Nature Human Behaviour

Stories

Study: 93% of Australia's Indigenous population lost within 73 years of colonisation

Published the population estimate and smallpox modelling papers

Australia's Indigenous population before European colonisation was about 2.22 million people — not the 250,000 to 1 million historians long assumed, a new study in Nature Human Behaviour finds. Within 73 years of the First Fleet's 1788 arrival, researchers estimate 93 percent of that population was gone, an average of about 28,200 excess deaths per year.

Updated 2 hours ago