Yet another body of primitive hunters, who interest us most, worked their way north-westwards, on a course between the former two, and took possession of any portions of the dry land of the globe, the present relics of which are India, south-western Asia, and Europe.
Then came the catastrophe! The exact period is not determined. It must have happened since the advent of the “human” type, but there the evidence fails. Upheavals or subsidences of land usually take an age to make themselves noticeable. It is scientifically established that the close of the Triassic period was characterized throughout the world by great tectonic changes. Beds of rock were faulted to lofty heights on one side, and to dizzy depths on the other. The height of the Blue Mountains plateau of New South Wales is evidence of such upheaval, whilst the broken coastline, with its “drowned” rivers and myriads of islands along the north-west of Australia, together with the coastal fringe of coral reefs along the north, are all evidences of comparatively recent subsidence en bloc.
By these processes Australia was gradually isolated from its former land-connections, but, being near to the original home of man, it is only natural to suppose that the land was peopled.
From that time on Australia remained, whether as an island continent or a group of associated islands does not concern us here, isolated from the rest of the world. The original inhabitants whiled away their time in comparative ease. They had nothing to fear. Their former companions who had, through their nomadic migrations, been so far removed from them, would, no doubt, have now posed as formidable rivals, if the barriers had not come between. Until the recent arrival of the European explorers and settlers, and the periodic visitations to the north coast by Malay bêche-de-mer fishers, this great Southern Land had remained the undisputed property of the comparatively sparse progeny of the first primitive possessors.
There were no ferocious animals to molest these early prehistoric Australians. Apart from a few dangerous, but usually non-aggressive, reptiles, the large animals were almost without exception of the ancient marsupial order, and, although perfectly harmless, offered excellent opportunity for the chase.
Thus it happened that the primitive hordes could roam at large in a congenial climate, and under peculiar conditions, which were everywhere much the same; and, in their subsequent wanderings, they met only with people of their own descent and inclinations. In consequence, they were spared many of the bloody brawls and conflicts, which the competitive waves of culture continually showered upon the other hordes that were struggling northwards under decidedly more adverse conditions of climate.
The great struggle for existence did not make itself felt so keenly to the ancient Australians because they were strictly insulated, and thus kept outside the sphere of exotic influence and interference; their only troubles amounted to an individual club-duel, or occasionally an inter-tribal warfare, which evoked more irate words than actual blood drawn by their sharply-pointed spears.
So the Australian has remained just what he was ages ago. And on that account the evolution of his pristine contemporaries, who were seized by the flood wave of culture, becomes the more comprehensible, when we measure the differences, but recognize the affinities, existing between the extremes. A line drawn across the map of the world indicating, so far as it is at this stage possible, the areas whose populations show, or before their extinction showed, the strongest affinities with him will represent roughly the direction of migration and incidentally of evolution of the Australoid strain.
This line of anthropological relationship connects the Australian (including the Proto-Australian) with the Veddahs and Dravidians of India, and with the fossil men of Europe, from whom the Caucasian element has sprung. In other words, the Australian aboriginal stands somewhere near the bottom rung of the great evolutional ladder we have ascended—he the bud, we the glorified flower of human culture.
In the living Australian then, we see the prototype of man as he appeared in Europe in the Stone Age. Australia has upon other occasions proved to be extraordinary in a scientific sense. The kangaroo is known only in the petrified condition in the Tertiary deposits in other parts of the world. The Zamia, which is still found living in Australia, is a conspicuous plant of the coal-measures in every other country. The ornamental mollusc, known as Trigonia, had been regarded as extinct until it was re-discovered in Australia. Most of the great river systems of central Australia have had their day; they have flourished in the past; yet, occasionally, after a prolific downpour, their dry courses swell temporarily to majestic streams. And, lastly, we see in the aboriginal yet another palæontological overlap—a living fossil man—the image of ourselves, as we appeared many ages before we learned to record the history of our progress, and of the world in general.