Introduction

Sahul is the name given to a continent that, until ten thousand years ago, encompassed the modern islands of New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania and various much smaller islands, which were then hills. Fifty thousand years ago, which is about the time humans arrived, it stretched from the Equator to the Roaring Forties (43° S) (http://sahultime.monash.edu.au). Off its shores to the east of New Guinea were the large high tropical islands of Near Oceania: the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons. All these lands could be reached only by sea voyages, the first of which, to Sahul, included crossings of more than 20 km. This “colonisation – is itself evidence for the existence of complex information exchange systems, planning depth and symbolic conceptualization” (Balme et al. 2009: 59). In other words, the organisation of building a boat and voyaging between islands is a clear hallmark of a modern human culture.

Although precise links have not yet been made, there is little doubt that people arrived by travelling through the Indonesian chain of islands, which were never all joined together by a land-bridge. These islands are generally called Wallacea, the area where both Southeast Asian and Sahulian animals and plants are found, forming a gradational link between the two areas. In this region, we have to assume boats of some kind were used, probably as part of peoples’ day-to-day existence. What these boats might have been has been the subject of considerable speculation, with bamboo rafts, perhaps with a simple sail, being among the favourites. With many of the islands intervisible, and sea crossings shorter than today’s because of lower sea levels, the arrival in Sahul of some Homo sapiens used to exploiting coastal and littoral resources seems almost inevitable.