Far from conclusive evidence of first Australian residents

To claim the present Aborigines are descendants of the first people to walk this land is folly and I believe the deliberate distortion of history.

Uluru at sunset at the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in the Northern Territory. Picture: Michael Wayne

TONY Sullivan of Nambour in a letter (Daily, April 10) takes Keith Whiteside to task, lampooning Keith about the history of the settlement of this land.

I do not know Sullivan's heritage, mine is European, and like Whiteside have been around for many decades.

I am no Rhodes Scholar, and suggest neither is Sullivan, but there is evidence those Aborigines who are claiming First Nation People status are not like the Intuits and Indian tribes of North America who were the First People that walked across the now Bearing Strait during the Ice Age.

Who is denying the movement of humanity around the world settling in all regions except the poles started during the Ice Age and increased after that era?

However, to claim the present Aborigines are descendants of the first people to walk this land is folly and I believe the deliberate distortion of history.

The first European explorers, mainly the French, created etchings, drawings, of the Australian inhabitants in Tasmania and south-west of the continent.

Those people bear no characteristics or visual resemblance to modern Aborigines who were photographed and painted a century or two after the French explored the southern regions of the land.

Since the human genome has been used to define and discover racial ancestry and heritage, from the DNA testing the Aborigines came from what is now known as the Tamil area of southern India.

There seems to be physical characteristics between them that could support the DNA finding.

Their ancestors walked to Australia during the Ice Age era that ended about 12,000 years ago.

But there were others here before those from south India arrived.

To my knowledge, there has been no scientific research into the colonising of Australia pre-European discovery of this land.

There seems to be speculation about this occupation but nothing conclusive.

BOB BUICK

Mountain Creek

Originally published as Far from conclusive evidence of first Australian residents