Australian continent once more became a separated landmass. However, the newly formed 150 km wide Torres Strait with its chain of islands still provided the means for cultural contact and trade between New Guinea and the northern Cape York Peninsula. Several thousand years ago the Melanesian Torres Strait Islander peoples were established in the Torres Strait Islands, and commerce and contact was continued via this route although there is little evidence to suggest immediate influences extended much further south. A more sporadic contact along the northern Australian coast was maintained by seafarers across the Timor and Arafat Seas, with substantial evidence of Macassan contact with Australia in the centuries prior to European arrival, and also evidence of earlier contacts and exchanges by other groups. However, these exchanges do not appear to have involved any extended settlement or migrations of non-Aboriginal peoples to the region. According to a 2013 German study by a team of researchers on Indigenous Australian DNA genes reveal that a wave of migrants from India arrived in Australia about 4,230 years ago. It shows that the Indian migrants settled in Australia before Captain James Cook's first recorded contact with the Australian coastline. The study also suggests that up to 11 per cent of Aboriginal Australians DNA derives from Indians. During the migration period, dingos first appeared in the fossil suggests that the Indians took their dingos with them and they may also have brought stone tools called microliths. This study overturns the view that Australian 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. Doctor Mark Stoneking, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology had explained that the DNA link could have been by people actually moving, physically travelling from India directly to Australia, or their genetic material could have moved in terms of contact between India and neighbouring populations who then had contact with other neighbor populations and eventually, there would have been contact with Australia. Professor Alan Cooper, from the University of Adelaide's Centre for Ancient DNA, says that the Indian influence may well have played a role in the development of the Australian Aboriginal culture. It has taken a while for the Indian influence to be discovered because Indigenous Australians have been hesitant to participate in these kinds of genetic studies. British colonisation and settlement: 1787–1850s After the loss of