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The pattern of languages in the northern half of Australia has distinctive features which strongly indicate the intrusion of prefix-language speaking peoples into Arnhem Land and suggest a movement of peoples into Cape York and other north-central areas. This pattern is plausibly linked to the post-glacial flooding of the land which laid between the present Australia and New Guinea. The impact of post-glacial flooding elsewhere in Australia is not apparent and may have been minor.

There are perhaps 200 existing and 50 known but extinct Australian languages whose relationship presented a daunting problem to the first investigators. However, after decades of study, linguists have concluded that all of the languages in this huge continent are related to each other. There are still different opinions on the details but all linguists concur that there is one clear distinction - that between the "prefix" languages of the northwest and the "suffix" languages which occupy the rest of the continent. These locations of these languages are shown in Figure 1 which is based upon a study which identifies 27 language families in Australia (after Yallop, Reference 1). We should note that in this map we have chosen to emphasize some features of importance to our thesis of the influence of post-glacial flooding.

Almost all of the suffix languages are classified in one family called "Pama-Nyungan" (PN) from the different names for "man", the Nyungan (green) which occupies most of the continent and the Pama (light blue) in the north-east. Because of its extensive use of suffixes, it is characterized as "suffixing". This family dominates the Australian landscape and occupies almost the entire continent with the exception of the north-west, stretching in a broad arc from Cape York in the northeast, through the southeast and central regions to the extreme south west. Thus it occupies about 90% of the land area, but despite its extent, it comprises only one family of the 27 found in Australia.

It is surely significant that the linguists have found it necessary to identify the dominant language family by two names, Pama and Nyugan, which clearly is evidence of some form of an internal distinction in this family. This is also evident in the geographical locations since the Pama languages are confined to the northeast in the Cape York peninsula. Some linguists (but probably few) would go as far as identifying a distinctive "Pama" language, to the extent of re-constructing a "Proto-Paman" (Hale).

The prefix group (yellow) occupies almost of the land extending from the northwest coast to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The languages of this group are all of the distinctive kind where prefixes as well as suffixes are used and are naturally called "prefixing". In striking contrast to the one-family Pama-Nyungan (P-N) language, they comprise 23 of the 27 families found in Australia.

From our perspective, the most important, and unambiguous, feature of this map is the separation of PN Murngic on the north-central coast from all of the other Pama-Nyungan languages. The prefix languages lie between them and all other PN peoples, and unless they achieved their present location by sea or by penetration of prefix-occupied land, this separation was due to penetration of prefix peoples into a region previously occupied by suffix peoples.

There is a third, small, group which consists of three suffixing but non Pama-Nyungan families located to the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria and south of and adjacent to the easternmost prefix languages. The family names are Djingili-Wambayan, Garawan, and Minkinian, and, for convenience we shall refer to this group as "Djingili" (dark blue). We must emphasize, that although they are suffixing and so not as distinctively different from the PN languages as the prefix group, they are not Pama-Nyungan. These appear to intrude upon the suffixing languages.

There is also some evidence for intrusions among the PN languages themselves. To the south of the Djingili group, in the center of the continent, lies the Pama-Nyungan Aranda people, and these have long been felt to be rather different from their neighbours. Indeed, one of the earliest scholars in Australian linguistics, The Reverend P. Wilhelm Schmidt, described Aranda as almost splitting the languages of the south into an east and west group. While this is perhaps an extreme view based on the limited linguistic knowledge of his time, it raises the possibility that the Aranda may have been late comers to their present location.

And, of course, the very location of the Pama languages is an indication of some significant changes in the north of the continent.

We believe that the pattern of Australian languages is directly related to the post-glacial flooding of the lands between northern Australia and New Guinea now occupied by the Arafura Sea, the Timor Sea, and the Gulf of Carpentaria. This conclusion was reached by considering the nature of the lands before they were flooded, the fact that they must have been populated by man, and the specific way in which the flooding occurred. We will discuss each aspect in turn.

