 Aboriginal people visited the islands during the Holocene, as indicated by the find on Beacon Island of a flaked stone artefact made from Eocene fossiliferous chert.According to the surviving historical record, the first sighting of the Houtman Abrolhos by Europeans was by the Dutch VOC ships "Dordrecht" and "Amsterdam" in 1619, only three years after Dirk Hartog made the first authenticated sighting of what is now Western Australia, and only 13 years after the first authenticated voyage to Australia, that of "Duyfken" in 1606.Discovery of the islands was credited to Frederick de Houtman, Captain-General of "Dordrecht", as it was Houtman who later wrote of the discovery in a letter to the directors of the Dutch East India Company