Australia may have had many more people before Europeans arrived than previously thought. Then 93% disappeared.

In January 1788, ships of the British First Fleet entered a bay near modern-day Sydney. More than a thousand people arrived on them, including convicts who were to be settled in the new colony.

Australia was not an uninhabited land. Indigenous peoples had lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years. Their communities were scattered across a vast territory, with their own languages, traditions, and ways of life.

With the start of colonization, the lives of Australia's Indigenous peoples dramatically changed, and their numbers began to rapidly decline. In the 1930s, anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown estimated their number at least at 250,000 people, though he himself considered this figure likely to be an underestimate. Later, higher estimates appeared, but they did not exceed one million people.

Now, a group of Australian scientists has attempted to make a new estimate. Their study was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. Tagesspiegel draws attention to its findings.

How to count people nobody counted

The researchers used several independent methods.

First, they turned to archaeological data. Scientists analyzed more than five thousand finds and traces of human activity, whose age was determined by radiocarbon dating. This helped to trace how the continent's population changed over time.

A separate estimate was obtained based on genetic data. This allows for the reconstruction of how population numbers changed in the distant past.

Finally, scientists modeled how many people different regions of Australia could sustain, considering local natural conditions and available resources.

Despite different approaches, the results obtained largely coincided.

There could have been more than two million people

According to new calculations, on the eve of British colonization, about 2.22 million Indigenous people could have lived in Australia, or 0.29 people per square kilometer. This is more than double even the highest of previous estimates.

Large estimated size of the Australian Indigenous population before its extensive decline following colonial invasion https://t.co/MGXKwqRHE7 pic.twitter.com/f5XSQvps2A

— Nature Human Behaviour (@NatureHumBehav) September 15, 2026

The new figure allows for a more accurate assessment of the scale of the subsequent decline in the Indigenous population. By 1861, it numbered only about 155,000 people, or 7% of the 1788 level.

Such a sharp decline had several causes. One of the main ones was diseases brought by Europeans. Other causes included violence, including mass killings, as well as the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands.

The loss of territories traditionally inhabited by Indigenous peoples disrupted their accustomed way of life. Communities were deprived of hunting grounds and migration routes, which in some cases led to food shortages.

From the mid-20th century, the number of Indigenous Australians began to recover. According to the 2021 census, there were about 813,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the country.

This is about 37% of the researchers' estimated population on the eve of colonization. If the current trend continues, according to their calculations, this figure could again reach the level of the late 18th century in approximately 2047.

The study's authors believe that the new estimate will help to better understand the scale of the consequences of colonization, which still affect Australia's Indigenous peoples today.

• 7
• 0
• 2
• 1
• 1
• 3
• 0
• 0