Landscape rules predict optimal superhighways for the first peopling of Sahul

Stefani A. Crabtree (), Devin A. White, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Frédérik Saltré, Alan N. Williams, Robin J. Beaman, Michael I. Bird and Sean Ulm
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Stefani A. Crabtree: Utah State University
Devin A. White: Sandia National Laboratories
Corey J. A. Bradshaw: Flinders University
Frédérik Saltré: Flinders University
Alan N. Williams: University of New South Wales
Robin J. Beaman: James Cook University
Michael I. Bird: James Cook University
Sean Ulm: James Cook University

Nature Human Behaviour, 2021, vol. 5, issue 10, 1303-1313

Abstract: Abstract Archaeological data and demographic modelling suggest that the peopling of Sahul required substantial populations, occurred rapidly within a few thousand years and encompassed environments ranging from hyper-arid deserts to temperate uplands and tropical rainforests. How this migration occurred and how humans responded to the physical environments they encountered have, however, remained largely speculative. By constructing a high-resolution digital elevation model for Sahul and coupling it with fine-scale viewshed analysis of landscape prominence, least-cost pedestrian travel modelling and high-performance computing, we create over 125 billion potential migratory pathways, whereby the most parsimonious routes traversed emerge. Our analysis revealed several major pathways—superhighways—transecting the continent, that we evaluated using archaeological data. These results suggest that the earliest Australian ancestors adopted a set of fundamental rules shaped by physiological capacity, attraction to visually prominent landscape features and freshwater distribution to maximize survival, even without previous experience of the landscapes they encountered.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01106-8

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