Guest Article: Dingo Diffusion: Evidence for Contact in Holocene Australia
Mungo Manic explores dingoes, diseases, genetics, artwork and more to build a case for pre-colonial contact in Australia
Mungo Manic is one the best new anthropology/archaeology accounts on Twitter/X, focusing on Australia and the lives and customs of the different Aboriginal peoples. He has written this fantastic article bringing together overlooked strands of evidence for contact between Australia and the outside world, evidence that archaeologists have not integrated into their work. I strongly recommend you follow him on Twitter/X and support his work.
"A very long time ago, Coorooma the good spirit came in a large outrigger canoe from a long way across the salt water. He stayed with them a short time and taught them many things."
– Legend of the Mamburra tribe, northwest Queensland
Isolation or Contact?
Nobody really knows what happened in ancient Australia. One big question is the amount of contact Australians had with the outside world. This debate has raged for decades. Some theories claim near-total isolation following the first settlement ~55,000 years ago. Others argue for multiple migration waves and extensive cultural diffusion.
My impression is that most contemporary researchers favor the isolation theory. But a few believe there were multiple, transformative contacts during the Holocene, and perhaps even earlier. I personally find it hard to swallow that the first modern humans to reach Island Southeast Asia were also, somehow, the only ones to find their way to Australia, and that these islanders then forgot about (or ignored) the continent for 55,000 years until around 400 years ago when they started hunting trepang to sell to Chinese people who believed the sea cucumber was as an aphrodisiac because it looked like a penis.
That said, Australia was more isolated than any other continent. It never experienced global transformations such as the adoption of the bow or agriculture. Linguistics, genetics and archaeology all reveal deep divergence with the rest of the world.
So, is there any evidence for outside interaction? Did any memes or genes find their way into (or out of) Australia?
Stone Age Herbalist wrote a great summary of the contact vs isolation debate and examined evidence for diffusion and migrations during the Holocene. His assessment found support for at least some interaction, although more limited than elsewhere in Oceania.
This article will examine additional evidence for contact found in diseases, rock art, oral tradition, genetics, artifacts, and the mysterious, non-marsupial mammal: the dingo.
As the dingo is the one proof of outside contact that all scholars agree on, I will focus on the question of who brought dingoes to Australia and when. Specifically, whether dingoes were introduced by seafarers from India, Toalean hunter-gatherers from Sulawesi or Austronesian farmers from Taiwan.
What is a Dingo?
There is still debate on whether dingoes are feral domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) or their own species (Canis dingo), intermediate between wolves and modern dogs. One argument for early divergence and limited domestication is that they lack the genes for cereal digestion found in domestic dogs. They also only have one annual breeding season and are difficult to train, which may explain why European dogs were preferred by Australian tribespeople.
Genetic studies indicate dingoes are most closely related to New Guinea singing dogs and that their common ancestors split from other dogs in East or Southeast Asia, sometime around 5,000-8,000 years ago. Dingo mitochondrial DNA has two main lineages: a widespread northwestern lineage and a southeastern lineage more similar to New guinea singing dogs. Y-chromosome and aDNA analyses also support this division. It is suggested that southeastern dingoes mixed with New Guinea singing dogs around 2500 years ago, while the northwestern ones did not.
Based on calculated times for genetic divergence, a few researchers think the dingo arrived as early as 5-7000 BP, possibly even crossing from Papua New Guinea before the flooding of the Torres Strait, 6000 years ago.
However, the fossil record shows no evidence of the dingo in Australia until around 3300 years ago. Native Thylacines (Tasmanian tigers) and Tasmanian devils disappear from the mainland fossil record just one hundred years later. Other factors such as climate change and human hunting may have contributed to their extinction, but the dingo is the primary suspect.
If these dates are accurate, dingoes took Australia by storm. A comparable case of rapid dispersal and impact is seen in feral cats which spread across the continent in just seventy years, threatening many native species. Similarly, by the time European explorers made contact with western Tasmanian tribes, European dogs had already preceded them.
