Australia is one of the most isolated and weirdest continents that humans have ever settled. Like, literally everything is just programmed to kill you. Name the biggest shark, largest venomous snake, most venomous snake, most venomous marine animal, a kickboxing freak of nature, and then we have koalas. While they look cuddly, a koala’s scream is enough to send the bravest hero running back to mama, and they are extremely aggressive, enhanced by their super-sharp claws. I mean, just look at that face. All in all, Australia is NOT a safe place to live, and yet we still somehow managed that.
Humans have been in Australia for a good 60,000 years, or even more. Moreover, the inhospitability of the land makes it so that until the 1800s a lot of people weren’t ready to colonize, so the Aboriginals of Australia have been genetically “pure” (without any racist connotations or anything) ever since they got to the continent, making them one of the oldest ethnic groups still around in the world.
Australian Aboriginals, Melanesians, and Papua New Guineans are genetically very close, but the cultural divide is insane compared to other places with high ethnic diversity, like India or Europe. In India, even if there are a lot of ethnicities, they share and understand the some of the same words, the same stories, the same religions, the same habits, but it is not so in Australia. With over 170 living languages and 80 more extinct all belonging to different families, Australia probably has the highest linguistic diversity of any single country; not to mention that different tribes have completely different customs and habits. This is also the case in nearby Papua New Guinea, with a staggering 832 extant languages.
Back in the day all of the landmasses mentioned above was just one huge continent called Sahul, which enabled them to spread quickly. However, Sahul was not connected to Asia, and therefore the wildlife there was (and is today) completely different. Australia in question is the only continent to have marsupials (other than the opossum of the Americas), with the exception of the dingo and other feral animals that were brought by humans.
People used to think that seafaring boats and sailing were recent inventions, around 20,000 years ago, but the very existence of Australian Aboriginals, as well other people like Hawaiians (and all other Polynesians) reveal that humans have been really good at travelling by sea for a LONG time. Even with small canoes and stars as navigation, the Polynesians reached places like Madagascar (yes, the people there ARE part Pacific Islander and speak a language distantly related to Maori and Hawaiian) and even South America, where they met with Native Americans 800 years before Columbus (seems like Columbus was the last guy to get there nowadays). If you don’t know what their boats look like, here’s a good example for ya:
The Aboriginals had peace for approximately 59,700 years before the good ol’ Brits showed up to exercise dominance. And ever since then, it hasn’t gone that well for them. Of course, now they are given equal rights and stuff but usually a lot of people prefer to stay in their traditional lives and customs. And that’s how we came down under; and no, unfortunately no one’s ever came to Antarctica (except for maybe the Maori but they never came too close. After all, who wants to live on a frozen wasteland with weird stuck-up birds? Not me)
Anay Ganesh 