The seas between Australia and New Guinea are shallow, but approaching Timor, to the west, the sea-bed dips strongly, forming the eastern boundary of a deep trench that has isolated the southern lands since well before the emergence of man on earth. Thus, as has been appreciated for many years, the seas filling this trench must have been crossed by the ancestors of the Australians, Tasmanians, and peoples of New Guinea. And the means for traversing the deep seas must have been very crude since the Australians and Tasmanians possessed only the crudest of rafts or flimsiest of bark-boats.

But at the height of the last glaciation, about 16,000 or 17,000 BP (Before Present) the sea-level was an estimated 600 meters lower than today, so that the seas had receded from the north, and Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, were one land mass (Figure 2). And the land exposed by the seas was distinctively structured. The western and eastern boundaries fell steeply, so that, although the sea sank to 600 meters below their prior (and present) level, the coastline at the time of greatest recession was little different from that corresponding to a 200m depth. In fact this was largely true even up to 100m, since the only significant change in this further 100m rise was a fairly minor incursion from the western edge into the region of the present Arafura Sea.

Thus, although the plain was originally a sea-bed, the steepness of a large part of its boundaries meant that only a fairly small portion returned to the seas during the majority of the process of re-flooding, from 600m to about 100m. Consequently there were many years for the land to drain, for vegetation to take root and then flourish, and for animals to make it their habitat. Also, since present day islands are of relatively minor extent, by far the greatest part of the exposed lands consisted of a vast plain with a stable environment and population.

This plain was truly an integral part of the "Australia and New Guinea" of that time, but there were also some differences. Perhaps the largest effect was that the sea currents which would otherwise flow through the seas and ultimately the Torres Strait were diverted, and this affected oceanic flow and climate over a considerable region. These matters are of great interest, to, for example, students of climate, and the type of vegetation in the exposed lands throughout their exposure and re-flooding has been reconstructed. The detailed patterns changed somewhat as the re-flooding continued, but the re-constructions showed that there were a series of east-west bands of vegetation which progressed from "woodland", to "open woodland", to "shrubland", to "arid vegetation", as one progressed southwards from the center of the plain (2).

Clearly, there was no sharp distinction between the environment(s) of the plain from the areas that later "became Australia". And so, since man is believed to have inhabited "Australia" at this time, man must also have been present in the great plain to the north. Indeed, the environment in this plain would seem to be benign (certainly by Australian standards), and we would anticipate that the population density could well have corresponded to the upper limit of three-per-square-mile found in the north of latter-day Australia. The plain that was later flooded must not only have been populated, it was well populated!

This point was clearly obvious to those who considered the re-constructed environments of the plain. For example, they discuss the societal impact of the absence of stone in the plain but but note that bone and wood would be adequate substitutes for weapons and tools.

The flooding of the great plain was surely not a simple event since the rise of the waters was unlikely to have been uniform. The sea level did not simply drop to its greatest extent and then rise uniformly to its present level as the huge glaciers covered (mostly) the northernmost lands of the northern hemisphere because the glacial coverage fluctuated greatly. In fact, the ice showed a complex series of advances and retreats, both major and minor, and the sea level over the entire world showed matching changes. And even during periods when the ice was generally advancing or retreating, the rate at which these changes were occurring was not necessarily uniform, and neither were the rates of advances and retreats of the coastline.

In addition, even if the rise in sea level was smoothly uniform, the gradient of the coast was small in some regions that a very modest rise would result in huge changes in the coast line. But where the coastline was very steep, as in the west opposite Timor, large changes in sea level resulted in little change in the land areas.

Thus we believe that is essential to consider the flooding in some detail, and particularly that we should consider the eastern and western regions separately.

