TASMANIAN


Meaning of TASMANIAN in English

n.

Any member of a now-extinct population of Tasmania.

An isolate population of Australian Aboriginals who entered Tasmania 25,000–40,000 years ago, they were cut off from the mainland when a general rise in the sea level flooded the Bass Strait about 10,000 years ago. Subsistence was based on hunting land and sea mammals and collecting shellfish and vegetable food. The first permanent white settlement was made in Tasmania in 1803, and the settlers provoked a war in 1804. Of an estimated 4,000 Tasmanians present when the Europeans first arrived, only 200 remained by the 1830s; moved to Flinders Island for their protection, they did not survive long in their new home, and the last full-blooded Tasmanian died in 1876.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia.      Краткая энциклопедия Британика.