In an exciting scientific breakthrough, researchers have found a massive, ancient colony off the coast of Australia.

This area, known as the northwest shelf of Sahul, near Kimberley, was once a land bridge to the Australian continent.

Detailed in a study from Quaternary Science Reviews, this now-submerged area is nearly 250,000 square miles—over 1.6 times larger than the United Kingdom.

It was a bustling hub during the Late Pleistocene period, which dates back as far as 2.5 million years.

Previously thought to be a desert, the shelf was actually filled with lakes, rivers, and streams, both fresh and salty, and even had a large inland sea.

This environment could have supported a significant population, estimated between 50,000 and 500,000 people. It’s believed that this area was a crucial pathway for early humans migrating into Australia.

The study reveals that about half of this land was submerged due to two major periods of sea level rise between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago.

This dramatic change likely led to a decrease in the area’s population, as suggested by the increased activity at archaeological sites from that time.

The people who remained adapted to life on a series of islands, becoming some of the first maritime explorers in the region and creating a sustainable life around Sahul’s vast landscapes.

Scientists are excited about this find and are committed to continuing their research.

They plan to reconstruct the environmental history of these landscapes to understand better how early humans lived there.

This work is part of a growing field of undersea archaeology, especially in Australia, which is contributing to our knowledge of early human migration and how climate change affected our ancestors.

This discovery not only sheds light on a previously unknown chapter of human history but also sets the stage for future explorations.

Researchers believe that these submerged continental margins were crucial to early human movements across the globe, and studying them will help us understand more about our past and how we adapted to changing environments.

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