The Aboriginal population of Tasmania became separated from the
mainland some 12,000 years ago when the sea level rose, flooding
the Bassian Plains. Archaeological excavations of the earliest
known occupation site in Tasmania, at Warreen Cave in the
Maxwell River valley of the south-west, have provided evidence
of Aboriginal presence at least 35,000 years ago. This discovery
means that the Tasmanian Aborigines were the most southerly
peoples in the world during the Pleistocene era. The complexity
of changes in the social, cultural and territorial structures of
the Tasmanian Aborigines over time is largely unknown. It is
evident from the ethnographic and archaeological record,
however, that at about 4,000 years ago the Aborigines dropped
scale fish from their diet and increased their consumption of
land mammals, such as kangaroos and wallabies. At about this
time they also stopped using bone tools, and refined their
making of stone tool implements. Canoes were crafted during the
last 2,000 years and used to ex