Australia was settled by a wave of immigrants from India little more than 4,000 years ago, a genetic study shows.The finding overturns the view that the continent was isolated from the time it was first colonised about 45,000-50,000 years ago until Europeans discovered Australia in the eighteenth century.

DNA evidence suggests that rather than complete most of the journey over several generations by foot, the Indian migrants came over by boat.

Mark Stoneking, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute, led the study and told Nature magazine: ‘Australia is thought to represent one of the earliest migrations for humans after they left Africa, but it seemed pretty isolated after that.’

Dr Irina Pugach, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said the international research team calculated that the Indian DNA reached the Aboriginal population 141 generations ago.

Australia was first seen by a European in 1606 when it was sighted from a ship and a further 53 vessels arrived before Captain James Cook arrived in 1770 to claim it for Britain.