SocietyAustralia’s Indigenous population estimated at 2.2m before colonisation’s ‘demographic catastrophe’

New modelling estimates that 2.2 million Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lived in Australia before the First Fleet arrived in 1788, far above the former estimate of 250,000. The researchers say disease, massacres, dispossession and malnutrition may have caused 2.06 million excess deaths, reducing the population to about 7% of its original size.

Indigenous Australianscolonisationpopulation research

TThe Guardian★★★☆☆2026-09-15 09:00Original