Home to inhabitants 70,000 years ago...the discovery of a continent off Australia twice the size of Britain
The discovery of a continent off Australia twice the size of Britain
Sonar maps from ships have revealed signs of freshwater rivers and lakes across a sunken area almost twice the size of Britain, where humans might once have lived.
About 70,000 years ago, there would have been a vast area of land now submerged off the coast of Australia and scientists have called it the lost continent of Atlantis.
Archaeologists have speculated that the continent likely harbored a population of half a million people. The undersea area was so large that it could have served as a launching point for migration from modern-day Indonesia to Australia, a new study published in the journal Quaternary Science Review has found.
A large area of the continental shelf
“We're talking about a completely submerged area, more than 100 meters [330 feet] below sea level today,” said Cassie Norman, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and lead author of the new study. Adding that this Australian continent of “Atlantis” consists of a large area of the continental shelf, which, if it were above sea level, would have connected the Kimberley and Arnhem Land regions, which today are separated by a large oceanic bay, according to the Live Science website.
This expanded ancient Australian land mass was part of the ancient continent that connected present-day Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania into a single unit known as the Sahol.
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