First Boat People

Explores how people travelled from Africa to Australia in the Pleistocene, challenging current ideas.

STEVE WEBB is Professor of Australian Studies at Bond University, in Queensland, Australia. He has previously carried out a pioneering palaeopathological study of Aboriginal health patterns prior to European colonisation, and has previously published Paleopathology of Aboriginal Australians (1995; ISBN 0521 460441). His research now concentrates on Australian regional human evolution, reasons for the extinction of Australia's megafauna, Upper Pleistocene migration and the earliest human settlement of the continent. His particular focus is on palaeoenvironmental change accompanying the last two glaciations in Central Australia to understand more fully megafaunal extinction in the region, and the timing of the first human entry into Australia.