Dingoes became integrated into Australian tribal culture, serving as hunting aids, camp guards, sources of warmth, companions and food. They were not selectively bred; instead camp dogs were replenished from wild litters. The puppies were either eaten or raised as pets, breastfed by women until weaned.
Australian mythologies include many stories about dingoes, often giving them supernatural qualities or associating them with ancestral spirits. Dingoes were also associated with promiscuity, treachery, and the initiation rites of circumcision and subincision. In southern Australian mythology, dogs were linked with the arrival of starving humans from the north. Another tribe’s legend told how their ancestors’ dingoes killed the son of the creator god who took the lives of many men in revenge.
It is debated whether the dingo-human relationship was net positive or negative. Around 3500 BP there was a massive increase in stone tool production, especially backed artifacts. Some researchers claim this is proof of exponential population growth, possibly enabled by the practice of using dingoes for hunting. An alternative “Red Queen” hypothesis holds that dingoes actually reduced the availability of game and transmitted parasites, leading to stable or even declining populations that required increased effort to maintain. As all-too-common with Australia, the experts do not agree.
The question of when the dingo was introduced is less contentious. There are two probable dates: 5-7000 years ago (based on dingo genetics) or around 3500 years ago (based on dingo archaeology). Both hypotheses are worth exploring.
Mid Holocene Hypothesis (5000-7000 BP)
One argument that fits the older date range, is the theory that a migration from India arrived in Australia sometime around 5000 BP, bringing new technologies and ancestral dingoes. Some DNA studies and the presence of backed artifacts in both regions lend support to the theory. But no studies since 2002 have found evidence for ancient Indian admixture. Moreover, dingoes are genetically closer to East Asian dogs than South Asian dogs, and the oldest concrete evidence of Indian contact with Southeast Asia (2000 BP in Java) post-dates dingo arrival.
While the Indian theory is growing more tentative, there is another region with backed artifacts that is even closer to Australia: the massive Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Located east of the Wallace Line, Sulawesi was first colonized by hominins (perhaps Denisovans) 150,000 years ago and was likely a stepping stone for the first migrations to Australia.
The peninsula of South Sulawesi is home to the world's oldest cave paintings which date to 51,000 BP and resemble the Pleistocene rock art of northern Australia. South Sulawesi was also the location of Makassar, the city from which trepang hunters sailed to Australia. And after the cave painters but before the Makassans, this same peninsula was occupied by an extinct hunter-gatherer culture called the Toaleans whose backed artifacts were identical to those found in Australia.
Is it possible the doorway between Sulawesi and Australia never fully closed?
Like Indians and Australians, the Toaleans made backed artifacts and microliths that were likely used as knife blades and projectile barbs. They also made bone points and bifacial, pressure-flaked points with serrated edges. The distribution, which included nearby islands, reveals they had seafaring capabilities.
The Toalean tool kit appeared around 8000 years ago, replacing an ancient lithic tradition of simple flakes. The tools continued to be made after Austronesians began colonizing South Sulawesi 3500 years ago, but had disappeared by 1500 BP.
Notably, this time period of 1500-8000 BP roughly overlaps with the use of backed artifacts in Australia. Some scholars such as Peter Bellwood see this as evidence for cultural diffusion from Sulawesi. It's also possible that the technology spread from Australia to Sulawesi, as some Australian artifacts are older than Toalean ones. In any case, the morphological and chronological similarities support some form of cultural exchange.
What about genetic similarities? A recent analysis of a Toalean woman from 7200 BP yielded the oldest aDNA recovered east of the Wallace Line, predating the oldest Australian aDNA by 5000 years. Considering that Oceania has almost no ancient DNA, I can't overstate how important this genome is.
Based on the woman’s DNA, about 50% of Toalean ancestry was Asian and 50% came from a sister group of Papuans and Australians. The Asian ancestors belonged to a basal East Asian lineage with similarities to both the ancient Tianyuan individual and recent Andamanese.
One interpretation is that around 8000 years ago, a seafaring culture migrated from Mainland Southeast Asia to Sulawesi where they intermarried with the local Australo-Papuan population. It's less clear whether they brought their toolkit with them or developed it locally. If they did bring it, India again becomes a possible origin point, as backed artifacts had been made there since the Pleistocene.
