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That's the paper, it has its own references. We also detect a signal indicative of substantial gene flow between the Indian populations and Australia well before European contact, contrary to the prevailing view that there was no contact between Australia and the rest of the world. We estimate this gene flow to have occurred during the Holocene, 4,230 y ago. This is also approximately when changes in tool technology, food processing, and the dingo appear in the Australian archaeological record, suggesting that these may be related to the migration from India. ... There is a sudden change in stone tool technologies, with microliths appearing for the first time (43), and people start processing plants differently (14, 44). It has been a matter of controversy as to whether these changes occurred in situ (45) or reflect contact with people from outside Australia or some combination of both factors. However, the dingo also first appears in the fossil record at this time and must have come from outside Australia (46). Although dingo mtDNA appears to have a SE Asian origin (47), morphologically, the dingo most closely resembles Indian dogs (46). The fact that we detect a substantial inflow of genes from India into Australia at about this same time does suggest that all of these changes in Australia may be related to this migration. In summary we now have at least four roughly supportive lines of evidence: the stone archaeological record, the dingo bone archaeological record, the genetic record, and comparative morphological characteristics. There is no technical reason why ocean travel could not have been made between Australia and islands to the north, indeed it would be stranger for it not to have happened since those islands almost all had native oceangoing traditions and birds would have been visible migrating to and from Australia so the fact there was land there would have been blindingly obvious. |