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The history of native Australia goes back to a time 50,000 to 170,000 years ago. Today the population of Aborigines, a term which comes from the latin word \"aborigen\" meaning native, is about 380,000, making up about 2.3% of the Australian population as a whole and slightly more than the estimated aboriginal population of 350,000 at the time of European colonization in the late 18th century. The Australian natives are dark-skinned and have black curly hair.
Scientists do not all agree about when people first arrived in Australia, but current archaeological estimates generally range from 40 000 to 60 000 years ago. The geography of the south-western Pacific Ocean region at that time suggests how people might have migrated to Australia from Southeast Asia.
Sea levels around the Australian continent have fluctuated widely over time due to expansion and contraction of the polar ice caps during and between ice age glaciers. When sea levels dropped, the ocean distances between Southeast Asia and Australia shrank considerably. People may have first migrated to Australia by boat during one of these periods.
When they arrived, the original Australians provided themselves by gathering plant foods, hunting birds, reptiles, land and marine mammals and fishing. Many aboriginal groups lived along coasts and fresh waterways, which were the areas of richest natural abundance. But they soon migrated throughout the continent.
The Australian continent consists of many diverse regional environments. As they spread across the continent, Aboriginal populations had to adapt to living in new climates with different kinds of plants and animals. When people first arrived in the tropical and subtropical northern region of the continent , it consisted of rain forests, mangrove swamps , coral atolls and savannahs. Migrants from Southeast Asia probably found this region similar to the one they had left, with similar plant and marine animal species. However, most if the land animal species of Australia - including large relatives of the emu and marsupials such as kangaroos, wallabies, wombats and koalas - lived only on that continent. Migrant groups had to learn about the characteristics of these species to determine which one might be dangerous and which could be successfully hunted for food. When people came to the centre of the continent it consisted of arid desert surrounded by temperate regions with forests, grasslands, rivers and lakes. People who migrated to these areas had to learn which plants they could safely eat.
Archaeologists and anthropologists think that several waves of people migrated to Australia over thousands or ten thousands of years. Different groups of migrants probably brought different cultural traditions from the mainland. As they spread across Australia, Aboriginal groups also developed many regional differences in language, religion, social organisation, art, economy and material culture. Each individual group carried on a partially nomadic life within an established, well-known area, or territory. Except for ceremonies and trading exchanges that periodically brought groups together, groups kept largely to their own territories.
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