An early colonisation pathway into northwest Australia 70-60,000 years ago

From the 'northern route' entry into the modern western tip of New Guinea, the main movement corridor is along the southern slopes of the New Guinea highlands (p = 0.9112) linking to southern Sahul via the then-exposed Torres Strait region (p = 0.9171).

“From the 'northern route' entry 27,47 (Fig. 3) into the modern western tip of New Guinea, the main movement corridor is along the southern slopes of the New Guinea highlands (p = 0.9112) linking to southern Sahul via the then-exposed Torres Strait region (p = 0.9171).”

Our resulting network explicitly identifies vectors of connectivity among regions that have so far only been qualitatively inferred from linguistic, genetic, or archaeological data.

“Our resulting network explicitly identifies vectors of connectivity among regions that have so far only been qualitatively inferred from linguistic 57,58 , genetic 59,60 , or archaeological 24,27,28 data (although see recent work by Pedro et al. 61 that suggested vectors of connectivity); our findings are complimentary to these studies.”

Many 'feeder' routes extend from the hypothesised 'southern route' landfall in the northwest (p = 0.8496), to highly ranked corridors connecting known, old archaeological sites in the Kimberley, Pilbara, and Arnhem Land regions.

“Many 'feeder' routes extend from the hypothesised 'southern route' landfall 26,27 in the northwest (p = 0.8496), to highly ranked corridors connecting known, old archaeological sites in the Kimberley, Pilbara, and Arnhem Land regions (Fig. 3; Supplementary Figure 13).”

Our results link with previous work predicting the most-likely pathways of entry into Sahul from Wallacea.

“In turn, our results link with previous work predicting the most-likely pathways of entry into Sahul from Wallacea 22,24,27 .”

Recent intervisibility studies and agent-based models of paleo-Wallacea provide support for the northern route into Sahul.

“Recent intervisibility studies and agent-based models of paleo-Wallacea provide support for the northern route into Sahul (Kealy et al., 2017 andNorman et al., 2018, respectively).”

Norman et al. (2018) showed that the paleoislands of the Sahul shelf were visible at 65 ka from Timor's mountain tops.

“While Norman et al. (2018) showed that the paleoislands of the Sahul shelf were visible at 65 ka from Timor's mountain tops”

Both visibility studies supported the presence of relative intervisibility but the absence of absolute shore-to-shore intervisibility between Timor and Sahul at 65 ka.

“both visibility studies by Kealy et al. (2017) and Norman et al. (2018) supported the presence of relative intervisibility (Kealy et al., 2017), but the absence of absolute shore-to-shore intervisibility, between Timor and Sahul at this time.”

Greater connectivity between islands along the northern route favors greater intervisibility and thus a higher probability of a northern landing location.

“Regardless, a greater connectivity between islands along the northern route favors greater intervisibility (Kealy et al., 2017) and thus a higher probability of a northern landing location (Kealy et al., 2017;Norman et al., 2018).”

Until better resolution datasets are available, studies analyzing the Wallacean Archipelago in its entirety must depend on the GEBCO14 database.

“Thus, until better resolution datasets are made available, studies which analyze the Wallacean Archipelago in its entirety must depend on the GEBCO14 database (i.e., Kealy et al., 2017;Norman et al., 2018) as we do here.”