The requirements for human colonisation of Australia

When Alfred Wallace embarked on his voyage from Bali to Lombok he turned his back on the limitations of our hominin ancestry and did something distinctively human: he drew a line (Davidson 1999b) (Figure 1). Morwood’s confirmation of dates for stone artefacts earlier than 800 thousand years ago (Morwood et al. 1999; Morwood et al. 1998) has shown how our hominin ancestors may have crossed similarly along the chain of islands of the Lesser Sundas. That may or may not have been a step of similarly human dimensions. In this paper, I argue that it is implausible to interpret that small step as an indicator of the emergence of human abilities and behaviour. The really “giant leap for mankind”—for our human ancestors—was the journey to Australia (Davidson & Noble 1992).