Lead author of the population estimate study
Appears in 1 story
Last updated Oct 15, 2026
Associate Professor; Partner Investigator in CIEHF representing EMM Consulting; Adjunct Research Fellow at James Cook University
Australia's Indigenous population before European colonisation was about 2.22 million people — not the 250,000 to 1 million historians long assumed, a new study in Nature Human Behaviour finds. Within 73 years of the First Fleet's 1788 arrival, researchers estimate 93 percent of that population was gone, an average of about 28,200 excess deaths per year.
Updated Oct 15
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