Surprisingly, geneticists have found little evidence of Toalean ancestry in present-day Sulawesi or elsewhere in Island Southeast Asia, suggesting that the Toaleans were eventually replaced by Austronesians, both culturally and genetically.
Considering that ancestral Toaleans successfully crossed the Wallace Line, there was nothing stopping them from continuing east to Australia. Unfortunately, geneticists have not directly tested for Toalean admixture in Australian populations. Is it possible the proposed Indian genes in Australia are actually the Andamanese-like portions of Toalean DNA? Hopefully future studies will give us answers. Until then, the best genetic support I’ve found for Toalean-Australian contact comes from recent research on inheritable and sexually-transmitted diseases.
The neurodegenerative Machado-Joseph disease is present in the tribal communities of Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the nearby Yolngu of East Arnhem Land. While once believed to be recently introduced by Makassans, genetic analysis revealed it to be an ancient Asian variant. Other families that carry the same rare lineage are currently found in Taiwan, India, and Japan. Geneticists estimate the lineage may have arrived in Australia around 7000 years ago.
Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is another potential clue. The HBV/C4 strain is only present in Australia and is distinct from HBV/C3, found in New Guinea and the Torres Strait. While some geneticists claim HBV/C4 was introduced during initial settlement, others argue the origin of HBV/C is much too recent. These researchers examined ancient DNA from China and estimated that the most recent common ancestor of HBV/C was present in Asia around 4500 to 5000 years ago, with HBV/C4 later splitting off and entering Australia.
One unique feature of HBV/C4 is the presence of the HBV/J surface gene. This suggests a recombination event between ancestral strains of HBV/C and HBV/J. The only HBV/J strain ever found in humans was recovered from a Japanese soldier stationed in the Borneo jungle. It is thought the man was infected by an orangutan or gibbon which are known to carry HBV/J. This suggests Borneo was the location of the HBV/C4 recombination, which occurred when a person with HBV/C4 came in contact with an infected primate.
The proposed introduction dates of Hepatitis B and Machado-Joseph Disease fall within the Toalean time period. It's uncertain if Toaleans migrated to Australia in significant numbers, but even occasional visits or shipwrecks could have included sexual contact and disease transmission. This is supported by historical accounts of Makassans fathering children with Australian women, as well as linguistic evidence for homosexual interactions. There is even an account from a young Yolngu man who visited Sulawesi and had sex with Makassan women.
Around the beginning of the Toalean period, 8000 BP, there were dramatic changes in the rock art of northern Australia. Perhaps most significant is the appearance of spear throwers, followed by composite spears with a wide array of spearhead types. Battle scenes become more common, with some scholars arguing for an increase in organized warfare around 6000-7000 years ago, a theory supported by archaeology in southeastern Australia.
The Toalean time period overlaps with the most dramatic development of Australian prehistory—the switch from the simple “Core and Scraper Tradition” to the complex “Small Tool Tradition.” The Pama-Nyungan language family was another major development. Many researchers think Pama-Nyungan spread from the Gulf of Carpentaria ~5000 years ago, around the same time as the appearance of pressure-flaking and reed fighting spears. Non-diffusionist theories explain all of these developments as local adaptations to climate change, but internal innovation and outside influence are not mutually exclusive. As seen during European colonization, an influx of new ideas and materials can lead to rapid modifications of traditional tools.
It is also important to remember that influence goes both ways. If Sulawesi was interacting with Australia to the east, it may well have been in contact with Asia to the west. Most Sulawesi rock art is pre-Toalean or Austronesian, but one proposed Toalean painting appears to show a bearded man in profile. I believe this painting has a direct stylistic connection to an undated cave painting found in southern Thailand, as both styles depict people in profile, with protruding mouths and straight lines for hair. Similar artistic choices are also seen in mid-Holocene rock art in northern Australia.
