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Aborigines

The Aborigines are the Melanesian indigenous peoples of Australia and its outlying islands, including Tasmania. The ancestors of the Aborigines migrated out of Africa circa 73,000 BC and arrived in Australia via Southeast Asia circa 58,000 BC, settling across the continent within 6,000 years; they genetically isolated themselves from the other Eurasian peoples before the Europeans and Asians split circa 36,000 BC, and they had little contact with outside peoples until the Age of Discovery brought European explorers to the Pacific Ocean. From 1788 to 1934, the British Empire and its colony of Australia inundated Australia with white settlers who conquered Australia in the "Australian frontier wars", during which the Aboriginal population was decimated by European diseases, starvation, infertility, the loss of hunting grounds, and occasional (and mostly undocumented) European massacres. The Aborigines were gradually assimilated and forced onto reservations, and, well into the 20th century, Aboriginal children were forcibly adopted by white families to destroy their cultures. By 2016, there were 759,705 Aborigines in Australia, composing 3.1% of the population.

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