Overview
- The paper, published in Nature Human Behaviour on Tuesday, synthesised five independent approaches — two computer‑modelling suites, two genetic reconstructions and archaeological radiocarbon analysis — to derive a median pre‑colonial population of about 2.22 million people.
- To match early colonial census figures the authors estimate a median of roughly 2.06 million excess Indigenous deaths between 1788 and 1861, with plausible ranges from about 700,000 to 4.2 million reflecting substantial uncertainty.
- By 1861 the study finds only about 177,000–193,000 Indigenous people remained, roughly 7 percent of the revised pre‑colonial median, showing the collapse occurred within decades of the First Fleet’s arrival.
- The researchers stress disease introduction as the primary driver of the depopulation, with frontier violence, displacement, malnutrition and structural harms also contributing, and they note recorded massacre counts likely understate actual killings.
- Authors and Indigenous scholars say the revised baseline matters for truth‑telling, reconciliation and policy because it changes how Australians understand intergenerational trauma, cultural survival and the time needed to restore population parity, which the paper projects could occur around 2047 if current growth trends continue.