Fire , paints , and tools have been find at a cave in South Australia ’s Flinders Ranges , some date to 49,000 year ago – 10,000 year earlier than expect . There is even a tantalizing suggestion that these former denizen raven on two of the extinct megafauna , the cause of whose death is much debated .
Although the first people reach Australia roughly 50,000 eld ago , we have found little evidence of human living inland for 10,000 years thereafter . Anthropologists concluded Indigenous Australians kept to the coast for ten millennia . Now that impression has been tilt on its brain with the dating of various artifacts from the Warratyi rock ‘n’ roll shelter in the northern goal of the Flinders Ranges . The finding are release inNature .
Giles Hammof La Trobe University , Australia , who moderate the findings , told IFLScience that he was exploring gorges in the area in hunt of probable site of human habitation when he found rock etching . This actuate a search of the surround area . The melanise roof of a rock tax shelter differentiate him firing had been lit beneath . When Hamm and his colleagues put investigation into the soil beneath the overhang , they find ash and charcoal layers to a depth of a meter ( 3.3 feet ) , indicating the site had been inhabit over a very long period of time of sentence .
Despite this , Hamm was amazed when carbon paper dating of some of the items he find suggested they were almost 50,000 years old . Dates in that range were confirmed by apply single - texture opthalmic stimulated luminescence to quartz grain among the charcoal .
According to Hamm , the site is so fertile in signs of human military control that , even after fag up less than a tenth of it , we already have a expert idea of how intensively it was used . After infrequent occupation for several thousand yr , the Warratyi site was used more often between 40,000 - 35,000 years ago . After this , occupation overlook off until around the end of the Last Glacial Maximum , when the creation started warming , 18,000 years ago .
The Flinders Ranges does not take care like an easy spot to inhabit today , and it was drier and cooler when humans first reached there . Giles Hamm
“ We think that hoi polloi spread around the edge of the continent and then dispersed up the big rivers and lakes , " Hamm tell IFLScience . " By the time they get to the Flinders Ranges , the lake started to dry up , so they swear on the rock’n’roll fractured springs there . For most of the last Ice Age , the ranges may have been one of the few inland part of Australia capable of supporting human lifetime . "
Among the items found at the internet site are instrument made of bone more than 38,000 years old . Stone tool around up to 30,000 yr old reveal technological changes as chert andsilcretereplaced quartz . Ochre and gypsum , used as pigments , were also found .
However , perhaps the most significant aspect , other than the age of job , is the discovery of remnants from two gargantuan extinct species amalgamate in with the human artifacts . Eggshells fromGenyornis newtoni , the 240 - killogram ( 530 - pound ) goose relative that once roamed the continent , advise those who used the website may have made a meal of their eggs , just as they did with emus .
An even more important breakthrough was the radial pearl of a juvenileDiprotodon optatum , the 3 - MT ( 3.3 - short ton ) wombats that were once Australia ’s dominant grazers . The question of whether humans or clime variety were the causal agency of the death of the great wildcat that inhabit Australia tens of thousands of years ago is possibly the most heated public debate in science on the continent . Hamm order IFLScience the off-white is too degraded to reveal gash Deutsche Mark , which might have settled the doubt , but the find is still implicative .
A off-white from the forelimb of a juvenile diprotodon suggests further digging at Warratyi could solve the doubt of whether humans hunted them . Peter Murray
