Indigenous people did not wipe out pygmy population in Australia

Soofia Tariq November 26, 2024
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Indigenous people have inhabited the land for at least 40,000 years.

WHAT WAS CLAIMED

Indigenous people wiped out a pygmy population that existed in Australia before them.

OUR VERDICT

False. Extensive evidence shows Indigenous people were the only people to settle on the Australian landmass prior to the arrival of the British.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following article may contain images of deceased persons.

AAP FACTCHECK - Indigenous people did not "wipe out" a population of pygmies who had previously settled on the Australian landmass, despite social media claims. 

It's being falsely claimed that Australia's Indigenous people were not the first inhabitants of the landmass, but that "negrito pygmies" lived on the continent prior to their arrival.

Genetic sequencing reveals Indigenous people arrived at least 48,000 years ago and have been here ever since. This matches with the dating of Australia's early archaeological sites.

There is no genetic or archaeological evidence of any other people prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 18th century. 

The theory of the existence of "negrito pygmies" in Australia - which was developed nearly 100 years ago - is being spread on social media. 

There's no evidence a pygmy population was "wiped out". (AAP/Facebook)

"Explain to me this. Weren't Aboriginals colonisers when they arrived here ?" a shared X post is captioned on Facebook

"They wiped out the REAL first people of Australia, the Negrito Pygmies," a reply to the post reads. 

The theory that Australia was home to a pygmy population was cemented in the 1940s when American anthropologist Joseph Birdsell proposed the "trihybrid model". 

The model contended that Indigenous people were an amalgam of three distinct ethnic groups who migrated to the landmass, including "negritos" or pygmy people.

The theory was later championed by historian Keith Windschuttle, who in a 2002 Quadrant article said Dr Birdsell had theorised that "negritos" came from Southeast Asia about 40,000 years ago.

Dr Birdsell believed the descendants of these people were still living in the north Queensland rainforests, near Cairns, in the 20th century.

Australia's Indigenous people have been here for tens of thousands of years. (Lukas Coch/AAP PHOTOS)

Mr Windschuttle wrote that "Australian pygmies" became "expunged from popular memory" partly because of what he described as the radical Aboriginal political movement of the 1960s. 

AAP FactCheck spoke to several experts who all dismissed the claim that Australia's Indigenous people replaced a pre-existing population of pygmies.

Evidence for when Indigenous people arrived on the Australian continent comes from a mix of genetic sequencing and the dating of archaeological sites.

Ethnic groups, including Indigenous people, have distinct genetic markers known as mitochondrial haplogroups.

Experts can use these to track the movements of early humans, and work out when they split from larger groups and when they arrived in certain locations.

A 2011 study looked at the genetic properties of a lock of hair donated by an Indigenous man in the 20th century.

It revealed an unbroken lineage over 2500 generations, or about 60,000 to 75,000 years, and suggested Australia's Indigenous people were the first group to split from early modern humans in Africa about 70,000 years ago. 

After comparison with the DNA of other ethnic groups, the study's authors concluded Indigenous people migrated through Asia before arriving in Sahul (present-day Australia and Papua New Guinea, which at the time was connected by land) about 50,000 years ago.

"Our data are in agreement with contemporary Aboriginal Australians being the direct descendants from the first humans to be found in Australia," the paper concludes.

This is supported by a 2017 University of Adelaide study that looked at 111 hair samples of Indigenous people.

Aboriginal rock art is another way we can chart Australia's Indigenous history. (Georgie Moore/AAP PHOTOS)

The samples came from three Indigenous communities: Cherbourg in Queensland; Point Pearce on South Australia's (SA) Yorke Peninsula; and Koonibba, some 600 kilometres away by land to the east in SA. 

Raymond Tobler, a population geneticist who co-authored the study, explained they compared the genetic markers from the various hair samples.  

This enabled them to date when the various geographically isolated groups last shared a common ancestor to about 48,000 years ago.

"[This] is effectively indicating when their ancestors first arrived in a particular place and started diversifying," Dr Tobler said.

The study also found that once diversification had taken place, the groups moved very little and that there was no introduction of any other peoples.

Dr Tobler said the study's results, which were based on genetic markers in the female line, are similar to a 2016 study that looked at genetic markers associated with the male 'Y' chromosome.

That study sequenced the Y chromosomes of 13 Indigenous people and found they diverged from Y chromosomes in other continents around 50,000 years ago.

Both studies also closely match the dating of Australia's earliest archaeological sites.