Australian Aborigines, AB uh RIHJ uh neez, are the first people of Australia. The word aborigines comes from the Latin phrase ab origine, meaning from the beginning. When spelled with a small a, the word aborigines refers to any people whose ancestors were the first people to live in a country. Australia's Aborigines live on mainland Australia and the nearby islands, including Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islands. The Torres Strait Aborigines are known as Torres Strait Islanders. Within Australia, the Aborigines are usually called Aboriginals.
The ancestors of today's Aborigines arrived in Australia at least 50,000 years ago. Scientists believe that these first people came by boat from Southeast Asia, the closest land that was inhabited by human beings at that time. By 30,000 to 25,000 years ago, Aborigines had colonized most of the diverse regions of the country, from the tropical rain forests to the central deserts. There were probably from 500,000 to 1 million Aborigines living in Australia when European settlers first reached the island continent in 1788.
Many white settlers thought that the Aboriginal way of life was backward and primitive and that it would be good for Aborigines to learn to live like white people. Today, however, most people realize that the Aboriginal culture was complex and well-adapted to the environment in which the first Australians lived.
After 1788, European diseases, malnutrition, and violent conflicts with the settlers greatly reduced the Aboriginal population. As European settlers pushed the Aborigines off their homelands, the Aboriginal people lost their livelihood and became poor and dependent. Whole families and clans died. By 1921, Australia had about 62,000 Aborigines.
From the time of the European colonization of Australia through the mid-1900
