This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Australia had a much larger Indigenous population before the arrival of Europeans than previously thought, according to new research. The research also demonstrates much larger population losses resulting from colonization than previously believed, with an estimated 93% of the pre-European population lost in less than 80 years following the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet.
Professor Corey Bradshaw, Flinders University Global Ecology Professor and a chief investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures (CIEHF), is part of a national research group working with Indigenous partners to investigate Indigenous population sizes over time. Using sophisticated computer modeling, they calculated that the Indigenous population was up to seven times larger than previously estimated. "Understanding the size of Indigenous populations in Australia before European invasion in 1788 is essential to truth-telling and reconciliation," says Professor Bradshaw.
The work is published in Nature Human Behaviour. The research team arrived at new population estimates by reviewing ethnographic observations, archaeological and genetic reconstructions, and modeling environmental carrying capacity across the continent to estimate the Indigenous population size before colonization. Many previous estimates are anchored by one of the earliest attempts to determine pre-colonization populations by anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in the 1930s, who calculated a population of 250,000 people.
However, he acknowledged these values did not account for the impacts of lethal diseases and frontier and structural violence. Increasingly, these impacts have been shown to be far more extensive than previously known and suggest that early figures underestimate the number of people across Australia. Using modeled and genetics-based estimates (supported by, but not relying on, historical or ethnographic accounts), the researchers calculated a median pre-colonial Indigenous population of 2.22 million, or 0.29 people per square kilometer.
This compares with previous historical estimates of only 250,000 to 1 million people, which the researchers say are underestimates because of the far-reaching impacts of disease and frontier and structural violence that had affected populations by the time of early Australian censuses. The new estimate also allows calculation of the number of excess deaths in the post-1788 era. To align with early census records, the model estimates that 2.06 million excess deaths (an average of about 28,200 per year) occurred between 1788 and 1861.
These estimates show that by 1861, only about 7% of the estimated pre-colonial population survived. "These devastating findings highlight the major impacts of invasion experienced by Indigenous Australians and demonstrate their remarkable survival, resilience and recovery over the past century," says lead author Associate Professor Alan Williams, a partner investigator in CIEHF representing EMM Consulting and an adjunct research fellow at James Cook University. Although the Indigenous population in Australia has grown since the 1950s, the 2021 census shows it remains at about 37% of the estimated median pre-colonial size.
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