People go way, way back Down Under.
That, at least, is the contention of scientists who have uncovered preliminary evidence that humans lived in Australia far earlier than previously thought, sometime between about 116,000 and 176,000 years ago. What's more, the researchers report having found the oldest known artistic renderings, with an estimated age of 58,000 to 75,000 years. Humans may have traveled over water from Southeast Asia to Australia when an ice age lowered sea levels and narrowed the gap between those land masses, prior to 135,000 years ago, assert archaeologist Richard L.K. Fullagar of the Australian Museum in Sydney and his colleagues. Fullagar's group presented its findings at a press conference last week in Sydney and is slated to publish them in the December Antiquity. Until now, investigators had placed the earliest human occupation of Australia at around 60,000 years ago.