Aboriginal ǀ Australoid
Photo: David Gulpilil, the star of Walkabout, was born in the Northern Territory. Photo by Stephen Michael Barnett, Wikimedia Commons.
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.
Aboriginal – Western Australia reflects a sample of 659 Aboriginal Australians tested in Western Australia in 2002.
From 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
Source publication: Western Australian Sub-Population Data for the Thirteen AMPFlSTR Profiler Plus and Cofiler STR Loci, JFS, 2002, p1149-1153
[Population 203]
