NOT SUBBED People are living here at this time./We know that people are living here around this time. Science confirms that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ connection to this land stretches so far back in time that it’s beyond the world as we know it. It goes back to a time when giant ancient marsupials weighing the same as a four-wheel-drive roamed the landscape. It spans an epic ice age, including a severe drought, and rising seas that swallowed huge chunks of the land. This landscape looks very different to the Australia we know today. Scientists call this Sahul. About 70,000 years ago sea levels were up to 70m lower than what they are today. People could technically walk from today’s Papua New Guinea all the way down to Tasmania. Researchers say people moved out of Africa and crossed here from south-east Asia. They estimate hundreds to thousands of people purposefully made the open-ocean crossing using advanced watercraft skills. Population and genetic modelling suggests at least 1,700 to 3,000 people made up the continent’s earliest population, and they then moved through the country in one phase. But it also indicates a very small number of new genes were introduced after that.