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The human history of Queensland encompasses both a long Aboriginal Australian presence as well as the more recent European settlement.〔A History of Queensland by Raymond Evans, Cambridge University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-521-87692-6)〕 Before being charted and claimed for Great Britain by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, the north-eastern Australian region was explored by Dutch, Portuguese and French navigators. Queensland has experienced dynamic growth since its separation from the colony of New South Wales in 1859. ==Indigenous people== The territory of Queensland was the most densely populated section of pre-contact Australia with a share of close to forty percent of the continental population. Aboriginal Australians arrived approximately 50-60,000 years ago by boat or land bridge across Torres Strait, presumably from Southeast Asia. They travelled over most of the continent in the ensuing 10,000 years. Before Europeans arrived 200 of the 600-700 Australian Aboriginal nations lived in Queensland with at least 90 language groups.〔 Around 25,000 years ago a sudden drop in global temperature of about 8C led to an ice age lasting over 10,000 years during which much of the abundant landscape became harsh and desolate. In this period the search for food was difficult, leading to the world's first seed-grinding technology. A land bridge existed both to south east Asia and to Tasmania but these land bridges were harsh and inhospitable. About 15,000 years ago warming global temperatures and high rainfall along the eastern coast caused the spread of tropical rainforest and at the same time the shrinking of available coastal land due to sea level rises. The inland, receiving rainfall, again became habitable. The Kalkadoon, in the inland central gulf region, dug wells 10m deep to maintain their supply of freshwater. The good conditions, lasting for at least 10,000 years prior to the arrival of Europeans, allowed the development of semi-permanent villages in the northern rainforests, the far western regions and Moreton Bay. Along the Barron River, and on the Moreton Bay Islands, large huts (djimurru) capable of housing 30-40 people were built. But for the most part the unpredictable climate with severe droughts and floods made the dominant hunter-gatherer lifestyle the most sensible. Queensland assumed its present shape around 6000 years ago.〔 The peak population of Aboriginal people prior to European colonisation is contentious. There may have been 200-500,000 Aboriginal people in Queensland prior to white settlement.〔 However, any pre-contact figure was no doubt greatly reduced by smallpox even before the arrival to the future Queensland of the white settler. There are two measurement for the pre-contact continental population, the amount of tribes of which Queensland carried 34.2 percent and the population estimates in which Queensland's share varies from 35 to 39 percent, both thus indicating that Queensland represented the most densely populated section of pre-contact Aboriginal Australia.〔Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: ''Frontier History Revisited'', Brisbane 2011, p9-15.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Queensland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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