In regards to whether Toaleans brought the dingo, it is notable that the painted scene from Thailand includes a depiction of dog. The possibility that these people were the ancestors of the Toaleans is a tempting prospect. However, the earliest archaeological evidence of dogs in southern Thailand is only 4000 years old.
Here is one way all these pieces might fit together:
Mainland Southeast Asians arrive in Sulawesi around 8,000 years ago, possibly carrying Indian ancestry
They intermarry with the locals and make contact with Australia, facilitating the spread of artifacts and Machado-Joseph Disease
4,000 years later, Asians from Thailand arrive in Borneo where a hunter carrying HBV/C4 kills an orangutan and gets infected with HBV/J
These newcomers then pass HBV, dogs and new art styles to Sulawesi and subsequently Australia
Potential support for this hypothesis is that one of the only living groups with Toalean ancestry is the Punan Batu, a hunter-gatherer tribe from Borneo who have ~1% Toalean DNA. Also suggestive is the appearance of pottery in Borneo 4000 years ago that was made by a group unrelated to the Austronesians, the Neolithic farmers who would soon dominate Oceania.
Evidence against this hypothesis is that the first dog remains on Sulawesi date to ~2600 BP, which is after the arrival of Austronesians who landed on Sulawesi around 3700 BP and had completely replaced the Toaleans by 1500 BP. If the dingo was actually brought to Australia during the Late Holocene, rather than the Mid Holocene, the Austronesians are the most likely candidate.
Late Holocene Hypothesis (3500 BP)
According to the "Out of Taiwan" model, the Austronesian expansion originated in Taiwan 5-6000 years ago and spread south across Island Southeast Asia and Oceania, eventually reaching Madagascar in the west and Peru in the east. These adventurous seafarers brought along many new ideas and technologies such as ceramics, crops, and domesticated animals.
In Sulawesi, the first evidence of Austronesian culture is the appearance of red-slipped pottery. Red-slipped pottery is commonly used to track Austronesian movement, as well as the remains of dogs (which often show signs of butchering).
Although dingo genetics supports an earlier arrival, the dingo’s archaeological record aligns suspiciously well with the timeline of Austonesian migration:
6800 BP
First evidence of domesticated dogs in Taiwan
5400 BP
Red-slipped pottery in Near Oceania (the islands adjacent to eastern New Guinea)
3700 BP
Red-slipped pottery on Sulawesi
3500 BP
First dogs in Near Oceania
3300 BP
Dingoes in Australia
3200 BP
Red-slipped pottery on Moluccas Islands (west of New Guinea)
Extinction of Thylacines and Tasmanian Devils in mainland Australia
3000 BP
Dogs on Timor-Leste, south of Sulawesi
2900 BP
Red-slipped pottery on Lizard Island (eastern Cape York, Australia)
2600 BP
Red-slipped pottery on Torres Strait Islands (northern Cape York)
Dogs on Sulawesi
2400 BP
New Guinea singing dogs interbreed with southeast dingoes
One strike against the Austronesian theory is that the village dogs of Island Southeast Asia and Oceania are not closely related to the dingo. But some scholars believe that the Austronesian groups who expanded the frontier were more nomadic and less agricultural than those who followed. If so, Austronesian dingoes may have been replaced by modern canines brought by more permanent settlers.
Curiously, red-slipped pottery disappeared from the archaeological record of the Torres Strait and Lizard Island around 1500 years ago. Some researchers take this to mean that the first colonizers were genetically Taiwanese and were later supplanted by Papuans who had adopted aspects of the Austronesian Lapita culture. Based on ancient DNA, a similar scenario played out in other Lapita regions of Melanesia.
Most geneticists assume all East Asian admixture in northern Australia is recent, and whether any of it came from ancient Austronesians has not been investigated. However the genetic connection between Australia and Papua New Guinea is much clearer.
Nuclear DNA studies suggest interactions between Papuans and Australians ended around 27,000 years ago, with the most recent mitochondrial DNA split occurring about 24,000 years ago. However, Y-chromosome lineages only diverged 9-12,000 years ago. This is long before Australia and New Guinea were separated, and it is uncertain why the two populations lost contact.