The sea bottom topography is shown in Figure 3. As we have already noted, the coastline at the time of greatest recession, 600m, was little different from that corresponding to a 200m depth and so there was only a relatively small change in the coastline during the first 400m of floooding. The change was larger with further flooding, but up to100m the only significant change was a fairly minor incursion from the west into the region of the present Arafura Sea. A further rise – from 100m to 50m - was much more significant since the bay being formed by the western incursion increased considerably, but, in the east, a wide band of the original land still remained, and the Strait of Torres remained unbreached. Thus, while the area of un-flooded lands was reduced, there was still extensive, land available after the flooding up to100m. But with a further rise of 50m - 50m below the present sea level – the available land was greatly reduced and the rate of reduction perhaps increased because of the very shallow gradient of the coastal land at this point. And too, the Strait of Torres was formed so that Australia was now isolated from the island to the north.

Thus we have two somewhat conflicting influences on the rate of change in available land and pressure for migration to present-day Australia. On the one hand the shallowness of the coastal gradient meant that the last 50m to 100m rise in sea level caused large changes in the coastline and flooding could have been rapid. But on the other hand, there was always a wide expanse of land remaining before the seas reached the present coastline and there was no change in topography which could have precipitated catastrophic flooding.

In summary, while the shallowness of the basin in the east meant that there were large changes in the available land for fairly small further flooding, the advance of the sea would have been steady and not catastrophic.

The flooding of the lands extending from the west coast of Arnhem land towards the island of Timor was radically different from that which occurred in the east. The topography of the sea bottom is shown in Figure 4.

As can be seen, the sea bottom plunges abruptly in off much of the west coast and there there is a broad, shallow, shelf extending 300 to 400 kilometers to the west from the position of the present coastline. And off the western coastline lies the very deep trough which extended about 100km east from Timor which has existed for all the time of man on earth.

As in the east there was little change in the coastline as the sea rose from its greatest depth of 600m to about 200m, but in marked contrast to the east, much of the coastline did not change even when the depth was reduced to just 50m. Most of the west coast facing Timor was essentially unchanged and the principal effect of flooding to 50m was to create a large, shallow, bay which ran from the center of this coast towards the present coastline. The land then consisted of a northern arm stretching from the northern part of the coast where Bathurst and Melville Islands lie, and a southern region extending seawards from the Bonaparte Archipelago in the south. Outside this central region, there was an appreciable retreat of the land in the easternmost region and some lesser degree at the southern boundary.

Thus, even when the flooding had proceeded to just 50m below the present level, about one-half to two-thirds of the original land was unchanged, and the principal change was the presence of a shallow, wide, bay which simply divided the land into two broad peninsulas. Flooding to 50m was of much less significance in the west and, for much of the land, probably had no effect at all.

But the situation during the last 50m of flooding was clearly not a relatively benign steady retreat of the coastline as in the east.

And the situation was complicated by the detailed topography of the remaining land. What cannot be shown at the scale of this map is that a huge arc of barely submerged shoals or banks extends from the present coastline all the way to the edge of the Timor trough (3). These are clearly the relics of numerous hills which dotted the outer boundary of the land which remained after the flooding to 50m, and these must have constituted an extended archipelago of small islands just prior to being themselves flooded by the rising water.

In summary, much of the land which was later flooded would remain dry until the sea-level reached about 50m but then the major part of this land would be transformed into an extended archipelago of small islands. A further small rise would be sufficient to transform these islands into sea-covered shoals and banks. In brief, almost all of the land would disappear within a short time beneath the waves. There would be no gradual disappearance of the coastline as in the east.

We take it as axiomatic that the drowned lands were inhabited. We cannot know the exact fate of the peoples there, but we can examine the options available to them. One thing we can be certain of - not one of these people when confronted with floods which engulfed their homelands and threatened their lives and those of their households would accept their fate. All of them would seek an alternative to death by drowning.

The common factor in all alternative fates would be an attempt to relocate in the un-flooded adjacent lands, but the alternatives would depend upon many factors. Among these are the nature of these lands, of the number and culture of their inhabitants, of the relationships between them and the refugees, of the sizes and strengths of the tribes, and whether the refugees were able to maintain cohesiveness so that they were not simply powerless individuals. It would also depend in part upon the urgency of the situation - whether there was time to seek for a solution or whether the drastic measures were forced on the parties. We will examine the various possibilities in turn.

