Between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, humans began navigating the mega-continent of Sahul, a landmass that connects modern Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands. The new study provides more insight into the routes these early humans used and the time it took them to fully explore the Sahul limb. It may have taken as long as 10,000 years for these brave people to completely cover the vast area twice as long as previously thought.

To improve their estimates, the researchers developed a new, more complex model that takes into account travel effects such as the land’s ability to provide food, the distribution of water resources, and the topography of the land.

“The way people interact with the landscape, the environment, and potentially other people, changes the results of our model, providing more realistic results,” says ecologist Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia.

“We now have a good guess at the patterns and processes of how humans first settled on this land tens of thousands of years ago.”

The researchers combined data from two previously published studies: one that models movement and population growth patterns using a grid-based system, and another that identifies possible “highways” of the study based on landscape features.

In addition to expanding the estimate of the time required to fill the mega-continent due to the constraints imposed by topography, the new model also identified a new unexplored corridor of movement from the center of Sahul to the south.

“An individual who walks across a landscape and repeatedly chooses this primary path is likely to lead to migration corridors, as it transmits information about the landscape to the rest of the population over time,” the researchers wrote in the published paper.

Migration most likely started from Timor, then western parts of New Guinea. Rapid expansion would then take place south to the Great Australian Bay and north to New Guinea. The researchers also suggest that travel to Tasmania will be limited by the rise and fall of sea levels in the Bass Strait – an example of how the new model impacts the landscape’s impact on the population.

“Our updated modeling shows that New Guinea was inhabited gradually over 5,000-6,000 years, initially centered on the Central Highlands and Arafura Sea region before reaching the eastern Bismarck Archipelago,” says Bradshaw. “Settlement in the far southeast and Tasmania is thought to have occurred 9,000 to 10,000 years after the first arrival at Sahul.”

The researchers believe their findings could be applied to other parts of the world when it comes to mapping. homo sapiens It made its way from Africa to Asia and the Americas, although the patterns had to be adapted to suit different regions. These estimates can then be verified and tested with findings from archaeological excavations, as in this particular study. Whether you choose a route that crosses two over two mountains or stay close to water sources, these details can be important when it comes to where and how fast a population is spreading.

“It also demonstrates the power of combining computational models with archeology and anthropology to advance our understanding of humanity,” says archaeologist Stephanie Crabtree of the University of Utah.