The First Boat People

Hardback  336 pages  ISBN 0521856566      £70.00

• The book suggests that modern humans did not necessarily come 'Out of Africa' but originated elsewhere because of population growth and some basic tenets of human behaviour and demography that do not fit this theory
• Claims that the world population was much larger than previously accepted during the Pleistocene period
• Evidence that humans entered Australia before 65,000 years ago

The First Boat People concerns how people travelled across the world to Australia in the Pleistocene. It traces movement from Africa to Australia, offering a new view of population growth at that time, challenging current ideas, and underscoring problems with the 'Out of Africa' theory of how modern humans emerged. The variety of routes, strategies and opportunities that could have been used by those first migrants is proposed against the very different regional geography that existed at that time. Steve Webb shows the impact of human entry into Australia on the megafauna using fresh evidence from his work in Central Australia, including a description of palaeoenvironmental conditions existing there during the last two glaciations. He argues for an early human arrival and describes in detail the skeletal evidence for the first Australians. This is a stimulating account for students and researchers in biological anthropology, human evolution and archaeology.

Contents

Introduction
Prologue

• 1. Going to Sunda: Lower Pleistocene transcontinental migration
• 2. Pleistocene population growth
• 3. From Sunda to Sahul: transequatorial migration in the Upper Pleistocene
• 4. Upper Pleistocene migration patterns on Sahul
• 5. Palaeoenvironments, megafauna and the Upper Pleistocene settlement of Central Australia
• 6. Upper Pleistocene Australians: the Willandran people
• 7. Origins: a morphological puzzle
• 8. Migratory time frames and Upper Pleistocene environmental sequences in Australia
• 9. An incomplete jigsaw puzzle

Appendices
References