Human colonisation of Australia

There is much debate about the date when humans colonised Australia. Much of this discussion involves differing opinions about the reliability of radiocarbon dating in comparison to other dating techniques. The issue is often "how much carbon-14 remains to be measured in very old samples?" (see calculator on the right), and has this carbon been contaminated with younger carbon? The problem is that as samples get older there is progressively less carbon-14 to be measured and any contamination will have increasingly dramatic effects on the estimated date. Use the calculator to see this effect by calculating several different ages (try 1000, 10000 and 40000).

For those researchers who distrust radiocarbon dating the alternative technique has often been luminescence dating, a method that is also subject to questions!

The hyperlinks below will display on-line versions of papers which investigate the dating of human colonisation of Australia. All papers are complete and are reproduced here with permission of the author(s) and the journal in which they were published.

Type in the years (without commas), press "Calculate" and the amount of carbon-14 remaining will appear.