The highest percentage of Papuan DNA is in northern Australia, with a gradient running from northeast to southwest. Genomes from the southwest desert have no Papuan admixture, while individuals from the northeast and southeast possess 5-15% Papuan DNA. This includes a man who lived 1700 years ago in the southeast.
There is no concrete date for the Papuan admixture in eastern Australians and it is possible that all or most of the genes entered Australia before the flooding of the land bridge around 6000 BP. It is also possible that the genes entered after the Austronesian-triggered colonization of Torres Strait.
Another genetic clue is the intrusion of the B blood type. Common in New Guinea but otherwise unknown in pre-colonial Australia, Type B blood was found concentrated near the Gulf of Carpentaria and across middle Cape York. Joseph Birdsell estimated that the blood type was introduced by two different populations to Australia several thousand years ago. Although the curly/frizzy hair of Papuans was not present in Australia (except Tasmania), some of the curliest-haired Australian tribes lived in these two regions.
The Gudang, the Australian tribe nearest the Torres Strait, did not share the islanders’ Papuan-like hair. This is demonstrated by historical photographs and also the legend of Kwoiam, an ancestral hero of the western Torres Strait Islands who was said to have straight hair “like a mainlander.” Unintuitively, Gudang hair was also much straighter than the hair found in the Cape York rainforest.
A final piece of genetic evidence is Y-chromosome haplotype M1, which is common in the Torres Strait, but occurs in low frequencies in northern Australia, indicating recent (and potentially earlier) interactions. Geneticists also detected East Asian, Southeast Asian and Oceanic paternal lineages but ignored them under the assumption they were all post-colonial.
As with genetics, there are various technologies which diffused from the south coast of New Guinea, through the Torres Strait and into southeastern Australia. This area of exchange has been christened the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere.
The Kaurareg, who occupied the Torres Strait Islands closest to Australia, actively participated in this trade network, receiving a variety of goods from New Guinea, including double-outrigger sailing canoes, drums, arrows, stone clubs, cassowary feathers, and bird-of-paradise skins. In return, they traded pearl shells, dried fish, human heads and sometimes wives.
Trade from Australia to the Torres Strait was more limited, but islanders valued the mainlanders’ spears, spear-throwers and ochre, for which they exchanged items like drums, bamboo smoking pipes, tobacco and cast-off outrigger canoes. It is often wondered why Australians never adopted the bow and arrow. Author Christophe Darmangeat argues that the most likely explanation is that spears and spear throwers were more effective for fighting. I also find it interesting how similar the featherless reed arrows of the Torres Strait were to the reed spears of northern Australia, with both having a 3-part construction of shaft, foreshaft and point.
Unlike Toaleans, there is no Australian lithic technology clearly shared with Austronesians. The closest examples I know of are the obsidian blades of the Bismarck Archipelago (west of New Guinea) which resemble the late-Holocene Leilira and Wanji blades of northern Australia.
Other non-stone artifacts point to additional cultural diffusion. Wood versions of Papuan stone "pineapple" clubs were present in northeast Australia. Various Papuan netting techniques, particularly the knotless hourglass technique, show a pattern of diffusion from Cape York southward. Harpoons with detachable heads, similar to those of the Torres Strait, were found along the northeast coast. Double outrigger canoes were also present in north Cape York, with single outrigger canoes made even farther south.
There are also hints of diffusion from Melanesia and Polynesia that bypassed the Torres Strait, but these require more research. In southeast Australia, the leangle club bore a strong resemble to the qauata of the Solomon Islands. And 1000 years ago, Polynesian-style shell fish hooks started appearing along Australia's east coast but not in Cape York.
Historical interactions were not always peaceful. Historical accounts describe conflicts between Torres Strait Islanders and mainlanders (in both Australia and New Guinea). The Torres Strait practice of head-hunting likely played a role, as did the practice of revenge raids. One Torres Strait informant said his people once took annual voyages down the Australian coast in order to obtain wives. He did not specify whether these women were acquired through trade or kidnapping.
