A new article published in ‘Science Advances’ provides an interesting insight into the recent study of sedimentary core samples taken from Emerald Swamp and laymina paywuta, located on the eastern and western margins of the Bass Strait.
Author Matthew Adeleye et al., provides dates of human migration to Tasmania of 41.6 ka using paleoecological records and explores the use of fire in landscape modification, offering insight into land-management practices and the continuous shaping the landscape for thousands of years.
Read the full Article here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp6579
Abstract
‘The establishment of Tasmanian Palawa/Pakana communities ~40 thousand years ago (ka) was achieved by the earliest and farthest human migrations from Africa and necessitated migration into high-latitude Southern Hemisphere environments. The scarcity of high-resolution paleoecological records during this period, however, limits our understanding of the environmental effects of this pivotal event, particularly the importance of using fire as a tool for habitat modification. We use two paleoecological records from the Bass Strait islands to identify the initiation of anthropogenic landscape transformation associated with ancestral Palawa/Pakana land use. People were living on the Tasmanian/Lutruwitan peninsula by ~41.6 ka using fire to penetrate and manipulate forests, an approach possibly used in the first migrations across the last glacial landscape of Sahul.’
