As of: February 7, 2024, 4:49 a.m
By: Philipp Bräuner
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Huge land masses off the Australian coast were probably habitable for thousands of years - until they disappeared into the sea.
Australia - A sunken land just off the coast of Australia.
This is what researchers from Griffith University in Brisbane discovered.
An area the size of Paraguay is said to have had optimal conditions for human life.
But with the rise of the seas, this habitat has disappeared from the face of the earth.
New insights gained by analyzing sonar data have led a research team from Griffith University in Brisbane to a significant discovery,
New Scientist
magazine reports.
Previous investigations in the region off the northwest coast of Australia focused primarily on potential oil and gas deposits.
But now the Geoscience Australia agency has collected its own data that provides precise insights into the nature of the landscape and its habitability.
Sunken land may have hosted up to 500,000 people
The result is remarkable: an area of 400,000 square kilometers that was once habitable now lies beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean.
In addition, there was an inland sea of similar size to Lake Marmara in Turkey.
In the immediate vicinity was a freshwater lake of about 2,000 square kilometers, accompanied by rivers, cliffs and ravines - all ideal habitats for a significant number of people, the researchers note.
In their study they assume that between 50,000 and 500,000 people could have lived there.
These living conditions existed over a long period of time.
The inland sea remained almost unchanged for over 10,000 years, and the freshwater lake even remained almost unchanged for over 16,000 years.
The surrounding areas thus offered many generations a stable living space.
Ice melting around 14,500 years ago caused land masses to slowly sink
However, this changed at the end of the Great Ice Age around 14,500 years ago, when sea levels rose dramatically.
This had a devastating impact on the inhabitants of the northwest Australian archipelago.
With water levels rising by four to five meters per hundred years, residents may have observed the decline in their habitats and retreated inland, the researchers suspect.
They left behind a land that, like Atlantis before it, can inspire the imagination of humanity.
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