Undersea Aussie aboriginal artefacts found, according to reports in ABC News, The Conversation and James Cook University News 2 July 2020, and PLOS ONE 1 July 2020, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233912.
Archaeologists have found hundreds of stone tools and grinding stones at two sites on the seabed near the Dampier Archipelago, off the northwest coast of Western Australia. One site was 2.4 metres below the sea surface and the other was associated with a submerged freshwater spring 14 metres below sea level. The scientists studied “known geomorphological and climatic processes including cyclone activity” that might have swept the tools into the sea from nearby land, but concluded the artefacts were found where people had been living.
Researchers claim the findings indicate people arrived at the site when sea levels were much lower, and lived there for many generations before that land was submerged. Sea levels around Australia show abundant evidence of having been up to 130 metres (400ft) lower during the depths of the last ice age, which would have extended the land mass of Australia by another 2.12 million square kilometres.
The research team wrote: “During this period some of the major transformations of early human history took place, including renewed human dispersals out of Africa into Europe and Asia, development of seafaring technology, palaeoeconomic diversification and intensification including exploitation of marine resources, and entry for the first time into Australia and the Americas, currently dated at c. 65,000 and c. 20,000 cal BP respectively.”
Links: ABC, Conversation, JCU
Editorial Comment: These findings are consistent with other global evidence of human habitation on what are now areas of undersea continental shelves. It is interesting that the scientists who did this study admit that sea levels have changed by a massive 130 metres, and the climate has cooled and warmed. What do they think caused the climate to change and the sea levels to rise? It certainly wasn’t burning oil and coal by human technology. Remember this story when the politicians and climate activists blame modern industry for changes in coastlines and seashores.
But it does show there was a time in human history when sea levels were significantly lower and people were able to migrate easily across the face of the earth because land masses were joined, and distances between islands were much shorter. However, the migration was not by upwardly evolving primitive humans developing new technology. It was high tech humans on the way to the stone age, who were dispersing from the Tower of Babel after God had judged them for defying God and wanting to use their technological expertise to “make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:1-9).
The ancestors of Australian aborigines moved east, via what is now called the Indian subcontinent, and then headed south, via south-east Asia, to northern Australia. Many of what are now separate islands would have been joined by land bridges, and any sea voyages would have been much shorter, and no problem for people who were the were the descendants of Noah’s family, who had built an enormous seagoing vessel.
Photos of stone tools from Benjamin J, O’Leary M, McDonald J, Wiseman C, McCarthy J, Beckett E, et al. (2020) Aboriginal artefacts on the continental shelf reveal ancient drowned cultural landscapes in northwest Australia. PLoS ONE 15(7): e0233912. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233912 Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence CC BY 4.0
Evidence News
5 August 2020
Creation Research Australia
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