Re: AUSTRALOIDS

Gautam Majumdar (gautam@majumdar.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 27 Aug 1996 19:32:50 +0100

In article <4vtsf7$p7b@hobyah.cc.uq.oz.au>, Howard Wiseman
<wiseman@physics.uq.oz.au> writes
>
>I think this is being too dismissive. I don't know what the recent
>research referred to is, but the fossil remains in Australia do show an
>extreme variation in skull shape and thickness, from very modern-looking
>to very archaic. Furthermore, the archaic specimens have marked
>similarities in form with the skulls of Homo erectus from Indonesia -
>e.g. Solo, Sangiran. So I think there is evidence for a mixture of local
>populations (with a regional pedigree of hundreds of thousands of years)
>with more modern newcomers (from Afirca?). I don't think that anybody can
>be sure on the basis solely of cranial and skeletal anatomy that two
>ancient "species" could not interbreed. So I think there is no reason to
>reject the suggestion out of hand.
>
[snip]

If the modern newcomers (H.s.s) had met an existing population
(H.s.a, derived from H.erectus locally) in Australia, that would mean
H.erectus (or H.s.a) was capable of sea-voyage or at least of
crossing wide and deep water channels. Is there any evidence of
their technological competence to do so ? Is there any evidence of
the presence of H.erectus in Australia ?

Gautam Majumdar gautam@majumdar.demon.co.uk