Hindustan Times ·
More than 2 million Indigenous people lived in Australia in 1788: new research
Melbourne, More than two million Indigenous people probably lived in Australia at the time of the British invasion in 1788, according to new research based on genetic, archaeological and environmental evidence.
This figure is much larger than the estimate of 300,000 which has shaped public understanding for the past century. The old estimate, published by anthropologist Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown in 1930, was based largely on observations made after disease, dispossession and violence had already devastated Indigenous communities.
Using three methods that do not depend on colonial-era headcounts, we calculated a median population of 2.22 million people in 1788, with a likely range roughly between 1 and 4 million. Our work is published in Nature Human Behaviour.
