Australoid Race

The Australoid race is a broad racial classification. The concept originated with a typological method of racial classification. They were described as having dark skin with wavy hair, in the case of Veddoids from Sri Lanka and parts of South Asia and Aboriginal Australians, or hair ranging from straight to kinky in the case of Papuan, Melanesian and Negrito groups.

According to this model of classification, Australoid or Austronesian peoples ranged throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Guinea, Melanesia, Polynesia and India. In the mid-twentieth century, a separate argument emerged that Australoids were linked to Proto-Caucasoids. In the Out of Africa theory, the ancestors of the Australoids, the Proto-Australoids, are thought to have been the first branch off from the Proto-Capoids to migrate from Africa about 60,000 BCE, migrating along the now submerged continental shelf of the northern shore of the Indian Ocean and reaching Australia about 50,000 BCE. This ostensible Proto-Australoid–Proto-Capoid link, however, has been contested.