First, if the adjacent lands were so desolate as to be uninhabitable, then the refugees would be unable to sustain themselves there and would perish. They would not leave any record in the lives of their neighbors or their descendants because there would be none. Since the adjacent lands include the populated parts of present day Australia we can dismiss this alternative as highly improbable.

Second, if the adjacent lands were thinly populated so that they could support additional population, then the refugees could be accepted as neighbors by the existing tribes if, for example, they were related to each other, or if neither had a tradition of war against strangers. Under these conditions, it is quite possible that the different tribes would merge to form a different culture. We think that this is quite probable, particularly if events unfolded over sufficient time to allow adjustments to be made.

Third, if the adjacent lands were sufficiently well populated to make the acceptance of refugees difficult, there would be conflict for their possession. This could result in the destruction of either of the disputing parties or in the displacement of the tribe that originally holds the land. The parallel to the last case where the refugees somehow escape defeat but manage to locate elsewhere seems unlikely. And, to follow the argument to its conclusion, if the original tribe attempts to locate elsewhere, they would be faced with similar problems to the refugees with the same range of possible outcomes. We think that this range of outcomes is quite probable.

We have to select between the second and third cases. We will now consider the circumstances in east and west.

As we have noted, the dominating characteristic of the eastern drowned lands is that although the flooding took place over a huge area, the land was one of gentle gradients and which was bounded by a very long coastline which merged gently into the flooded areas. Thus, unless the sea rose in a dramatically sudden way, the inhabitants would simply have retreated in an orderly way. Conversely, if the sea rose suddenly, perhaps due to high winds or a storm surge, there could have been considerable loss of life.

But the rise in the sea must have occurred over a considerable period of time, and so it is difficult to believe that the people who lived near the ocean did not view the need for caution as a normal part of their way of life. Under these circumstances, while there may have been occasional disasters, we believe that a steady drift away from the coast was anticipated and occurred without significant effects upon the people. They simply moved inland as the shoreline gradually advanced and if the population density was low the adjustments in tribal territories would not have been traumatic.

On occasion there could well have been reluctance on the part of the inland people to share their land or to move inland themselves, and conflict could well have occurred, but, whether peacefully or otherwise, the drift away from the coast would have occurredAs the shoreline receded, the peoples adjacent to the shore edged further inland, and those who lived further inland also eased further away from the coast. And, given a slow pace and a huge coastline, conflict was surely unlikely. There was no enormous sense of urgency, and little incentive for conflict since if an inland tribe was very territorial or aggressive the incoming peoples would probably avoid their land and try again to one side or the other. And if the incoming tribe was particularly aggressive the original inhabitants would perhaps also yield to them and press upon their inland neighbors rather than go to war. Only when two aggressive groups confronted each other would war be likely.

There would have been some loss of life, by drowning or by warfare, but the generally gradual nature of the process probably meant that most of the peoples of the drowned lands migrated to present day Australia. We thus have a picture of a merging of peoples over a fairly long period and over the entire coastline of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

If both the peoples of the drowned lands and those inland spoke similar languages this process would have left no mark upon the later pattern of languages. However, the fact that there appears to be some difference between the "Pama" of the very region which would be subject to migration indicates that this was not so. The differences appear to have not been very great so that a combined "Pama-Nyungan" family could be identified, but it is probable that the newcomers did indeed speak a distinctive "Proto Paman" as identified by Hale.

