Compare and contrast the colonization of Sahul and the colonization of Essay

Compare and contrast the colonization of Sahul and the colonization of the New World. Consider how people might have gotten to each continent, and evidence for Pleistocene overkill in each situation - Essay Example Homo Sapiens are believed to have undertaken their migration from their origins in Africa from about 50,000 years ago (O’Connella & Allen 2004). These late Pleistocene migrations coincided with the end of the earth’s most recent period of glaciations (Ice Ages). The accumulation of vast amounts of ice in the glaciers resulted in punctuated drops in the sea level of up to 100m allowing easier access to the previously uninhabited continents. When the Homo Sapiens left Africa they are believed to have migrated east toward India and then south east along the coast of Asia until they reached Australia between 45,000 to 42,000 years ago (O’Connella & Allen 2004). At that time, due to the much lower sea level, most of martime Southeast Asia formed one land mass – known as the lost continent of Sunda. Following the coastal route southeast they would have reached the channel between Sunda and Sahul (present day Australia and New Guinea). This channel, between the Sahul and Sunda (known as the Wallace Line) must have been traversed by the technologically more advanced Homo Sapiens whereas the earlier Homo Erectus never traversed it (O’Connella & Allen 2004). It is presumed that they used rafts of some sort to traverse the channel. The close chronological coincidence of the arrival of humans capable of hunting megafauna and the Pleistocene mass extinction around 40,000 years ago in the Sahul lends support to the hypothesis that humans were in some way a causal factor. These megafauna, having evolved in the absence of human predation are thought to have been particularly vulnerable to the arrival of humans in the form of Homo Sapiens. The Megafauna had few other predators and because they evolved largely without significant predators. Models of migration to the New World are more divided. The reliable evidence currently available suggests a north western migration of