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Originally posted by Tehutimes:
I've seen articles on Ancient Khemetic Medunetchers or heiroglyphs painted on hillsides in Australia so coins from medevial Kilwa,Tanzania shouldn't be startling news.

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An Egyptologist from Sydney's Macquarie University has rejected any new claims about one of the most mysterious and controversial sites on the New South Wales Central Coast, known as the 'Gosford Hieroglyphs'.

The glyphs site at Kariong features almost 300 engravings on two sandstone walls, which some believe are an example of an early form of Egyptian writing and have drawn widespread interest over the years.

They have long been dismissed as fakes by authorities and academics since their discovery in the 1970s but there are still ongoing attempts to prove the theory they were carved by the ancient Egyptians.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service maintains the engravings are not authentic, as does Associate Professor Boyo Ockinga from Macquarie University's Ancient History Department, who is currently on an archaeological dig in Luxor, Egypt.

Professor Ockinga says as much as he would like the glyphs to be genuine, there is no doubt they are fake.

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Not to mention that New South Wales would be an inconvenient location for Egyptian colonists to settle. The northern coast would have been much more accessible.


That aside, it does seem quite weird to me that historiographic accounts always portray Australia as so isolated from the rest of the Old World between its initial colonization and the 18th century European "discoveries". I recall reports of minor Indian ancestry being found in some Aboriginal populations, which might explain how they got dingos, but that's about it.

We know that ancient Austronesian sailors from Southeast Asia (including the ancestors of Polynesians) were able to cross the Wallace Line and settle along the coast of New Guinea and some Melanesian islands, and smidgens of their ancestry might have diffused across the Torres Strait into northeastern Australia as well. But why don't we see more evidence of extensive contact between Aboriginal Australian and other Old World cultures, given that Australia is located so close to Southeast Asia? If the Polynesians could cross the entire breadth of the Pacific in outrigger canoes, you'd think the Malays, Chinese, Arabs, or other seafaring Asian civilizations could make it across the Timor or Arafura for trade. For that matter, Aboriginal Australians themselves would have to be descended from seafarers rowing across the Wallace from Asia, so it's not like they were unfamiliar with aquatic travel either.

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