WHO were Australia’s first people?

David Penberthy (The Sunday Mail, April 20) thinks it’s the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

They are two different racial groups.  

There is clear evidence there were at least five different races of people here prior to the Aborigines, as they acknowledge their artwork is evidence.

There were the ancestors of Mungo Man, their ancient skeletons of very modern man, almost Asian in appearance and totally different to any known DNA, who were the ancestors of the North Queensland negrito pygmies.

Tasmanian Aborigines were of Papuan stock, as were many mainlanders.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reported “evidence of substantial gene flow between Indian populations and Australia about 4000 years ago”. 

They brought the (non-native) dingo with them. 

They were the ancestors of the stocky hairy people who lived in various parts.

Archaeology of the Dreamtime by Josephine Flood points out that “Pleistocene human remains lie outside the range of present-day Australian skeletal forms ... however, evidence suggests that another group of people were here, perhaps 100,000 years ago” (The Australian, May 15, 1992).

Will these also be recognised?

We do not need a lie locked into the constitution.