As always, it is hard to pin down the exact nature of ancient contact. Shipwrecks, trade, displacement and raids are all possible. The presence of wild patches of taro, banana and domesticated yam could even be evidence of failed colonization attempts.
In any case, it’s clear that Australia had exposure to Austronesian culture, beginning sometime in the last few thousand years. Much of this contact was probably mediated through the Torres Strait.
The islands of the Torres Strait are all that remain of the sunken land bridge that connected Australia and New Guinea, forming the supercontinent of Sahul. This bridge was flooded at the end of the Ice Age, 6000 years ago. The first sign of humans on the southern islands dates to around 3800 years ago, and they are thought to have come from Australia rather than New Guinea.
While the eastern islanders speak Papuan languages, the inhabitants of the western and southern islands speak an Australian language. This language retains more archaic features than neighboring mainland languages, and probably diverged early from the Pama-Nyungan language family. One of these tribes is the Kaurareg who occupy the southern islands. Although their language is Australian, their genes and culture are mostly Papuan. So how did they come to be?
Torres Strait oral tradition includes tales of migration and colonization. One legend tells how the ancestors once lived on islands near New Guinea but fled south to escape Papuan raiders.
Another legend describes how light-skinned traders (probably Austronesians) sailed from the east and established a base near the Fly River in southern New Guinea. The traders intermarried with local Papuans but decided to move south into the Torres Strait to avoid further miscegenation. Upon discovering that the southern islands near Australia were already occupied, the colonizers killed the men and kept the women. Later generations migrated into the western islands, also to avoid intermarriage with the mainlanders.
If this legend is accurate, it may describe the initial migration around 2600 BP which brought red-slipped pottery to the Torres Strait, and potentially facilitated the admixture of southeast dingoes with New Guinea singing dogs. This of course means the first dingoes had been introduced to Australia earlier, perhaps on the northwest coast.
South of the Torres Strait, the Yidiny people of the Cape York rainforest have an oral tradition that their ancestors came by sea from the north. One story tells of two brothers who arrived and fought with the locals, after which one returned north and one stayed behind, founding the tribe. Another tale tells how the first Yidiny men sailed southwards to the rainforest where they found a weak, midget-like people already living there.
The very curly hair of the Yidiny and other rainforest tribes is curious. Joseph Birdsell considered them “pygmoid” descendants of the first of three migrations to Australia. But DNA studies have not supported his theory. I think it’s possible they instead partially descend from more recent Papuan or Torres Strait migrations. This may explain the archaeological evidence that shows the rainforest was not permanently occupied until around 2000 BP. DNA studies have also found significant Papuan admixture in the rainforest region but most assume this is historical. As always, the lack of ancient DNA obscures a clear answer.
These aren’t the only legends of seafarers from the north. 1400 kilometers south of Torres Strait, a coastal Queensland tribe tells the story of Coorooma, a good spirit who arrived in an outrigger canoe, stayed with them awhile and taught them new laws and ceremonies. This story may be related to Australian masked hero cults which are thought to have originated in New Guinea.
To the northwest, in Arnhem Land, Yolngu legends describe the Baijini, a pale-skinned people who preceded the Makassans. One Yolngu origin story features two sisters who arrived by canoe from a mythical island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They discovered the Baijini occupying their present territory and drove them away.
As the Gulf of Carpentaria is also considered the birthplace of Pama-Nyungan, it seems significant that Yolngu is a Pama-Nyungan language, surrounded by non-Pama-Nyungan languages.
Perhaps the most provocative evidence of contact in mythology is found further west in the Kimberley region. Wandjina spirits, famously portrayed in rock art, are linked to the seasonal monsoon—the same winds that carried Makassan traders to Australia. Legends tell of battles between Wandjinas and the ancestors of local tribes. They describe how Wandjinas experimented with spear technology, favoring stone spear points over traditional barbed wood spears. Wandjinas also stole wives, a practice reminiscent of Torres Strait raids.
Aspects of Wandjina mythology appear to incorporate outside elements. The Thunder Complex is a specific set of taboos widespread throughout Southeast Asia, particularly among Austronesian-speaking peoples. The core belief is that mocking animals results in supernatural punishment in the form of devastating floods or storms.