As we have noted earlier, the sequence of flooding in the west led first to the creation of two peninsulas extending westwards from the coast of Arnhem Land, but much of the land was completely unaffected even when the seas rose to within 50m of its present level. There would have been the necessity of accommodating those people displaced from the great bay between the peninsulas and the flooded regions to the north and south, and there could have been conflicts. However, most of the land was unchanged, and most of the people simply continued with their lives unchanged. But the further rise beyond 50m must have brought disaster. The land in the peninsulas rose at most 50m above the sea, and it extended for a great distance from the unflooded lands. There may have been a temporary respite in refuges upon the many islands at first left by the floods, but these were far smaller in area than the flooded portions and the struggle for survival upon the islands could have been violent and exceedingly disruptive. The inhabitants had no alternative but to flee eastward, forcing themselves upon the original inhabitants, probably as a disorganized rabble.

We believe that the refugees were the ancestors of the present day prefix peoples, and that their abrupt and probably violent struggle for survival led to migration to their present location (Figure 5). Since the people inhabiting Melville and Bathurst Islands are prefix-speaking it seems obvious that the refugees from the drowned lands were probably also prefix-speaking, and the diversity of Prefix languages (23 of the 27 identified in Australia) could be the result of the collapse of their society and the tumult of their race for survival.

Furthermore. the Djingili may represent the people who originally occupied Arnhem Land who had to flee from the prefix invaders, and the Aranda were quite possibly a people displaced by the fleeing Djingili. This would account for the fact that the Djingili and Aranda have a suffix language but appear to be somewhat different from their neighbors. And in the process the Murngic people were isolated from the other suffix people by the intruding prefix peoples.

There are areas all around the coast of Australia which were uncovered when the sea-level fell and one may ask whether there are indications elsewhere of the movements of peoples. The answer appears to be no!

This may be that these other coastal areas are generally narrow compared to those in the north and so the populations there would be small so that their movement inland would have little impact. But the uncovered shelf on the south coast is quite large, and the case here is not as clear. Nevertheless, the present population density on the south coast is low, and it may also be the case that, despite the area exposed, the population was too low to have a distinguishable impact.

Of course, the rise in sea level had the effect of isolating Tasmania, but the relationship of Tasmania to Australia presents a series of other questions that we will not enter upon here.

Apart from the fact that the impact on New Guinea was likely to have been significant we can offer few useful comments.

When the "50m flood" penetrated the region of the Gulf of Carpentaria a shelf of land was left on the southern coast of New Guinea which was comparable in area to New Guinea itself. Thus, all else being equal, one would expect that the impact of movement of people from this area when it flooded would be proportionately larger. However, the linguistic situation in New Guinea is not as well defined as in Australia and we see no "obvious" result such as the intrusion of Prefix people into a "suffix" continent.

Indeed, since the likely number of intruders could be large compared with the original population, it is possible that the large number of languages in New Guinea and the ill-defined pattern are actually the indications of an intrusion that we seek. In other words, it is a massive, post-glacial intrusion into New Guinea that created the remarkable diversity of languages there.

The pattern of languages in the northern half of Australia has distinctive features which are plausibly linked to the post-glacial flooding of the lands which lay between the present Australia and New Guinea.

In the west, off the coast of Arnhem Land, the effect of flooding was not great until the 50m level was reached and the peoples there were largely undisturbed and not prepared for major changes. But the folowing 50m rise led to a catastrophically rapid inundation which caused the inhabitants to flee as a disordered rabble and invade the lands to their east. This is likely to be the cause of the present location of the prefix-language peoples, the unusual diversity of their languages, the isolation of the Murngic peoples from their Pama-Nyungan relatives, and possibly the distinctive features of the Djingili and Aranda languages.

In the east, around the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the movement of displaced peoples would have been gradual and almost part of the way-of-life. Most of the inhabitants of the flooded lands would probaly survived and these may be represented by the Pama peoples of the northeast.

"Australian Aboriginal Languages", Colin Yallop, published by Andre Deutsch, 1982

"The Origin of the Australians", edited by R.L.Kirk and A.G.Thorne, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1976.

A simple chart which illustrates the banks is "Indian Ocean, Australia, North Coast, Adjacent Waters, INT 603, published by The Defense Mapping Agency, Bethesda, MD.