Forget the lost city of Atlantis.
Scientists stumbled upon a huge forgotten colony off the coast of Australia that was once home to hundreds of thousands of people.
Several artifacts and signs of human life were discovered on the northwest Sahul shelf, located off the coast of the northern Kimberley region on a land mass connecting to New Guinea, according to a study by Quaternary Science Reviews.
The drowned terrain was likely a thriving ecosystem during the Late Pleistocene period, dating back to 2.5 million years ago.
The now submerged landmass was almost 250,000 square miles, more than 1.6 times the size of the United Kingdom.
The platform, once thought to be a desert, was filled with habitable fresh and saltwater lakes, rivers and streams, as well as a large inland sea, which could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people.
It may also have served as a bridge for people to walk to Australia before it became the huge island we know today.
Hundreds of thousands of people once lived on the northwest Sahul shelf near Australia, according to a new study. StockByM It may also have served as a bridge for people to walk to Australia before it became the huge island we know today. wallix
About half of the shelf drowned between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago during the first of two periods of rapid global sea level rise.
“This likely caused a retreat of human populations, with spikes in occupational intensity being recorded at archaeological sites,” the scientists wrote.
Those who funneled into an archipelago on the shelf would become Wallacea’s “first maritime explorers, creating a familiar environment for their maritime economies to adapt to the vast land continent of Sahul.”
The now submerged landmass was almost 250,000 square miles, more than 1.6 times the size of the United Kingdom. direct science
Scientists are still working to uncover the history behind the lost colony and plan to continue reconstructing the paleoecology of the landscapes.
“The now submerged continental margins clearly played an important role in early human expansions around the world,” the study states.
“The rise of underwater archeology in Australia will contribute to a growing global picture of early human migration and the impact of climate change on late Pleistocene human populations.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn