Study: 93% of Pre-Colonial Indigenous Australians Died in 73 Years

A study reported by ScienceDaily estimates that Australia's Indigenous population before European colonization was 2.22 million—substantially higher than previously believed. The researchers describe a demographic catastrophe: within 73 years, roughly 93% of that population was lost.

The scale of decline implied by the study is far greater than commonly recognized. The authors frame the loss as a rapid collapse rather than a gradual decline, though the ScienceDaily summary does not provide details on the methods or causes behind the estimate.

Because the report draws on a single study, the figures have not been independently corroborated in the source material. Still, the findings point to a much larger pre-colonial population and a much sharper population crash than earlier scholarship suggested.