Surprisingly, this same complex appears in Wandjina narratives from the Kimberley region, particularly in stories about dingoes and owls being mistreated. A recent study presents this as evidence that Austronesians introduced the dingo.
The legends of the Kaira, spirits similar to the Wandjina, also point to coastal visitations. The Kaira are associated with the sea and cyclones, and are said to originate from the northwest, the direction of the open sea and Island Southeast Asia.
Both the Kaira and Wandjina are painted in the same style. Some Kaira paintings appear to depict European sailors in 19th century boats, but local informants in the 1960s interpreted these as Kaira children eating lily roots (rather than men smoking pipes). Overall it seems plausible that Kaira and Wandjina spirits trace their origins to foreign visitors or migrants who were absorbed into local mythology. The pop-culture belief that Wandjinas were aliens may technically be correct.
Most Wandjina paintings date to the last 1000 years. But this is probably due to their short lifespan, as paintings would fade within decades if not repainted. The earliest dated Wandjina (made with beeswax) dates to around 3700 years ago, close to the dingo’s appearance in the fossil record.
Wandjinas are often shown wearing large, fan-like headdresses with radiating feathers. Similar headdresses are found in an ancient Kimberley rock painting that depicts large canoes, each with many men. They also appear in Holocene rock art made by different cultures across northern Australia.
Historically, there were many types of ceremonial headdresses made in Australia but almost none had radiating, fan-like feathers. The only example I could find was a 19th century photo taken on the coast of Cape York, not far from the Torres Strait.
On the flip side, a fan-like headdress called the Dhari is still worn today by Torres Strait Islanders. This headdress also appears in the Fly River and Lake Murray regions of lowland New Guinea. There are even fan-like headdresses in Melanesia and Polynesia, suggesting they were a widespread aspect of Austronesian culture.
I haven’t seen any researchers suggest the connection, but my hunch is that the rock art depictions of fan-like headdresses, such as those worn by the Wandjina spirits of northwestern Australian and the Quinkan spirits of northeastern Australia, were directly inspired by Austronesian and/or Papuan contact. It is even possible these early interactions triggered religious movements similar to Polynesian cargo cults. Or in this case, dingo cults.
Final Thoughts
The presence of the dingo proves that Australia was not totally isolated during the Holocene, but it is far from the only evidence. The infusion of certain aspects of Austronesian and Papuan culture via the Torres Strait is inarguable. While theories of large scale migration remain speculative, the evidence for multiple instances of outside contact is steadily growing, and I think something was definitely happening in the Gulf of Carpentaria around 5000 BP.
What about the dingo? Was it introduced around 3500 years ago by Austronesians or sometime 5-7000 years ago by Toaleans? My opinion is that the Late Holocene hypothesis is the best supported, and that Austronesians brought the ancestors of dingoes and New Guinea Singing dogs, either from the east or the west. Of course, the Toaleans were still around in 3500 BP, so it’s possible they acquired the dingo first and then beat the Austronesians to Australia. No matter what, I suspect both cultures had more interactions with Australia than is commonly thought.
As archaeologist Michael Rowland observed:
"There is sufficient evidence to suggest that contacts did occur, perhaps from different directions and at different times, over the last 6000 years. Although direct contact may have been negligible, it may be unwise to assume that introduced items did not greatly alter the existing patterns, since much of what was introduced may be archaeologically invisible."
Although Australia was truly the most isolated continent, it likely experienced sporadic contact with its neighbors throughout the Holocene. The nature of these interactions remains to be explored. Like many areas of Australian prehistory, the questions always outpace the answers. All that is certain is that these visits had profound and lasting impacts, not least of which was the dingo.
References
Here are some of the papers, books and blog posts I based this article on. If you have any feedback or questions about particular sources, feel free to email me or find me on X.com.
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Top-notch research. This was a pleasure to read.
"avoid intermarriage with the mainlanders"
(As a Tasmanian I ask) what does this even mean? Did they have wrong-way love issues?