboriginal, who were sampled in 2005 the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.
Aboriginal – Northern Australia represents 586 individuals, known as pure Aboriginal, who were sampled in 2005 the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.
From Australia, officially named the Commonwealth of Australia:
“Australia’s indigenous inhabitants, a hunting-gathering people collectively referred to today as Aboriginals and Torres Straits Islanders, arrived more than 40,000 years ago. Although their technical culture remained static—depending on wood, bone, and stone tools and weapons—their spiritual and social life was highly complex. Most spoke several languages, and confederacies sometimes linked widely scattered tribal groups. Indigenous population density ranged from one person per square mile along the coasts to one person per 35 square miles in the arid interior. When Captain James Cook claimed Australia for Great Britain in 1770, the native population may have numbered 300,000 in as many as 500 tribes speaking many different languages. In 2006 the indigenous population was approximately 517,200, representing about 2.5 percent of the[Australian] population. Since the end of World War II, the government and the public have made efforts to be more responsive to aboriginal rights and needs –most recently with then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the indigenous people in February, 2008, which included a pledge ‘to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.’
For more details on this population, see:
Aboriginal Land Rights Act;
See Also this Blog
Aboriginal Australian History Finally Resolved
Photo: David Gulpilil, the star of Walkabout, was born in the Northern Territory. Photo by Stephen Michael Barnett, Wikimedia Commons.
Source publication: Population data from sub-populations of the Northern Territory of Australia for 15 autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) loci, FSI, 2007, p237-249.
[Population 345, 346]
